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House advantage refers to the advantage expressed as a percentage that gambling establishments maintain in their favor. Many players believe that casinos profit from player losses. As true as it may be, it is the casino games that are created in a way that benefits the casino.
Have you heard the adage that says “The house always wins”? In this guide, we tell you exactly what that means and how the house edge works in online casinos.
Each casino game has its own rules that govern how the game is played. It is the rules of the game that determine the number of participants, the tools of the game, as well as the different ways of winning or losing in the game.
In the beginning, betting games were created for the primary purpose of making a profit for the house – the government used to be. Furthermore, these games were designed to promote a house advantage.
For example, in the classic game of blackjack, one of the rules of the game states that the player loses the game if there is a tie with the dealer. Roulette also has rules that favor the house: the bets that offer the best odds of winning pay less money in return. This way, players will go for the higher paying bets – which leads to more losses in the long run.
Here is a list of the most popular online casino games and the house edge they offer:
Before his death, in one of the rare moments when gout and mental illness gave him a short respite, William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778) received a young admirer who gave him more or less this speech: for years you have wielded tremendous power in a great nation and in Europe; your rare integrity has brought you popularity; it is said that many of the most beautiful women in the kingdom were not reluctant to your seduction; you have turned old and modern literature into family gardens. Fortune having offered you everything, including wealth, which of all these pleasures has given you the most pleasure? “Answer:” Win at the game. “
It doesn’t matter that this anecdote could be apocryphal so many players could claim it. In fact, not all of them, and it is far from it, do not return the hazy and obsessive image of Alexis Ivanovich and, far from what Dostoyevsky took an involuntary cliché, they assume their taste for the game, enjoy it every time. as possible, without compromising their children’s milk.
So where does this inclination come from almost everywhere perceived as both pathological and sinful? That it carries hints of sulfur even for the best ointment? That the voice lowers a tone when evoking it in others, like those shameful secrets that a little bad conscience helps to distill better?
The astonishment is all the more lively since no one, no doubt will dispute that playful activity seem consubstantial with the animal kingdom; whom man has given them an infinite variety and baptizes sad sire he whom nothing amuses. Certainly, one will say, but there are healthy amusements – in the sport which makes the bodies lose, the cultural distractions which nourish the spirit, etc. – and others who are not, first of all, because they touch money, secondarily because they often do not require talent or know-how, threaten the peace and balance of families.
This raises three questions that must be addressed in turn: games, stakes, players.
Before tackling them, let’s start, to clarify, by discarding games that are not. This covers all those, such as lotteries or EuroMillions, which are aimed at non-players. If we are willing to admit that buying a ticket or ticking a few boxes or scratching a ticket cannot, in itself, arouse any tangible pleasure, we must immediately recognize that the success of these activities results not from their intrinsic qualities but from greed, sometimes spectacular.
Players can engage in it but they would not be enough to ensure the scale. The marketing genius of the designers of this type of product has been precisely there, in reaching millions of people who are not attracted to the game and who are hardly aware of their involvement. They do so, moreover, by a very rational calculation: that of limited risk in the hope of a modest but welcome gain, at the same time as that, more precious, of the happiness of buying, for a few euros only, the right to dream about what one would do of ‘a huge jackpot.
To hell with the hostility of statistics! The players are well aware that, in spite of themselves, there are always winners that luck has touched with its miraculous finger and, without really believing it, nevertheless rightly say to themselves: Why not me?
But let’s leave these epiphenomena to come to the phenomenon, the real one, the hard one, the one that we find in casinos or around poker tables, as well as their online avatars, to stick to those who are the more common under our skies, to which we must also add the ineffable encouragement, at the pmu or on the racetracks, to the improvement of the horse race.
Does the game exist or does the word not conceal activities, behaviors, people without many relations between them?
are very varied and one does not understand anything if one is not aware of them. Of course, everyone knows the differences related to the greater or lesser part that luck occupies. Almost excluded from the most subtle games, the part of chance increases with ineptitude but, curiously, it can be the same with fascination. Let’s try to put it in order.
The usual horse racing bettor – to whom sports betting is assimilated – is a knowing. He finds in his service an abundant specialized press, knows the pedigree of the competitors, often to have vibrated with the tumult of their ascendants, is not unaware of the performances of the trainer, of the Palmares of the jockey or driver, recognizes at the first blow of eye the owner’s gown. It is in this science, more or less deep, that he will draw when betting, casting only a condescending glance on those who rely on their date of birth.
The victory will confirm to him his knowledge, his intelligence, and his intuition, and chance will reappear to him only in the form of bad luck, Rebecca III who could not lose and put himself at fault or the usually patient jockey who, this time pushed his horse too soon… Whoever wants to can even, wagering with caution, ensure an almost regular income by playing only on favorites. But it will take him so much time and self-discipline to do that that it is no longer a game, almost a job.
The poker player belongs to a closely related species where, quite simply, human psychology replaces equine physiology. There are good, bad, and bad poker players. The first are precisely those who know how to reduce as much as possible the part of chance.
