Craps Strategy

There are a wide variety of bets when you're playing craps. Some of these bets have low house edges; a few with under 2% and these tend to pay one-to-one. Other bets have somewhat larger payouts with house edges hitting about 6% (give or take) and then we have what my mentor the Captain of craps called the Crazy Crapper proposition bets which can pay out large sums on relatively small bets but the Crazy Crapper bets come with very high house edges, often hitting over 10 percent.

So many people want to learn how to play craps, yet the layout looks too complicated and before even making an attempt to learn the game these people flee for the safety of what they consider simpler games such as blackjack, roulette, slots and baccarat. But craps is actually an easy game to play, and it does not take a load of study to learn the proper way to bet.

There are dozens of craps bets advertised right on the casino table felt - wagers including pass and don't pass, come and don't come, place numbers, the field, hardways, one-roll propositions.

But in some ways craps is like an American fast-food restaurant with a secret menu, ways of combining standard ingredients that aren't listed on the big board but are known to customers and workers alike.

When craps players put together combination bets, there are two key things to keep in mind:

• The house edge is a weighted average of the house edges on all bets in the combination.

• The overall house edge can never be lower than the best individual bet in the combination.

Casino players have the rare opportunity to play craps with a house edge of less than 1 percent. Unfortunately for low rollers, may require wagers too large for their comfort zone.

What’s a player on a budget to do? We’ll do some comparison shopping right after we look at what’s needed to get the lowest house edge.

To get that less than 1 percent deal, players either back pass and come bets with free odds or lay the odds behind don’t pass and don’t come bets.

When craps players bet against the shooter in a casino table, the most common strategy is to play don’t pass and don’t come. 

Backing those bets by laying the free odds cuts the house edge to the bone for “Dark Side” or “wrong bettor” – as the majority who bet with the shooter refer to don’t players.

Just because people play certain games, perhaps playing them aplenty, does not mean they necessarily understand those games. Even some dealers are not conversant with the true odds and underlying math of the very games they deal. They certainly know how to run the game and they certainly know the payoffs of the various bets but that doesn’t mean they are actually experts.