10 Things Your Casino Won't Tell You

Maybe you’ve had a good night or two at the casino sometime in the past decade, but it’s the house that’s really hit the jackpot. Visitors gambled and lost more than $34 billion at U.S. casinos in 2006, up from about $17 billion in 1996—not that the casinos are passing much of that growth on to consumers. While the odds always favor the house, some casinos are changing the odds and payouts on table games to be even more in their favor.

Take blackjack. Instead of the traditional 3-to-2 payout—which means a player betting $20 would get $30—some casinos are now paying 6-to-5, effectively reducing the payout by 20 percent. And almost every casino now uses multiple decks, stacking as many as eight in a single sleeve, which makes it harder for gamblers to keep track of which cards have been played. In perhaps the most significant shift, an increasing number of casinos don’t allow the dealer to hold on “soft 17,” the term for a 17-point hand that includes an ace. Continuing the hand improves the house’s odds by about 0.2 percent. It doesn’t sound like much, but on a table that sees $100,000 in wagers on a given day, that adds $200 to the house’s take.