Sic Bo Odds, Payouts and House Edge
Three dice can land in 216 different ways once you tell the dice apart, and every one of those ways is equally likely. Every figure on this page is counted across all of them: how often each bet wins, what a game with no edge would pay for it, and what it costs you at the payouts sic bo tables actually print.
Three numbers describe a bet, and they are easy to confuse. The chance is how often it wins: a specific triple, such as three 4s, turns up once in 216 rolls. The fair odds are what a game with no edge would pay: 215 to 1 for that triple, because for every roll that wins it there are 215 that do not. The payout is what the game pays you, and it is always less than the fair odds. The gap between the last two is the house edge, the share of every stake the game keeps over time.
What makes sic bo different from most table games is that the payout is not fixed. The same bet is paid differently from one game to the next, and the payout decides the edge. A specific triple paid at 180:1 costs 16.20% of every stake; paid at 150:1, the very same bet on the very same dice costs 30.09%. So instead of one list of payouts, this page gives the edge at each payout you are likely to meet. Read the figure printed on your game's layout and look it up here.
The 216 Outcomes of Three Dice
"Ways to roll it" treats the three dice as three separate dice, which is what makes every way equally likely: 2-2-5 can arrive as 2-2-5, 2-5-2 or 5-2-2, while 4-4-4 can only arrive as itself. That is why doubles come up far more often than triples, and why the second column, not the third, is the one every chance on this page is built on.
Every Bet: Chance, Fair Odds and the Edge at Each Payout
Payouts are written "to 1": a winning bet returns your stake plus the payout. Where a bet shows more than one payout, games differ on it and each is a payout you may find printed on a sic bo layout; the edge beside it is exact for that payout. The single-number schedules list what one, two and three matching dice pay.
Total Bets: Ways, Chance and Edge
Each pair is a mirror image (a roll totalling 4 turns into one totalling 17 when every die is flipped over), so both totals in a row share every figure. A total bet is on one total, not the pair. 3 and 18 have no row because only a triple makes them, and a total bet does win on a triple that adds up to it, such as 3-3-3 on a 9.
Big, Small, Odd and Even: Where the Edge Comes From
Each of the four even-money bets wins 105 of the 216 rolls, which is 48.61%, and pays 1:1. That leaves the house 2.78% of every stake, and the whole of it comes from one rule: all four bets lose when the three dice match.
On Odd and Even, the triples are the entire edge. Pay them like any other roll and each side would win 50.00% of rolls with an edge of 0%, a perfectly fair bet.
Big and Small are different, and this is the detail most descriptions get wrong. Only four triples fall inside the ranges: 2-2-2 and 3-3-3 total 6 and 9, inside Small's 4 to 10; 4-4-4 and 5-5-5 total 12 and 15, inside Big's 11 to 17. Three 1s total 3 and three 6s total 18, outside both, so they never belonged to either bet. Pay the in-range triples and each bet would still win just 49.54% of rolls, with an edge of 0.93%. It is fair to say the triple rule creates most of the edge on Big and Small; it is not true that the bets would otherwise be an even coin toss.
Single Number: How Many Dice Match
The single-number bet wins whenever your number appears on at least one die, and it pays more the more dice show it. Most of its wins are single matches, so what it pays for one die carries most of its value; what it pays for three dice is the figure games change.
Single Number: The Edge by Payout Schedule
The first three schedules differ only in what three matching dice pay, and that one line is worth several points of edge even though it comes up once in 216 rolls. The last row is shown to mark where break-even sits: a schedule that paid that much for two and three dice would carry no edge at all.
How the Payout Moves the Edge
The rows step through each bet's range rather than naming particular games, and every edge beside a payout is exact. Between the rows, the edge moves in even steps.
Why One Unit of Payout Matters More on Some Bets
Adding one unit to a payout gives back more on a bet that wins often than on one that rarely wins. That is why the two-dice combination swings so hard: it wins 13.89% of rolls, so moving it from 5:1 to 6:1 takes its edge from 16.67% down to 2.78%, level with Big and Small. At the higher payout it is one of the cheapest bets on the layout; at the lower one it is among the dearest.
The specific triple works the other way. It wins so rarely that one extra unit is worth very little, and it takes the whole step from 150:1 to 180:1 to take the edge from 30.09% to 16.20%. The any-triple bet sits between them: it covers all 6 triples, so each unit of its payout counts that many times more than a unit on one specific triple.
So a large number on a spot says nothing about value on its own. What matters is the payout measured against the chance, and the tables above do that measuring for you.
What an Edge Means Over a Session
A house edge is an average over a very long run, not a forecast for tonight. Over many rolls, a bet with an edge of 2.78% costs about that share of everything staked on it; over a short session, anything can happen in either direction.
How far a session strays from that average depends on how often the bet wins. Big and Small win almost half the time, so results stay fairly close to the average. A specific triple wins once in 216 rolls on average, which means long stretches with no win at all are normal, and a single hit can put a short session well ahead. Neither outcome changes what the bet costs in the long run.
Multiplier Versions
Multiplier games such as Super Sic Bo have no row here: their boosts land at rates nobody publishes, so no edge can be counted for them. What to check instead is in the overview's multiplier section.
Reading the Pay Table of the Game in Front of You
A sic bo game hands you its pay table before you stake anything, printed on the betting spots themselves. Before you bet, look at the spots that vary most from game to game: the specific triple, the any triple, what a single number pays for three matching dice, the specific double, the two-dice combination, and the totals 4, 5, 16 and 17. Then find each figure in the tables above.
If a game prints the total returned, stake included, every figure reads one higher than in these tables, so take one off before looking it up; how to play sic bo shows how to tell the two forms apart. The free sic bo games put every layout we carry a click away, to be read before any money is involved.