Online casinos are for profit so unless you are lucky, you will lose money. The Expected Return and Payout on various Steem related casinos varies significantly. Some sites have better odds than others, some offer more incentives to play their games and some have competitions to drive volume. Today we will get into the basics comparing six Steem gaming sites which now exist. In no way am I suggesting you gamble, break the law, invest in a casino or trade their tokens. Use these sites at your own risk!
Your returns will definitely not look like this
@magicdice, 
@steem-bet, 
@epicdice, 
@kryptogames and 
@cupz (Referral links at the bottom.) There is also another new gaming site found here https://www.steem-roller.com/ which doesn't have tokens. I don't want to go too much into the tokens with this post as they bring a whole new dynamic, but I will say, it is not worth mining them.
The first and most popular site is Magicdice. I just wrote a post about why I quit playing it found here. With Magicdice you can bet over or under a number from 1 to 100, in the event of a tie you lose and the house keeps 1%. If you roll 100 times at an under 50 bet, you should win 49 times. This means you will pay 100 Steem and win 98, the house edge is 2%. You will also mine 1250 tokens which will definitely not get you onto any leaderboards.
Since there are over 2 billion tokens outstanding, your 1,250/2,050,000,000 shares in the daily profits will be extremely insignificant. If the prize pool is 2000 Steem, you will get 0.001 Steem. This is why I am leaving it out of the discussion. Mining these tokens is not worth it! Since the house takes 2% of bets and distributes 40% of that to token holders, they need to see 250000 Steem bet to pay your 0.001 Steem. As you can see, these tokens aren't worth much and require a consistently high gambling volume to pay out anything to all but the largest of holders. To rank on a leaderboard, you would have to gamble at least 1000 Steem, if the leaderboard becomes easier to rank on, the payout will be less, as you can see, it's only really worthwhile for the winners and they are risking a lot of Steem.
Another game to lose your hard earned Steem on is Steem-Bet. The house edge is the same as Magicdice, so you will lose 0.02 Steem, per Steem bet. Right now, the mining rate is higher than on Magicdice as you get 50 SBT tokens per Steem wagered(soon to be 25) and there are less outstanding so they are worth slightly more than Magic, let's be really generous and say double. The volume is very low compared to Magicdice but they will soon have new games out and offer better customer service. They just paid their first dividend (which was a couple of months worth at once and promise to pay daily in the next few days.
As you can see, I know what I'm talking about being one of the largest stakeholders. This dividend was once only and will decrease as more tokens are mined, please don't get too excited, I played a lot and was able to early mine at a 5x higher rate. I am way up on that site and will provide proof in the comments. They pay 40% of the house take to SBT holders and are currently selling SPT tokens for an additional 30% take white paper they also have prizes but they aren't consistent enough to analyze. I don't recommend investing in SPT, they have not provided me with any proof that they aren't money launders, tax evaders, terrorists or criminals. I don't think their tokens are worth much more than 0.001 Steem per Steem wagered either.
This website is my favourite because they have blackjack, video poker and dice. I will not get into the blackjack odds, but if you know how to play, it has the best Payout and Expected Return as seen at the wizard of odds as you will only lose around 0.004 Steem per Steem bet. You also mine tokens, so it's pretty good. One mistake though and the odds can be terrible. It is not dice. I won't discuss video poker, the odds are on their website and it's not my thing. Their dice game is pretty good, as they payout 1% more than the other sites per Steem bet meaning the house edge is 50% of what it is on the above two. For this reason, it is much better to play here than on Steem-Bet or Magicdice.
Kytpogames has its own token system too, GAMER. They have a unique system which gives you more tokens as you bet more per month and if you bet a lot you can get an insured bet which means if you lose, you get your wager returned to you. 70% of the daily profits are paid to token holders as well, so the tokens are better than on other sites. If the house loses money though, you will not get paid for holding tokens. Because the house edge is worse, the 70% is not as good as 40% on the other sites, but I suspect anyone who knows basic math will stop gambling on the other sites. This site is literally twice as good as Magicdice or Steembet from an Expected Payout and Return perspective.
(i)Edited(/i)
There is a 2% house edge, originally they had a 1.5% promotion. Rolling under 50 which has a 49/100 chance there will be a payout of 2 Steem, per Steem bet. So you are losing 2% here which is the same as Magicdice and Steem-Bet. They also own a lot of their own tokens and have a very low maximum payout of 100 Steem on wagers. This site has been down for maintenance quite a bit but they have great customer service and a simple yet attractive intereface.
On days when the house wins money, you can earn a decent return holding tokens because not many are outstanding. It only takes one really unlucky gambler to make a big payout or one lucky gambler to make zero payouts. We can't really analyze the value of the tokens, so let's just say 0.001 again per Steem bet.
A relatively new site with very low volume, there is a 2% house cut on all bets and the odds depend on the game. It is new, it is unique and you can use my referral at your own risk https://cupz.io?referrer=crypticat the are player vs player games, games for Cupz holders only and player vs house games. I won't get into the details here because you win back some of the money you lose as a token holder and the history is too short. The volume is low and the site states a 2% edge.
This gaming site is new and has the best potential. The developer 
Unlike the other sites, you can wager on extremes and decimals. For example, you can bet that you will roll under 0.001, you probably won't but if you do the payout will be staggering. The site allows for fractions too and the payouts are currently limited by the amount invested on the site. Because it is new and Beta, exercise caution. Since you can roll below 1 unlike the other sites, the house edge is 1%. You can also roll over a number like in Magicdice. There are no tokens but you can choose to be the house too, so if you are invested, the developers only take 10%, so you will only be losing a percentage of the 1% percent. Depending on how invested you are, it can significantly vary. I would say it's better than Krypto Gamers and you don't have to wait 24 hours for payouts and there is no house winning or losing period, its per bet and almost instant.
Also, Steem-Roller requires you to sign up and attest to your age and eligibility to legally gamble. The fact that it is the only site to do at least basic due diligence makes it the most trustworthy in my opinion. All anonymous gaming websites could be funding terrorism, engaging in money laundering and tax evasion. They could be funding organized criminal organizations as well, so please use your judgment. Since most of the owners refuse to disclose their linked-in profiles, names, pictures, and addresses. We can assume they have something to hide.
If you use my referrals and provide proof I will reward you with upvotes, 
https://cupz.io?referrer=crypticat
https://steem-bet.com?ref=crypticat
https://magic-dice.com/?ref=crypticat
https://epicdice.io/?ref=crypticat
https://kryptogamers.com/?ref=crypticat
I hope you enjoyed reading, open debate is encouraged and no hard feelings if you operate one of these gaming websites.