They know their statistical chances of obtaining or not the card that would give them a good game, have on that of others, in modern practices, indications that they know how to interpret and evaluate, only engage in winnable moves and do not bluff more than necessary. Yet the best player can always be defeated by a reckless mediocre all battleship of luck.
Then come the cases in which the player’s intervention gives him the illusion of influencing the result. They are found at baccarat, railroad, blackjack. The fact of drawing, or not, an additional card, or even several, offers an exciting dilemma which, moreover, allows the less lucid to believe themselves then authors of their victory, but it is true that the won banco makes one forget everything for a moment. the rest.
At the height of chance, and therefore stupidity, are slot machines and roulette. Yet they are not equal because the first, electronic and closely watched, are programmed to return to the players a given percentage of the stakes.
Blow by blow, there is the only chance, but the player who would not leave a machine and would be alone to play it could know in advance the exact cost of his stubbornness.
Not so with roulette where chance is expressed in its purest form. The ball has no memory, which makes faith in any martingale laughable. The same numbers can often come out – the same sometimes make a repetition, more rarely a triplet, exceptionally a quadruplet or even, and all the witnesses will remember it then, a quintuplet – or others never show up.
The player’s participation is limited to placing chips before, passive from start to finish, watching the ball leave the dealer’s fingers, and waiting to find out where it has landed. Can you imagine being more stupid? Do we know more fascinating, at least for those who are sensitive to it?
But this hierarchy of chance is only one of the variables of the games. Two others, very important and largely linked, relate to the number of gains and the identity of the opponent, which lead to different groupings.
To play, there must be at least two, so that the loser finances the winner and it is wise that the rules be fixed beforehand which will calibrate the magnitude of the victory (that of the defeat always results from the stake, therefore from the will. one-sided by the person installing it, who must, however, respect, if necessary, rules setting a minimum and a maximum). Two large families then appear matching games and circle games.
In counterpart games – roulette, black-jack, etc. – players operate against the bank, generally a casino. She takes all the risk and rakes in all the profit if there is one. In these matching games, the amount of the winnings is fixed: a multiple of the stake (multiplied by two in the event of a victory in blackjack, by thirty-six in the event of a victory over a full number in roulette).
Circle games, on the contrary – poker, baccarat, etc. – lead players to play against each other. The bets are equalized, each one having to align, but the final amount of the gains will result from the addition of the individual decisions of each one and not from a report indicated in advance, the organizer being compensated by taking a percentage modest but recurrent.
Horse races follow an even different logic. In France, the bet is mutual in that it is the choices of the racers themselves who set the odds of each competitor, which allows the pmu to calculate the gain that goes to each, quite heavily cut by the State. Elsewhere, as in Great Britain, there is nothing mutual about betting and it is bookmakers who, at their own risk, offer a determined return for each bet made.
It is easy to see how many substantial differences can exist within gambling which, in truth, often have nothing in common other than the money itself. But is it that important?
There are games that do not need it, all those who are intelligent – where bridge and chess are in the first places – or in which a bet – on a match of tennis or a game of pétanque – does only ‘bring spice to the pleasure that could do without it.
Degas has shown us enough of the beauty that can be seen on racetracks. Seeing thoroughbred or trotters riding is a spectacle of choice for those who know how to appreciate it.
The aesthetics of equines, their athletic qualities, the talent of the jockeys would not however be enough to fill Longchamp, even on the first Sunday in October for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, if the meeting did not take place surrounded by hundreds of millions. euros. Likewise, you can play poker for chickpeas, and many started out like this, but it gets boring quite quickly.
As for watching a marble turn in a cylinder, even with an inimitable sound, or tirelessly sliding chips into a gleaming electronic device, even a fool would not dream of doing it for a moment, were it not for the stake attached to it…
So it is money. But why? Simply for lack of anything better.
Not all players are just money and not just Russian roulette. Ian Kershaw has impressively established how Hitler conceived of Barbarossa as a terrifying poker game. He understood the risk but was prepared to take it for the tremendous gain he hoped for.
In a less terrible fashion, how many men have become “great” by a successful roll of the dice when others are today forgotten, who could have more merits because the luck they had also tried had to them? refused his smile?
Thus the game is not confined to houses made for it, nor the stake limited to only cash gains.
But for those who fortunately do not have in hand the destiny of nations or the movement of their armies, they can only risk what they have. So that’s what they do.
Now, what do they have that can lend itself to the game? For this to be able to satisfy their taste, it must be personal enough, important enough so that through the thing they engage a little to be it, otherwise the activity would remain external to them, hence it would be powerless to give them the sensations they seek.
If the player could engage a finger or two, maybe they would. But who would be tempted by the gain of the finger of another? And himself, if he wins, what would he do with a multiplication of little fingers? The body, decidedly, cannot fuel the game. The soul?
Faust immediately listens but we know, not only thanks to him, that she is not an adequate bargaining chip and that there are too many dupes to ensure the sustainability of the game.
Since it would be deeply immoral to engage third parties (of course, this was done in the days of slavery or serfdom, by entire villages, but it was also the one where these unfortunate third parties were considered an element of the heritage), and since one can commit neither his body nor his soul, only his money remains, whatever form it takes, as being the least unusable part of himself.
