Blackjack House Edge — How It Works & By Rule

The house edge is the casino's long-run statistical advantage, expressed as a percentage of each bet. A 0.5% house edge means you lose half a cent per dollar wagered on average over many hands — the lowest of any common casino game when you play correctly.

The baseline

With perfect basic strategy under liberal Vegas Strip rules (S17, double after split, 3:2 blackjack, multi-deck), the house edge sits near 0.5%. That is the number to anchor on; every rule change moves it up or down from there.

The rules that move it

Individual rules shift the edge in predictable increments:

• Blackjack pays 6:5 instead of 3:2 — about +1.4%. By far the most expensive rule a casino can impose; avoid 6:5 tables entirely.
• Dealer hits soft 17 (H17) instead of standing — about +0.2%.
• No double after split (DAS) — about +0.14%.
• No re-splitting aces — about +0.07%.
• Fewer decks help — a single deck is roughly 0.48% better than an 8-deck shoe.
• Late surrender available — about −0.08%.

Stacking these is why two tables that both call themselves "blackjack" can differ by more than a full percentage point. Each rule variant — Free Bet, Macau, Vegas Strip S17 and the rest — has its exact house edge and RTP on the rule variants page.

Why the quoted number is a floor

Published house-edge figures assume a full, average shoe. Acting on the exact cards remaining — composition-dependent play, the basis of card counting — lowers the effective edge further, and a high count can push it below zero. Fullcount reports EV as a fraction of your bet for the exact rules and the exact remaining cards, the most accurate house-edge figure for the situation in front of you:

House edge is the long-run average; it says nothing about a single session, where variance dominates. Judge your play by whether each decision is the highest-EV one — see what EV is — not by one night's result.