You can categorize craps bets into 2 broad categories – good bets and bad bets. If your definition of a good bet is one in which you have an edge, you might change these categories to bad bets and worse bets.
That’s because ALL the bets at the craps table give the casino a mathematical advantage over the player. You’re going to lose your money at the craps table if you play long enough.
The real question is how fast and how much are you going to lose.
Choose the good bets, and you’ll lose your money at a lower rate, and choose the bad bets, and you’ll lose your money faster than you ever thought possible.
What Are Proposition Bets in Craps?
A proposition bet, regardless of the betting activity, is just a bet on a something that might or might not happen.
It’s a proposition bet because it’s not a bet on the main outcome of the game. Another way of thinking about a proposition bet is to think of it as a “side” bet.
Here’s an Example:
You can bet that the next roll of the dice will result in a total of 12 – the shooter must roll a 6 on each die for this result to happen. The odds of winning this bet are 35 to 1. You have 36 possible outcomes when you roll a pair of 6-sided dice, and only 1 of them is 6, 6. That’s 35 ways to lose and only a single way to win.
This isn’t automatically a bad bet. It depends on the payout. If I offered to pay you 40 to 1 every time you won this bet, you’d be justified in making this bet repeatedly and winning all my money in the long run.
Casinos, though, are smarter than that. They usually only pay 30 to 1 on this bet.
The difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds is the house edge. It’s the mathematical average loss per bet expressed as a percentage.
How to Calculate the House Edge of a Bet
The easiest way to calculate the house edge for that proposition bet in the last section is to assume you make the total number of bets in the odds and see perfect results. You also assume $100 per wager.
This means that you bet $100 on 36 rolls of the dice, winning once and losing 35 times.
On the roll where you win, you get $3000 in payouts. On the 35 bets where you lose, you lose a total of $3500.
Subtract the wins from the losses and you’re left with a net loss of $500. Divide that by the 36 bets you made, and you have the average amount you lost per bet.
$500 divided by 36 is $13.89.
It’s easy to see that $13.89 of a $100 bet is 13.89%, which is a terribly high percentage for a bet on any table game in any casino.
The Hard 8 Is Another Example of a Proposition Bet
One of my favorite P.T. Anderson films is called Hard Eight. Among other things, it’s about a gambler named Sydney who likes to play craps and always bets on the hard 8 – much to the amusement of some of the other people in the casino. He’s rich and tough, though, so he doesn’t get too much flack about it.
What’s a bet on hard 8?
It’s a bet that the shooter will roll an 8 “the hard way,” which means that she’ll roll a 4 on each die BEFORE rolling either a 7 or an easy 8.
Rolling an easy 8 means rolling any total other than a hard 8 – this could be a 2 on the first die and a 6 on the second die, or vice versa. Or it could be a 3 on the first die and a 3 on the second die, or vice versa.
There’s only 1 way to roll a hard 8, but you have 6 ways to roll a 7 and 4 ways to roll an easy 8. This means that the odds of winning a bet on hard 8 are 10 to 1.
You have 10 ways to lose and only 1 way to win.
A bet on the hard 8 pays off at 9 to 1.
Make 11 bets at $100 and get perfect statistical results and what happens?
You lose $1000 and win $900 for a net loss of $100. Divide that by 11 rolls total, and you’ve lost an average of $9.09 per bet.
This means that the hard 8 has a house edge of 9.09%. That’s better than the prop bet on the total of 12, but not by much.
If the Proposition Bets Are Bad, What Are the Good Bets at the Craps Table?
The good bets at the craps table – or at least, the not-so-bad bets – follow:
- Pass
- Don’t pass
- Come
- Don’t come
- Odds
The pass line bet wins immediately if the shooter rolls a 7 or an 11 on the come-out roll. It loses immediately if the shooter rolls a 2, 3, or 12 on the come-out roll.
