Walk past the slot floor at any casino, online or off, and you hit the felt: blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps, a row of poker variants with dealers running the action. That’s the table games section, and despite the name, it isn’t really about furniture. A table game is any casino game where you play against the house (occasionally against other players) at a dedicated table, run by a real dealer or a fixed set of software rules, rather than by spinning reels or a random symbol grid.
This guide covers what actually separates a table game from a slot, the difference between an RNG table game and a live-dealer one, a plain-language rundown of every major game family, and a single house-edge table so you can see how they stack up against each other at a glance. It’s the starting point. For strategy-level depth on any individual game, we link out to our dedicated guides throughout.
Quick answer: A table game is any casino game played at a table against the house, using cards, dice, or a wheel, as opposed to a slot’s spinning reels. The major families are blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps, and poker-based games like Three Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, Pai Gow Poker, and Casino Hold’em. Every one of these exists in two forms online: an RNG version, where software deals the cards or spins the wheel instantly, and a live-dealer version, streamed in HD with a real human running the game. House edges range from as low as 0% on a craps Odds bet up to 0.3%-0.5% for basic-strategy blackjack, generally beating typical online slots (roughly 2%-6% house edge).
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What Actually Makes a Game a “Table Game”
Three things put a casino game in the table games category rather than somewhere else. First, the outcome comes from cards, dice, or a physical wheel, not a reel or a random symbol grid. Second, you’re playing against the house’s fixed rules (blackjack, baccarat, craps, roulette) or, in poker-based games, against the dealer’s hand rather than other players. Third, and this is the part most guides skip, a table game is played at an actual table layout, whether that’s a physical felt in a casino or its exact digital equivalent on screen, with betting spots, chip stacks, and a dealer or automated dealer running the round.
That third point is why table games feel structurally different from slots even when both are just software underneath. A slot generates one outcome per spin from a fixed math model. A table game unfolds as a sequence, cards get dealt one at a time, a wheel spins and the ball drops, dice land and the shooter’s turn continues, and in games like blackjack you make decisions mid-round that change your own outcome. That sequence, and the decisions some games let you make inside it, is the core identity of a table game.
Table Games vs. Slots: What’s Actually Different
The most common way people describe this distinction, “table games are skill, slots are luck,” oversimplifies it. Baccarat, craps’ base bets, and roulette involve zero decisions once you’ve placed your bet, exactly like a slot. What actually separates the categories is structure and, in some games, player input.
| What matters | Table Games | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Outcome source | Cards, dice, or a physical/virtual wheel | Spinning reels and a random symbol grid |
| Round structure | Sequential (cards dealt in order, wheel spins to a result) | Single resolved outcome per spin |
| Player decisions mid-round | Some games yes (blackjack hit/stand/split), others no (baccarat, roulette, craps base bets) | None |
| Typical house edge | As low as 0% up to roughly 5%-14% on the worst side bets | Roughly 2%-6% on typical online titles |
| Available in RNG and live-dealer form | Yes, both widely available | Live “slot”-style game shows exist but aren’t the same category |
The house-edge gap is the practical reason people care about this distinction at all. Skill-neutral table games like baccarat and European roulette already beat typical online slots on pure math, and games with a correct-decision component, blackjack chief among them, widen that gap further. A full breakdown of exactly how every major game compares, including slots, follows below.
RNG Table Games vs. Live Dealer Table Games
This is the distinction almost no beginner-facing guide actually walks through, and it matters before you pick a table. Every major table game exists in two forms online, and they’re not interchangeable experiences.
RNG table games run entirely on software. A random number generator determines the card sequence or wheel result the instant you act, the round resolves in seconds, and the game is available 24/7 with no waiting for a seat or a dealer. Minimum bets tend to run lower, and you can pause between hands for as long as you want, which makes RNG tables the more forgiving place to learn a new game’s rules or basic strategy without anyone watching.
Live dealer table games stream a real human dealer from a studio in HD, dealing physical cards from an actual shoe or spinning a real wheel, with your bets placed through an on-screen interface and a live chat running alongside the action. Rounds move at a real dealer’s pace instead of instantly, table limits and seat counts vary by table, and the experience is built to replicate sitting at a physical casino table from your couch. Live casino floors now cover every major table game family, with dedicated live blackjack, live roulette, and live baccarat sections each running multiple variants, studio providers, and stake levels.
Neither version changes a game’s underlying math meaningfully; a standard live blackjack table and a standard RNG blackjack table run essentially the same rules and RTP. What chang