Craps Strategy

It’s no hidden secret that the house always wins in casino games.  This is the only way the casino can make enough money to pay their costs including staff, operations and maintanance etc.  But in craps in particular, the house edge can be very high compared to other games.  Some craps bets for instance can have up to a 14% edge.  This means if you play craps wrecklessly in a casino, without learning any craps strategy, you’ll lose a lot of money in a short space of time.

By reading up our Craps strategy, before you play online craps or live craps, you’ll minimise your losses by sticking to profitable bets with a low house edge.  You can avoid the costly bets that only suckers make, and in the long term you’ll increase your expected value from the game.  You can also check out the various Craps betting systems which have been published online and used a lot by craps players.

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Best Bets

The best bets to place, whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned pro, are the Pass Line bet and Don’t Pass Line bets.  These bets are similar to BlackJack and roulette in that you bascially have a 50/50 chance of doubling up and the house only has a 1.41% advantage. “Betting Against the Line” means you are betting against the run of play.  These odds are actually slightly better than Pass Line bet as the house only has a 1.40% edge.  You win by laying the person rolling and hoping that he hits a 7 before his Point.  Be careful when placing this bet however, because it tends to mean you are betting against everyone else at the table i.e. when you win they lose.

The second range of optimal betting includes place 6, place 8, buy 4 and buy 10.

Most players are unaware of this but there are a few bets you can make that have a 0% house advantage.  These are the Taking the Odds and Laying the Odds.  Unforunately, you need to have previously placed the minimum bet on Pass Line of Don’t Pass Line to place these, which happens to give the House a marginal advantage overall.  Most casinos also limit the amount you can wager on the odds bets.  This is related to your Pass Line/Don’t Pass bets e.g. limit of 2-5x.

Worst Bets

Generally speaking, the higher the real odds the larger the House’s mark-up. This means betting on an unlikely event like “Big 6” gives the house a massive 9.1% advantage.  These are horrible odds for any gambler.  Even though the payouts are high I would avoid these hit-and-miss bets.

The worst thing you can do in Craps is make “Big Round”, Hard Way or Field bets.  Punters who bet on individual numbers is the big money maker for casinos.  The odds can be even worse for Hard numbers like Hard Eight where the real odds of 10:1 are replaced by Casino odds of 9:1.  The worst proposition bets give the House a 16% advantage in some casinos.  Snake Eyes (1 and 1) is one of the most popular proposition bets but it is also costly. It gives the house a 14% advantage.

Gamblers Fallacy

There is a common tendency for gamblers to make predictions