If you ever visited a live casino, particularly in Las Vegas, Macau, or Atlantic City, you can’t help notice the excitement around the craps table. Visit the right casino and its entirely possible for you to see some lucky or unlucky whale, betting and winning, or losing a $100,000 bet or more. There are over 120 different bets on a carps table, and although some of them are really bad bets with a house advantage of up to 16.7 percent. the house edge on the pass, don’t pass, come and don’t come bets are as low as 1.36 percent. Back a pass or don’t pass bet with odds, and the odds bet has absolutely no house advantage at all. How is this possible Simply because the casino knows that most people aren’t smart enough to make odds bets. More on that in a bit.
Most people don’t play craps
The plain fact is that most people don’t play craps for the reason that there are so many intimidating factors. First, if it becomes your turn to be the shooter and you are a small gambler, it can be really intimidating for all eyes to be on you. Second, there are so many different terms. Snake eyes, Big Red, Easy Way, the Hardway, Little Joe, and more. Regarding all of this, our best advice is to ignore all the terms, and as for being the shooter, you can always pass the dice if you don’t want all eyes on you.
The basic bets
As we said there are over 120 different bets on a craps table, but we’ll start with the basic four, pass, don’t pass, come, and don’t come, since they have the best odds. Let’s say a huge 6-foot 4-inch cowboy is the new shooter. Our cowboy rolls two dice on the table and there are then three outcomes. The first is that the shooter has a natural. Either the total of the two dice is a 7 or an 11. The shooter then automatically wins his bet and rolls again. The second outcome is that the shooter craps out. If he rolls a two (snake eyes) or a three, (an ace/deuce) or a 12 (craps) the shooter automatically loses. However, if the shooter rolls a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10, that becomes the shooter’s point. On the initial shooter rollout, the odds of hitting a natural are 6 combinations for hitting a seven, and one additional chance for hitting an 11. Let’s say the shooter rolled a 6, and therefore his point becomes 6. Now the changes have shifted. If you hit a 6 before you roll a seven, you win. If the 7 comes up, you lose. Since there are only 5 chances of getting a 6 but 6 different combinations to getting a seven, the odds have shifted away from you. If your point is 4 or 10, there are only three combinations to win. Five and 9 have four combinations to win. An 8 has five chances to win. Most gamblers like to bet with the shooter, so they will likely lay a bet down on the pass line. However, let’s say you really hate cowboys. You can then bet on the don’t pass, hoping the player loses and you therefore win. They come and they don’t come bets operate just like the pass and don’t pass bets, except that you can only bet on them once a point has been established. Let’s say the shooter has a 5 as his point. Betting on the come bet, you win if you get a natural on the next roll and lose if you get and loses if you roll craps. If neither happens a come bet point is established. Don’t come bets operate just the opposite. You lose on 7 or 11 and win on 2, 3, or 12.
Taking the odds
The best bet of all craps comes from taking the odds. Once a point is established, you can take odds of as much as 10 times per more at most casinos. (Be sure to check the limits before playing.) Let’s say you are betting $10 on the pass line to win. To lay the odds, you bet additional money to win and are paid at true odds. The amount you will be paid for the additional bet depends upon how much additional money you bet as well as your point. A point of 4 or 10 pays 2 to 1 to win. So if you bet an additional $10, then you would win $30, $10 for winning your pass line bet, and $20 for laying up the odds. If you have a point of 5 or 9 it pays 3 to 2, and if your point is 6 or 8, you get paid 6 to 5. The terrific thing about odds betting with the odds is that they significantly bring down the house’s edge. With 2 times the odds, you bring down the house advantage from 1.41 percent down to .606% percent. Since many casinos allow you to bet 10 times the odds, the house advantage can be paired all the way down to .184% If you have the bankroll for it, you are much better off placing a $10 bet on pass or come, and then placing a $100 bet on the odds. Placing a single, pass line bet will over time, cause you to lose about 14 cents per roll. However, if you take the odds, you’ve reduced that down to around 2 cents per roll. The opposite is true if you bet on don’t pass or don’t come. Laying the odds here, you make slightly larger bets to make smaller amounts because you are favored to win. For example, if the point is four, if you lay the odds on the point, you would bet $10 to win $5 more, since you are favored to win. Odds are the closest thing to free money in craps, and if you watch professional gamblers, they always take the odds. There are lots of other bets such as betting on any 7, the hard way, any craps or field bets, but the house advantage of these bets run as low as 5.56 percent to as high as 16.67 percent. Unless you’ve mastered Kreskin’s mind-reading course, stay away from these. Playing bass, don’t pass, come and don’t come along with playing the odds will give you plenty of action and you are odds are good that you will come out a winner.