It alone brings together all the attributes required, by the trouble that one has had or not in gaining it, by the intimacy that one maintains with one’s possession, by the free disposal that one has of it, by the ease of subtracting, adding or multiplying it, by the convenience that it represents in the exchange and by the attraction, finally, that it can exert on others.
It is for this, and for this alone, that money is the most common of the stakes, for lack of anything better, let us repeat it. Yet it is he who gives the game its bad reputation when it is not the heart.
Nothing is more false, in fact, than to believe that gambling is first and foremost a question of money . Except, and even that deserves nuances, in the case …. No, gambling is first and foremost a question of gambling.
In order to grasp it, you have to have seen these players, clearly, enough installed in life so that the gain they achieve does not weigh much in their income does not change their situation; you must have seen them leap with disproportionate joy or, trying to hide it, put themselves in a quasi-state of levitation.
Rich or poor, most of them play according to their means, often a little more than reasonable, always less than dangerous. It may even be irrelevant whether the final result is flat or slightly in deficit provided that, during the game, we have experienced the pleasure of winning.
It’s Pitt’s drunkenness. Money is only liquid, gambling is alcohol.
First, reconsider the received ideas. The first is that every player is a potential ludopath, since it is the now usual denomination by which we designate the one who can neither control himself nor stop.
Jean-Pierre Martignoni-Hutin, a little further on, underlines the narrowness of the number of people concerned and questions the causes in terms that deserve reflection. However, let’s admit for a moment, whatever he doubts it, that the game is seriously addicting.
Even so, is it more so than other pleasures? Empirically, we can argue that there are people who like the game and others who do not enjoy it, and we can all put names of friends in the second category without having to accuse them of puritanism. or inhibition.
From gustibus and coloribus …In the first category, those who are most attracted to gambling – which the police services usually call gamblers – risk submitting to it only if, on the other hand, their lives have serious and deep flaws which can then translate into a ludopathy which is the sign much more than the cause. But the same phenomenon can be observed in all kinds of other affections.
So we must see in any wine lover a drunkard to come if his life disappoints him. But the excess, which exists, is also marginal in all inclinations, neither more nor less.
The second cliché is that of players who would be constantly, whose temperament would lead to taking risks, everywhere and always, even not or badly calculated. Yet there are many players who are only at the table, who only reserve the taste – moreover often-timid – that they can nourish for a certain danger that they seek on the contrary to rationally avoid in all the other acts of their life.
The third misconception is that the player first seeks to lose. Although very widespread, we know of no other source than psychoanalysis with an ax. Whether it comes from practitioners completely foreign to the game and understanding nothing about it or who, players themselves, struggle to assume it, or from analysts who have only been confronted with real patients or who fear themselves such, it is simply absurd.
The player accepts to lose since that is part of the game, but to imagine that this could be his quest is to have not grasped anything of the pleasure of playing, of the happiness of winning, which alone explains the persistence of the activity. The game dissolves everything, like the best readings, intoxicating music, successful walks.
We no longer think about anything else and we hardly perceive our neighbor. No more past and no future because only the present moment exists and, if the fate is favorable, this present is that of grace. Are there so many activities that can offer those who are subject to them the same satisfaction, as lively?
It is unique in that it is a socialized egoism. Everyone, except cheating, plays only for himself, is in no way united with those who accompany him: it does not matter that all the others have lost if I myself have won, or the opposite. Selfishness, therefore, yet socialized because one never plays alone. But we do not play with others, rather in their presence, each in his world, in his bubble, in the shelter.
The variety of behaviors attests to it, from those who would like to be imperturbable to those, very expansive, who take the world to witness their luck or the relentlessness of a fatal fate, the most unbearable going so far as to take it out on themselves, to the croupier or to the one who deals the cards as if they were responsible for their disappointments.
Most often, however, the players are polite, courteous, sometimes accomplices without this being ambiguous, and there are even strong friendships that have been born around the gaming tables.
40Again, however, not all players are the same. A balance of power slips into circle games that do not exist in counterpart games. In fact, this is probably even their essential difference. Play against the bank [4][4]In Russian roulette, the bank has a slight advantage …confers anonymity, stripped of any feeling other than exclusively intimate.
To play against others is to want to prevail over them, to want to dominate them, sometimes even to bring them down. When he wins, the counterpart player feels blessed, the circle player feels superior. Both are for an instant that the second if it does not owe everything to luck, will be able to reproduce less easily than the first.
Thus the mystery of preferences is clarified a little. Both are real players, but different, that of poker having nothing else in common with that of roulette, and rare are those that both appeal to so much. For the competitor, circle games. To the egotist, the matching games.
This one likes to compete with others. He only likes to measure himself and his own luck. One will be entirely taken up in his own calculations and those which he lends to his adversaries. The other will get intoxicated with the magic of the numbers and their arrangement on the cylinder. One resigns himself to chance, the other abandons himself to him, deliciously.
The fact remains that both, although drawing them from different sources, can experience the same pleasure in winning and, first and foremost, the same pleasure in playing. No, gamers aren’t the damned of the earth and it might be time to finally admit it.
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