Craps

Trying to give a brief strategy guide to Craps is like trying to teach calculus quickly: 99% of the time it ain't gonna happen. Tough! Let's give it a shot anyway.

Let me give you my strategy for just about everything: take the best odds you can get, nudge them in your favor as much as you possibly can and play smart.

In Craps the best odds on the table are Pass, Don't Pass, Come, and Don't Come because they give the house the smallest edge.

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THE BEST BETS
The numbers people say that a Pass bet gives the house a 1.41% edge. And a Don't Pass yields slightly less than 1.40% to the house. These are the Line Bets and they're the heart of a winner's strategy because everything else gives too much away. For example:

• The Field gives away 5.6%.
• Big 6/Big 8 gives 9.1%.
• Horn: 12.5%.
• Craps 2/Craps 12: 13.9%
• Any 7: 16.7%.

   

See what I mean? Craps is about dice and dice are about percentages. The smart money gives as little away as possible and that means Pass/Don't Pass at around 1.4%. Those bets and how to improve them is what this article is about. While we're at it, it's worth keeping in mind that Come/Don't Come bets follow the same odds and logic. The only thing different about them is the timing as to when they're placed.

Improve Your Bets
Okay, so the smart bets are Pass/Don't Pass (and Come/Don't Come). Now how can we improve the best bets in Craps? The Odds, that's how -- either by Buying Odds when you play "right" (Pass) or Laying Odds when you play "wrong" (Don't Pass). These are placed in addition to your initial bet after the Come Out roll and the reason they improve your initial bet is that the house takes no edge on Odds. That's right, zero house. All you're betting against is the straight dice. But you could spend a long time looking at the felt trying to find where the Odds bets are supposed to go. The truth is they're not marked. It's a "hidden" bet, so to speak. The word is that in Vegas the big houses simply take the position that it's not their responsibility to inform the players of all their betting options, so the Odds stay unmarked. Needless to say, our online friends are not in the business of correcting Vegas so they take the same approach: no Odds to be seen. No biggie, it's an easy bet to make and it will improve your original Line bet by almost halving the house edge or better, if the house let's you do it.

Placing an Odds Bet
An Odds bet is made by supplementing your original Pass/Don't Pass bet by an additional amount after you've made it past the Come Out roll. The bets are placed right beside your initial bet on the Pass/Don't Pass line. In Vegas it's typical for the house to restrict these bets to Single Odds, meaning you can match your Come Out bet with an equal amount. And as I said, that'll about half the house edge on your initial bet. The good news is that the online casinos I've sampled let you bet double your initial Line bet. This is called Double Odds and it cuts their edge even further, to a little more than 40% of their initial edge. So that 1.4% they originally had is now down to about 0.6%. It's a smart play. Generally speaking, and assuming you can handle the gaff, buy the biggest Odds you can find because the larger the Odds bet, the more you shave off the house edge on your initial bet.

Buying Odds
When you play "right" and Buy Odds, you're supplementing a Pass bet and if you win you'll get your winnings based on the Point. So assuming a Pass Bet of $5:

I'm just showing your Odds win here, not the total. In other words, on a right bet of $5, where the Come Out roll sets a Point of 10, your total take on the win will be $40: your original $5 bet back plus a winning on that of $5, plus your Odds bet back ($10) and the winnings from that ($20).

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