What every casino game costs, per hour

The formula, once

Cost per hour equals stake, times rounds per hour, times house edge. Three numbers, and the middle one is the one nobody thinks about.

That is why a low-edge game played fast can cost more than a high-edge game played slowly, and why turbo spin is the most expensive button on a phone.

The table

Blackjack on a chart, 0.5% edge, 220 hands an hour at C$5: about C$5.50 an hour.

Blackjack played on instinct, 2.5%, same pace and stake: about C$27.50.

Baccarat banker, 1.06%, 90 hands at C$10: about C$9.50.

Craps pass line with odds behind it, effectively under 1%, 100 rolls at C$10: about C$8.

Single-zero roulette, 2.70%, 60 spins at C$5: about C$8. The same hour on a double-zero wheel: about C$16.

Slots at 96%, 600 spins an hour with quick spin on, C$0.50 a spin: about C$12.

Keno, 25%, 100 tickets at C$1: about C$25.

What the table shows

The cheapest and the most expensive hours differ by a factor of five, and the games sitting at each end are not the ones people assume.

Blackjack is only cheap if you play it correctly. The chart is worth roughly two percent of everything you stake, which is more than any promotion attached to any account.

Slots look mid-table and get there through pace rather than through the edge. Turn quick spin off and the same hour costs about half as much.

Automated roulette deals three or four times as fast as a live wheel with a human on it. Same game, same edge, several times the hourly cost.

The one number that beats all of this

Session length. Every figure above is per hour, so two hours is double and five hours is five times, and the maths does not soften with familiarity.

Set the session reminder in the app. On the operators we have torn down it sits between two and five taps into settings, and it is the only control on that screen working for you rather than for them.