Casino odds in Ontario and Alberta: RTP and house edge by game

Every casino game is built to keep a small share of what you bet. That share is the house edge, and it’s the one number that tells you how expensive a game is to play. This page gives it for the games you’ll find at regulated casinos in Ontario and Alberta, using figures published by the game makers and the casinos, not guesses.

RTP and house edge, in one minute

RTP, or return to player, is the share of all bets a game pays back over millions of rounds. The house edge is what’s left. A slot with a 96% RTP has a 4% house edge.

To estimate what a session costs, multiply what you wager by the house edge. Two hundred C$1 spins on a 96% slot is C$200 wagered, so the average cost is C$8. That’s an average over huge numbers of players. In one evening you could win several hundred or lose the lot, and slots swing more than table games.

You can’t see these odds in a casino’s website code. Each result is decided by a certified random number generator on the casino’s server, and your screen just shows the outcome.

Table games

These are the live dealer games most Ontario and Alberta casinos carry, mostly supplied by Evolution. The RTPs come from an Ontario and Alberta operator’s help pages, which list the figure for each Evolution game. The roulette and baccarat bet figures come from standard game maths.

Three things stand out. Blackjack is the cheapest game in the building if you play basic strategy. The edge above assumes you do, and guessing costs far more. Baccarat’s Banker bet is next, even after the commission. The Tie bet looks tempting at 8 to 1 and is one of the worst bets you can make.

With roulette, pick the single-zero wheel. The extra green pocket on an American wheel nearly doubles the house edge, and the two often sit side by side in the same lobby.

Blackjack rules that change the odds

Blackjack’s edge depends on the table rules, and they vary from table to table. Each rule nudges the odds. These figures are measured against a standard 8-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17.

The 6 to 5 payout is the one to watch. It costs you more than every other rule on this list put together. The table limits and rules are in the info panel at each blackjack table, so check the payout before you sit down.

Slots

Slots have the widest range of odds, and the house edge is usually higher than at table games. We took each slot’s RTP from two places: the game maker’s page for the game, and the rules screen inside the demo the game maker hosts on its own site.

The Pragmatic Play games match, give or take rounding. Starburst doesn’t. NetEnt’s game page gives 96.08%, but the demo on NetEnt’s own site says 90.05%. That’s the difference between a house edge of about 4% and one of about 10%, in a game that looks and plays exactly the same.

This is the catch with slots. Many come in more than one RTP version, and whoever runs the game picks which one. Book of Dead is the best-known case. Play’n GO doesn’t publish its versions, but reviewers report them ranging from 96.21% down to 84.18%, which is an edge of roughly 4% at one end and almost 16% at the other.

The headline figure on a game maker’s site is often the best version. The version a casino actually runs is shown in that game’s rules screen, so check before you play.

What one Ontario casino actually runs

PlayOLG publishes an RTP on each game’s page, and for some games you can open the rules screen in its demo without an account. We checked the five slots above there.

Four of the five match the game maker’s figure. Starburst doesn’t: OLG’s page for it gives 95.05%, about a point below NetEnt’s headline figure. OLG’s Starburst demo was switched off when we checked, so that figure comes from OLG’s game page rather than the rules screen.

What 200 spins on Big Bass Bonanza looks like

An RTP is an average over millions of spins. A single session can land a long way from it, in either direction. To show what that means, we played 201 spins of Big Bass Bonanza at $2 a spin and recorded the whole session.

The bonus round took 176 spins to arrive and paid $60. Over the whole session, $402 went in and $139 came back, a return of about 35%. That’s well under the game’s 96.71%, and it’s normal for a session this short.

What 200 spins on Gates of Olympus looks like

We ran the same test on Gates of Olympus, Pragmatic Play’s 96.50% slot: 200 spins at $2 a spin, recorded start to finish.

The biggest win was $34.30, from a 2x and a 5x multiplier on the same spin. The bonus round never came: three scatters landed four times, one short of the four it needs. Over the session, $400 went in and $191.60 came back, a return of about 48%.

Jackpot slots work differently. Part of every bet goes into the jackpot pool, so the RTP of the base game is lower, and most of the return is tied up in a prize few players will ever win.

How to check a game’s RTP yourself

Open the game and look for the info, help or paytable button, usually an “i” or a menu icon. Regulated slots and tables in Ontario list their return or the odds of each bet there. If the figure is below the game maker’s headline RTP, the casino is running a lower version.

Ontario’s rules back this up. The Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming require casinos to give players “accurate and understandable information on the odds of winning, payout odds, or returns to players” (standard 4.06). They also require every game and random number generator to be approved by the regulator or certified by a registered independent testing lab before it goes live (standard 4.08). In April 2023 the AGCO fined three operators a total of C$70,000 for offering slots that hadn’t been certified.

Alberta also requires games to be tested by an independent lab before launch, and approves the labs that do the testing.

What we couldn’t check

Most casinos in Ontario and Alberta only open their games once you’ve signed up and passed a location check. So, apart from the PlayOLG figures above, we haven’t confirmed which RTP version each casino runs for each slot, and this page doesn’t rank casinos by payout rate. If a casino publishes its game RTPs on a public page, we’ll add them here. Our how we check page explains the rest of our method.

Sources

Checked 6 November 2026.

• Pragmatic Play game pages for Big Bass Bonanza, Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza and Wolf Gold
• NetEnt’s Starburst page and its demo
• The demos embedded on each Pragmatic Play game page, opened 6 November 2026
• PlayOLG’s game pages and demos for the five slots above, checked 8 November 2026
• theScore Bet help centre pages for Evolution’s Blackjack Classic, Euro Roulette, First Person Lightning Roulette, Baccarat and Crazy Time
• Wizard of Odds on roulette, baccarat and blackjack rule variations
• AGCO game integrity standards and its April 2023 penalty notice
• Gaming Associates’ approval as an Alberta test lab

Play safe

No strategy beats the house edge over time. Set a deposit limit before you play, and treat whatever you deposit as spent. In Ontario, ConnexOntario is free and open 24/7 on 1-866-531-2600. In Alberta, the Alberta Health Services Addiction Helpline is on 1-866-332-2322.