Any other total sets a point. The shooter keeps rolling until she rolls the point total again or rolls a 7. If she rolls the point total before rolling a 7, the pass line bet wins.
You’ll win the pass line bet about 49.3% of the time, and the house edge on this bet is 1.41%.
As far as casino bets go, this isn’t bad. It’s not a house edge as low as the house edge in blackjack when you play with basic strategy, but it’s still better than any slot machine you could hope to play.
It’s also way better than the house edge on any of the proposition bets.
How the Odds Bet Makes the House Edge in Craps Lower
When a shooter rolls a point and you have a pass line bet in action, you can place an additional bet called an odds bet. This is a bet that the shooter will roll the point number before rolling a 7 – in other words, it’s another bet that you’ll win your original pass line bet.
The odds bet, though, pays off at mathematically fair odds. It pays off at 2 to 1 if the point is 4 or 10. It pays off at 3 to 2 if the point is 5 or 9. And it pays off at 6 to 5 if the point is 6 or 8.
Your odds bet must be at least as big as the pass line bet. Even if you bet just that amount, the overall house edge on the money you now have in action is less than 1%.
Casinos generally have limits to how much money you can bet on the odds bet. The more you can bet on odds, the better it is for you. If you can bet 2X odds, that’s better than single odds, but 10X odds is even better. Some casinos even allow you to bet 100X odds. In that case, the house edge becomes among the lowest in the casino.
You could bet $5 on the pass line and bet $500 on the odds bet in such a casino. In that case, the house edge is down to 0.2%, which is better than the house edge anywhere else in the casino.
How to Get an Edge in Craps
A 0.02% edge in craps is still an edge, though. If you play real money craps long enough, you’ll eventually lose all your money.
But there is a way to get an edge in craps.
And no, it doesn’t involve setting or controlling the dice.
With an edge that low, all you need to do to get a small edge over the casino is correct the dealer any time they make a mistake in the casino’s favor. Keep your mouth shut any time the dealer makes a mistake in your favor.
You can increase the probability that the dealer will make a mistake by placing unusual-sized bets, but don’t expect to make friends with the casino when you do.
Also, your edge over the casino will be tiny. Worse, the volatility will be huge. You need a huge bankroll to accomplish this.
If the casino is offering a promotion of almost any kind on the action you’re bringing, betting 100X odds at the craps table might be more worthwhile. In fact, even if the casino only offers 20X odds, you can still do well when combining that with a promotion of any kind.
If you’re looking for a way to get an edge over the casino, this will do the trick, but it’s far from the best way of getting an edge while gambling. You’re better off learning to count cards in blackjack, making sharp bets in the sportsbook, or playing expert-level poker.
What About Those Other Bets on That Earlier List?
I only explained the pass line bet and the odds bet on that list of not-so-bad bets at the craps table. How do those other bets work?
A don’t pass bet is just the opposite of the pass bet. It wins if the shooter rolls a 2, 3, or 12 on the come-out roll. It also wins if the shooter rolls a 7 before rolling the point.
The odds bet on a don’t pass bet pays off at mathematically fair odds, too, but the odds are reversed because you’re more likely to win. Instead of paying off at 2 to 1, 3 to 2, or 6 to 5, the odds bet on don’t pass pays off at 1 to 2, 2 to 3, or 5 to 6 odds.
The come bet is the same as a pass line bet, but it treats the next roll of the dice as if it were a new come-out roll.
Don’t come, obviously, is the same as don’t pass, but it also treats the next roll of the dice as a new come-out roll.
Conclusion
If you come away from this post thinking that from now on the only bets you’ll make at the craps table are the pass line bet and the maximum odds bet possible, you’ll be ahead of the pack in the casino gambler arena.
You’ll still lose money in the long run, probably, but you’ll have more fun doing it than most of the people in the casino.
Michael Stevens
Michael Stevens has been researching and writing topics involving the gambling industry for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on all things casino and sports betting. Michael has been writing for GamblingSites.org since early 2016. …
