Downtown Las Vegas casinos offer lower table minimums and more favorable blackjack rules than Strip properties, according to the casinos’ own floor signage and the rule surveys published by gaming analysts, and that gap has widened since Strip operators moved most of their low-limit blackjack to 6:5 payouts in the 2010s.
For a visitor who plays table games, the difference in expected loss over a weekend is larger than the difference in room rates.
Minimums
Daytime and weekday minimums at downtown blackjack and craps tables commonly run $5 to $10, with $15 the usual floor on Friday and Saturday nights and during citywide events. The same games on the central Strip start at $15 to $25 midweek and $25 to $50 on weekends at the major resorts. Minimums at every property vary by time of day and are posted at the table; the figures here are what has been typical in recent years.
Roulette and the carnival games follow a similar pattern, with $5 roulette still common downtown and rare on the Strip.
Blackjack payouts
The larger difference is in the rules. A blackjack paying 3:2 returns $15 on a $10 bet. One paying 6:5 returns $12. The change raises the house edge on a basic-strategy player by roughly 1.4 percentage points, which on a typical game more than doubles it.
Most Strip casinos moved their lower-limit blackjack to 6:5 between about 2010 and 2016, and today 3:2 on the Strip is largely confined to tables with $25 or higher minimums. Downtown, 3:2 blackjack at $5 and $10 minimums remains widely available. El Cortez has been the most consistent about it and advertises the fact. Binion’s, Four Queens, the Golden Gate, The D, and the Boyd properties also deal 3:2 at low limits, though each has some 6:5 tables, usually the single-deck games, and the mix changes.
The rule is printed on the table felt. A table that does not say 3:2 is not 3:2.
Craps
Craps odds multiples downtown are generally higher than on the Strip. Several downtown properties offer 10x odds; the Strip standard is 3-4-5x. Binion’s, which built its reputation on high craps limits under Benny Binion, still runs 10x odds. Higher odds multiples do not change the house edge on the line bet but let a player put more money on the zero-edge odds bet behind it, which lowers the combined edge on the total wager.
Video poker
Downtown is also where most of the city’s remaining full-pay video poker is found. Full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better, which returns 99.54 percent with perfect play, has nearly disappeared from the Strip and is still on the floor at several downtown casinos, mostly at quarter and dollar denominations. Pay tables are posted on the machine; the first two numbers on the full house and flush lines identify the game.
Why downtown is different
Downtown casinos compete on a few blocks for a customer who walks between them, and the walk is short enough that rules are a visible competitive factor. Strip resorts compete on the property, where a guest rarely leaves. The result is a downtown market that has kept the older, player-friendlier rule set as a draw, and markets it, while the Strip has adjusted rules upward in the knowledge that most customers will not notice.
For a visitor, the arithmetic is simple. At the same bet size, a weekend of 3:2 blackjack at $10 downtown costs less in expected loss than the same hours at 6:5 on the Strip by more than the room rate difference between a downtown hotel and a mid-tier Strip resort.