The debate over just how rigged algos have made the market may be raging, but when it comes to riggedness, there is no debate that nothing beats Las Vegas where in the long (and not so long) run the house always wins. But how much does it win, and what games provide the house with the biggest profit? The following two charts answer these pertinent questions for anyone who may be planning a trip to the city of Lost Wages.
As Vizual Statistix explains [4], for those who want to stay away from the most rigged games, your best bet is the $100 slot machines, where the casinos take "only" 3.6% of your money. And those concerned about the magnitude of money lost rather than the percentage, you may want to move over to the penny slots, where you’ll still lose only 11.8%.
For the sports-betting fans, betting on baseball gives slightly better odds than basketball and football. One is much less likely to lose money betting on those sports than on racing.
For the tables fans, bingo is the game-o as here the house only takes in 8.8% of the wagers there, followed by blackjack (11.1%). Most punishing by far is 3-card poker, where gamblers lose an average of 32.5% of their money.
[5]
And keeping the rigged stock market analogy, there is liquidity and then there is churn. The chart below shows in which games casinos would prefer you gamble: sorted by revenues for the house, the most lucrative by far is Baccarat (thank you habitual Chinese gamblers), where the casino revenue is the biggest amounting to nearly $30 million on average per week. Blackjack fans who can never catch a break may be surprised to learn that their favorite game is in fourth position generating "only" $15.5 million of the revenue, below such honeypots as penny slots, which bring in on average a whopping $20 million weekly.
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However, one thing the charts above certainly do not capture is the fun factor: because at the end of the day if given the choice of losing one's money in a rigged Las Vegas, or in the just as rigged stock market, it should be absolutely no contest.
Source: Nevada Gaming Board [7]