Sic bo: the bets, the payouts and what each one costs

How a round works

The dealer places three dice in a small shaker: a lidded chest in a pit, a mechanical dome on an electronic terminal, a software shuffle online. Players put chips on a large printed layout covered in boxes. When betting closes the shaker is opened, the three numbers are read off, and every box that matches is paid.

That is the whole game. There is no drawing, no decision after the bet, and no order of play to learn. What takes time is the layout itself, because a sic bo table carries around fifty separate betting boxes and they are not all priced the same way.

You will meet the game under several names. In Malaysian rooms it is often called dai siu or big small (大小), after its two simplest bets. Sic bo (骰宝, roughly "precious dice") is the name most casinos print on the felt, tai sai and hi-lo turn up too, and in Malay it is usually just dadu, dice. Same three dice underneath all of them.

Three dice produce 216 equally likely ordered results, from 1-1-1 to 6-6-6. Every number below comes out of that 216, which is small enough that you can check any of it yourself with a pen.

The bets on the layout

The boxes fall into six families. Once you can name the family, an unfamiliar table stops looking like noise.

• Small and Big. Small wins on a total of 4 to 10, Big wins on 11 to 17. Both lose on any triple, which is the rule that gives the house its margin. Some tables add Odd and Even, which work the same way and also lose to triples.
• Total bets. One box for each sum from 4 to 17. There is no box for 3 or 18 because those are triples and live in their own part of the layout.
• Single number. You pick one face, say a five, and you are paid according to how many of the three dice show it.
• Specific double. At least two dice showing the number you named.
• Combination, sometimes called the domino bet. Two different numbers you name, both appearing on the roll.
• Triples. Either any triple, or a specific one such as three fours. These are the boxes with the big printed numbers on them, and they are the reason people walk away from the table faster than they expected.

Nothing here interacts. You can cover twenty boxes on one roll if you like, and each is settled on its own terms. That is precisely how a table that looks cheap turns into an expensive one.

What each bet pays, and what it costs

This is the table worth reading slowly, because the payout column is not fixed. Sic bo payouts vary more between houses than almost any other casino game, and a single step down in a payout can double the cost of a bet. The figures below are the most commonly seen ones; the house edge column is derived from that exact payout and no other.

The arithmetic is short enough to do at the table. Take the specific triple: it wins once in 216 rolls and loses the other 215. At 180:1 you collect 180 units on that one win and pay out 215, so you are down 35 units every 216 rolls — 16.2%. Drop the payout to 150:1 and you collect 150 against the same 215, which is 65 units lost per 216 rolls, or 30.1%. The bet did not change. The price nearly doubled.

That is why quoting one universal sic bo figure is meaningless. Read your own table's payouts, count the ways to win from the column above, and you have the real number.

The bets actually worth making

Three bets sit at 2.78%, and everything else on the layout is worse, usually much worse.

Small and Big are the cheapest thing on the table, and the easiest to follow. You are betting that the three dice add to somewhere in the low half or the high half, you win 105 rolls in 216, and you lose the remaining 111. The extra six are the triples, which is the entire house margin in one sentence. Odd and Even, where offered, price identically for the same reason.

The combination bet is the one that surprises people. Two named numbers both appearing happens 30 times in 216, and a 6:1 payout on that comes out at exactly the same 2.78%. But plenty of tables pay 5:1 instead, and at 5:1 the same bet costs 16.67% — six times as much. This is the single box where checking the printed payout is worth more than any strategy you could read.

For scale, 2.78% is roughly two and a half times the banker bet in baccarat and around five times what a well-played blackjack hand costs. Sic bo's best bet is a mid-priced bet by casino standards. It is not a cheap game, it is a fast and cheerful one.

The bets to leave alone

Plainly: the specific triple, the specific double, and the 9 or 12 totals are the worst-value boxes on a normal layout, and the whole triple section is where a session's money goes.

