Craps Bets

There are hosts of ways to play the game of craps. Most of them call for a great number of bets, perhaps using the Pass Line, the Come bets, the Place bets of the 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and a serious number of Crazy Crapper bets including the Hardways, the C&E, the Horn, the Whirl, the Field, and all the possible combinations of single numbers straight up. In addition, with new “jackpot” type bets such as the Fire Bet, players can have a huge amount of money on the layout.

I think most successful athletes, scholars, writers, doctors, actors, chefs and, yes, casino gamblers often need a mentor; someone who can jog the unthinking fog that often settles in our brains when we perform an activity. I know I needed such a mentor or I would have been one of those lost, misty-eyed players you often see shambling about in the halls of Lady Luck.

There are times craps shooters are cold, times they're hot, and times they're on fire. It's for those time shooters are burning through the points that the craps fire bet was devised.

Win the fire bet, and you could walk away with a 999-1 payoff, turning a $1 side bet into a cool $1,000. That's the kind of payoff not available on standard craps, where the pass line pays even money and long shots such as bets on 2 or 12 reach only 30-1.

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.

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.

There are elements of craps that will fire up any player’s imagination in a casino.

When craps players learn the basics of how to play craps online or offline, they’re taught that the time to make a pass line bet is on the comeout roll. If it’s not the comeout, you can bet on come instead, with the same basic odds and gameplay.

But what if you bet on the pass line and it’s not the comeout? Will the casino still accept your bet? Yes it will. A pass bet made on a roll other than the comeout is called a “put bet.”