What Does 'House Edge' Really Cost You?
House edge in plain numbers: what 1%, 2% and 3% mean per bet and per session on Crash, Mines, Plinko, Coinflip and Slither, with worked examples.
Every casino game is built so the house wins slightly more than it pays out, on average. That slice is the house edge. It's usually quoted as a percentage, like 2%, which sounds small and is, per bet. What matters is how it adds up.
House edge and RTP are the same number
Return to player (RTP) is 100% minus the house edge. A game with a 2% edge has a 98% RTP: across all the bets ever placed on it, 98% of the money comes back to players as winnings. Any single session can be far above or below that; the edge is what happens on average over a very large number of bets.
What it costs per bet
The expected cost of a bet is the stake times the house edge. On Crash, a 0.1 SOL bet costs 0.002 SOL on average, whatever target you choose. That never shows up on any one bet: you either win something or lose 0.1. It shows up in the total.
| Game | House edge | Average cost of 100 bets of 0.01 SOL |
|---|---|---|
| Mines | 1% | 0.010 SOL |
| Plinko | About 1% | about 0.010 SOL |
| Crash | 2% | 0.020 SOL |
| Coinflip vs house | 2% | 0.020 SOL |
| Coinflip duel | 3% of each stake | 0.030 SOL |
Why it's the amount wagered that counts
The edge applies to everything you bet, not to what you deposit. If you deposit 1 SOL and keep re-betting your winnings, you might wager 20 SOL in a session. At 2%, that costs 0.4 SOL on average, 40% of your deposit, even though no single bet felt expensive. That's why betting systems that make you bet a lot, like Martingale, cost more than they seem to. The Martingale simulator shows this directly.
Slither is a different shape
Slither's 5% is taken once from the buy-in, not from every action. A 0.01 SOL buy-in gives a snake worth 0.0095 SOL, and nothing else is taken during the match: value moves only between players. That means a strong player can win more from other players than the fee costs, which isn't possible in the casino games.
What the house edge doesn't tell you
- How bumpy the ride is. A 100× crash target and a 1.5× target have the same edge but very different swings.
- Whether a game is fair. Edge is how much the house keeps; provably fair is proof it didn't change results. You want both stated clearly. See the fairness page.
- How long you'll play. A session at 2% costs whatever 2% of your total wagering is.
Using it
Treat the house edge as the price of entertainment. Decide what a session is worth to you, divide by the edge, and you know roughly how much you can wager for that price: 0.1 SOL of entertainment buys about 5 SOL of wagering on Crash or 10 SOL on Mines. Our guide to which game suits you compares the games beyond the edge.
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