• Specific triple: 16.2% at the usual 180:1, and 30.1% if your table only pays 150:1. A 150:1 triple box is one of the most expensive bets offered anywhere in a casino.
• Specific double: 18.5% at 10:1, which surprises people because it feels like a modest bet.
• Total 9 or 12: 19.0% at 6:1. Note that 10 and 11 pay the same 6:1 and cost only 12.5%, because they genuinely happen more often. Four adjacent boxes on the same row, two of them half the price of the others.
• Any triple: 13.9% at 30:1. Cheaper than a specific triple, still four to five times the price of Small or Big.

None of these is a trap in the sense of being hidden. They are printed on the felt in large numbers precisely because large numbers attract bets, and the house is content for you to take them. If you want the excitement of a long-odds box, the honest way to buy it is with a small amount you have already written off, on top of a Small or Big bet doing the real work.

Why there is no sic bo winning formula

Search for sic bo strategy and you will find betting patterns sold as sure-win formulas: cover both Small and Big, double after a loss, follow the streak, wait for six Bigs and then hammer Small. None of them works, and the reason is simple enough to state in one line.

Every roll is independent. Three fresh dice do not remember the previous roll, so the chance of Small on the next shake is 105 in 216 whether the last eight results were Big, Small or alternating. A betting pattern changes the shape of your wins and losses: how often you have a winning session, how large the losing ones are. It cannot change the price of the bets it is made of. Stake a hundred bets at 2.78% in any order you like and you have staked a hundred bets at 2.78%.

Covering Small and Big together is the clearest example. You now win one bet and lose the other on every non-triple roll, which nets exactly zero, and on a triple you lose both. You have not hedged anything; you have volunteered to pay the house edge twice while feeling busy.

Doubling after a loss has the same flaw as it does at the baccarat table: it converts many small wins into one very large loss, and the table limit guarantees the large loss arrives before the recovery does.

What is genuinely available is bet selection. Choosing 2.78% over 18.5% is a real, permanent improvement, and it is the only one on offer.

Live, electronic and online tables

The rules are identical across all three formats. What changes is speed and the payout schedule, and speed matters more than players expect. The house edge is charged per bet, so a table running twice as many rounds an hour costs twice as much an hour at the same stake.

• Pit tables use a lidded shaker the dealer operates by hand, and run slowest.
• Electronic terminals use a dome that bounces real dice with a puff of air, with betting on a screen. Fast, lower minimums, and usually the same payouts as the pit beside them.
• Live-dealer streams show a real shaker on camera with a betting grid overlaid. Fastest of the physical formats, and the payout table is normally shown in the game rules panel. Read it before your first bet.
• Software sic bo deals from a random number generator with no dice involved. The maths is the same as fair dice provided the generator is properly tested, and the round time can drop under ten seconds, which is the fastest way to pay a house edge that exists.

What changes between operators is the payout schedule, not the dice, and that is what decides whether the combination bet costs you 2.78% or 16.67%. Checking that a site publishes its schedule at all is part of judging an online casino. The ones we cover each have their own page.

Two relatives are worth naming so you do not confuse them with sic bo. Chuck-a-luck (grand hazard) uses three dice in a wire cage but offers only the single-number bet, priced differently. Hoo hey how, the fish-prawn-crab game seen at fairs, is three dice with pictures instead of pips and pays like a single-number bet. That one is a recreation, not a casino game.

Sic bo and the law in Malaysia

Gambling in Malaysia is restricted under the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 and the Betting Act 1953, and it is additionally prohibited for Muslims under Sharia law. There is one licensed land-based casino in the country; online gambling is not licensed for the domestic market. This page explains how the game works and what its bets cost. It is not an argument that you should play, and nothing in it should be read as saying online play is legal here.

Sic bo deserves one specific warning that other table games do not. It is quick, the layout invites you to cover several boxes at once, and the expensive boxes are the eye-catching ones, so the amount actually at risk per roll climbs without any single decision to raise it. Decide the total you are willing to lose before you sit down, count what is on the felt each round rather than what is in front of you, and stop at that number. 18+.