Baccarat and Blackjack Reign Supreme on U.S. Casino Floors in 2025
Casino gaming floors tend to provide more space for slot machines - thanks to their lucrative payouts for the operators - than for table games.
The table-game section of the floor, meanwhile, features a variety of games with very different rules - and with widely differing levels of skill required.
But which of those games is most popular among Americans and foreign tourists?
Baccarat tables lead in Nevada, blackjack comes second
In Nevada, the answer in 2025 once again was baccarat, a card game in which gamblers wager on which of two hands will wind up with a total closest to nine (or whether the result will be a tie).
The state's casinos collected $1.44 billion in revenue from baccarat, putting it ahead of the blackjack "21" card game at $1.2 billion. Next up among the dozen or so table game options in the state were the dice game craps ($456.2 million), the roulette wheel ($407.8 million), unlimited Texas Hold 'Em poker ($217.5 million), and the Asian game pai gow poker ($118.7 million).
Blackjack - a game where the most skilled players can mentally keep close track of which cards already have been dealt - offered casino owners just a 12.9% "hold" percentage, meaning the amount of money gambled that is retained by the casino.
The most rewarding returns for the casinos were unlimited Texas Hold 'Em at 22.5% and pai gow poker at 20.7%. Roulette, which purely is a game of chance, had a hold of 19% - right around the typical annual hold rate for the game.
Baccarat historically – at least since 2001, according to figures from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas - is similar to blackjack with total hold in that span of around 13%. But in 2025, the casinos managed to keep 16.2% - not too surprising, since baccarat revenue fluctuates far more from year to year than blackjack figures do.
Indiana gamblers had reversed favorites - blackjack, then baccarat
The Indiana Gaming Commission files annual reports for fiscal years that begin on July 1 and end on June 30 of the following year. For fiscal year 2025 that ended mid-calendar year, blackjack was the most profitable for the casinos at $137.2 million.
That reversed a two-year "winning streak" for baccarat, which this time produced $111 million as blackjack regained its traditional top spot. All forms of poker – which are combined into one in Indiana reports - were next at $76.6 million, followed by craps at $55.8 million and roulette at $46.6 million.
Blackjack and baccarat also led in Illinois and Oklahoma
Neighboring Illinois doesn't feature a compilation of annual table game figures, but the monthly reports seem to show that blackjack also consistently led baccarat there in 2025, while roulette revenue was relatively stronger than in Nevada or Iowa.
The Winstar World Casino and Resort in Oklahoma, the largest casino gaming floor in the world at 600,000 square feet, is privately owned by the Chickasaw Nation tribe. According to the casino website, the most popular table games there are blackjack, roulette, craps, poker, and baccarat.
Read More
