Most players play online casino games for fun and hope to win some money. However, players who know how lucrative online casinos can be, know that they need to look for the best online casinos and the highest-paying casino games.
If that’s the case with you, you’re in the right place!
In this piece, I wanted to tell you all about casino game payouts and the games that pay out the most. I’ll discuss a few other things that will help anyone looking to gain insight into the online casino world.
All of that knowledge will prove incredibly useful if you want to have the best chances of winning the most. Let’s begin!
Casino Game RTP, House Edge, Payout Percentage, and Variance Explained
Various terms are used in the casino world. It can be challenging for the average player to understand what they all indicate, especially when you consider that the casinos never explain them.
So, to make things easier, let’s delve quickly into the terms connected with casino game payouts.
Return to Player Percentage (RTP)
RTP is a figure you’ll often see connected to online slots and sometimes with other casino games. The term denotes the percentage of the stakes that will be returned to the player.
For instance, if a slot game has an RTP of 95%, then that means that from every $100 invested, you can expect $95 in winnings, on average.
Naturally, this is just a theoretical number, and it never means that this is the amount you’ll win for sure. Sometimes, you’ll win more, and sometimes you’ll win less.
- In general, you should strive to play games with the highest RTPs, so any slot game with an RTP of 96% or above is a good choice.
House Edge and Payout Percentage
The house edge shows you how much the casino is bound to earn on a casino game. It’s a statistical advantage software providers build into the games themselves, ensuring that the casino will always win something.
Without the house edge, casinos wouldn’t have secure profits, which would make it impossible for them to function properly.
- The goal here is to play games with the lowest house edge, and since the average is 2–3%, it’s best to avoid games with numbers higher than that.
Variance or Volatility
Variance and volatility are two terms signifying the same concept and are typically used for slots. They usually go in tandem with the RTP percentage.
Variance/volatility denotes the payout frequency, i.e., how often the slot tends to pay, and how much. There are effectively three types of variance:
- Low variance — games with low volatility pay frequently but usually in smaller amounts.
- Medium variance — games with medium volatility pay fairly frequently, and they land both small and large winnings.
- High variance — games with high volatility pay rarely, but winnings are always massive when they do.
As you can see, it’s hard to determine which of these is better, as the payout can be the same regardless of the variance.
If you play a high variance slot, you might win a jackpot after a long time, and if you play a low variance slot, you might win so many times that you’ll eventually win a jackpot when all of that money is summed up.
This effectively means that choosing a game based on its volatility is a mere matter of preference.
Important Disclaimer
- All casino games are random, which effectively means that there’s no way to know how much you’ll win from any of them.
However, we can still use RTP percentages and other similar figures to determine which games offer the best winning chances.
Additionally, after careful research, I’ve also considered countless past winnings in various casinos to determine which games offer the best payouts.
So, if you follow the advice laid out in this piece, you’ll have the best chances of winning the most. But, once again, remember that it’s all theoretical, and since all gambling games are luck-based, nothing will guarantee a win.
The Best Paying Online Casino Games
Now that we’ve covered everything you need to know to understand how and why some games pay more than others, let’s take a look at the games with the:
- Best odds
- Lowest house edges
- Highest payouts
In other terms — games that are bound to reward you the most and ones you need to learn to play.
Single- or Double-Deck Blackjack
Blackjack has always been considered the best casino game to play as it has the lowest house edge.
However, you need to check how many decks the blackjack game uses because the more decks it has, the higher the house edge is. Every deck roughly increases it by 0.02%, which is not much, but it’s important to know as we are dealing with minor differences with all the games in this guide.
Double-deck blackjack is the most common blackjack game you’ll find in online casinos, and its house edge is 0.12%. This gives it an RTP of 99.88%. A typical blackjack game in a brick-and-mortar casino usually has a higher house edge of 0.28%.
Craps
Craps might seem like a complicated game with so many different bets you can place, plus it’s the only game that uses dice instead of cards. But it’s not as complex as it looks, as long as you learn a thing or two about it beforehand.
It’s worth mastering because the house edge is low, but how low depends on the casino. It can be 1.2%, but also as low as 0.6%.
Baccarat
Baccarat is both an exciting and highly rewarding game. The payouts here are big as the game only has a 1.36% house edge, as long as you’re betting on the banker. The RTP here is 98.64%.
Casinos typically impose a 5% tax on banker bets, but they are still better than player bets, which have a higher house edge.
European Roulette
Roulette has a low house edge, but there’s a big difference between roulette variants.
European roulette only has one 0 and thus a house edge of 2.7%, which gives the game an RTP value of 97.3%
On the other hand, American roulette has both a 0 and a 00, which effectively doubles the casino’s advantage, making the house edge 5.26%.
Slots With the Highest RTP
Slots generally pay less than table games and give you the lowest odds of winnings, even though their potential prizes are massive.
In general, they are to be avoided, but if you don’t want to play table games, you should choose slots with the highest RTP. Here are some of the highest-paying slots you should try, along with their RTPs:
- Ugga Bugga (Playtech) — 99.07%
- Mega Joker (NetEnt) — 99%
- Ooh Aah Dracula (Barcrest) — 99%
- Jackpot 6000 (NetEnt) — 98.8%
- Uncharted Seas (Thunderkick) — 98.6%
- The Carfather (Pragmatic Play) — 98.10%
- Blood Suckers (NetEnt) — 98%
- Jokerizer (Yggdrasil) — 98%
- Rainbow Riches Pick n Mix (Barcrest) — 98%
- Starmania (NextGen) — 97.87%
- White Rabbit Megaways (Big Time Gaming) — 97.77%
Honorable Mention — Poker
Poker deserves mention here as it is the only casino game that’s not based on luck but mainly on skill. This makes it unique in the online gambling world, and it’s why it’s worth considering.
However, you need to master the game if you want to win more on it, as your skill level directly influences the amount of money you can win.
Plus, the more skill you have and the better you play, the more tournaments you’ll win, which will unlock even higher-paying tournaments. That’s precisely why the best poker players in the world earn the most.
In the end, if you want to play any of these games, it’s best to refer to our list of the top casinos for US players, as they have most of these games and offer the most dependable service.