Any craps players here?

The Game Room
61

ITA agree with posts 59 and 60 as a response to post 58’s query from Jas09.

I would like to add that what is a bigger priority to Jas09.

Do you want to play Craps for 2 hours. Or do you want to double your money?

Option A: Play Craps for two hours
Option B: Double your money

Option A is your best bet if you want to score free drinks for two hours (minus waitress tips).

Neither option is going to help you score a lot of comps like free hotel rooms and buffets. Your stakes aren’t high enough. But, in general Option A is the better avenue than Option B as you are more likely to play longer under Option A. And the Pit Bosses to not rate Odds bets when evaluating play for comps.

62

I made a lot of money playing the don’t pass. When I originally read the rules, I couldn’t believe that the player wins all the don’t pass bets if the roller rolls a 7 or craps (conversely, the house takes all the pass/come bets in this situation.) The odds are ridiculously good for “wrong” bettors. However, dealers hate this strategy. On several occassions, I was criticized for my style of play by the dealers.

However, the last time I went to vegas, I couldn’t find a craps table under a $20 minimum bet. I don’t have the bankroll to play at that level, so I didn’t play. (Later, my friend told me the azteca had a $2-3 min table.)

If you really want to make a lot of money consistently on craps, learn how to play don’t pass/don’t come. Pass/come is OK as well, but you don’t want to risk as much. I usually played opposite when I was rolling.

But most importantly: DO NOT PLAY ANY OF THE OTHER BETS ON THE TABLE. The odds are ridiculously bad.

63

Superhal - Aren’t the odds on Don’t Pass the same as on Pass? Basically a 1.4% house take?

ETA: And looking at the wiki odds table - holy crap that Any 7 bet is bad…

64

Pass / Come bets are 1.414%. Don’t Pass / Don’t Come are 1.402%. For a difference of $12 per $10,000 wagered (unless I slipped decimal.) Not a big difference.

Dealers don’t necessarily hate Don’t players … however … a large percentage of Don’t players are nasty, cynical people who have spent years getting ground down on the Craps tables – and they rarely tip. If they are spoiling the fun of other players (who are much more likely to tip), dealers will likely do their best to run them off, otherwise, they’re just a part of the game.

Oh. Nothing personal toward Superhal, of course.

65

The beauty of don’t pass/come is that you win all existing bets if there’s craps/7. However, you lose all existing bets with come/pass in the same situation. I found this amazingly in favor of the player because you’re basically playing with the house.

66

The rudest dealers I met were when I was alone on an empty table playing don’t pass against myself.

67

Sorry about that, it was uncalled for. My bad.

This isn’t meaningful in a practical way because you never reach the long term expectation in a session. There is no functional difference between the two proposed systems ($15 pass vs $5 pass with $10 odds every point with no other bets) in any given session. You are just as likely to win or lose with both systems, though they win their money differently. (With odds, you have to hit a bunch of <50% chance occurances. Without odds, you have to have more ~50% occurances happen than not.)

Though they win differently, for the most part they lose the same, and whether your $200 bankroll is down to $0 (playing without odds) or $3 (playing with odds) is irrelevent; you’re busted either way.

68

This mentality is easy to fall into because most people ignore the come-out roll, which is a ridiculously large part of craps and can’t (or at very least shouldn’t) be ignored.

Doing the math:

12 ways to immediately decide the Pass Line: (11 for the Don’t)
Six ways to roll 7
Two ways to roll 11
Two ways to roll 3
One way to roll 2
One way to roll 12

There are 36 possible rolls for the Pass, 35 for the Don’t. That means:

33.3% of the time, the Pass Line is decided by a come-out roll (no point established)
31.4% of the time, the Don’t Pass is decided by a come-out roll (no point established)

It’s easy enough to just say a third of the time, you never get to establish a point. A third of the time is a very large percentage of time. Now let’s look at the odds you face in that third of the time:

33.3% of the time, the Pass Line wins 66% of the time. (8 ways to win, only 4 to lose.)
31.4% of the time, the Don’t Pass wins 27% of the time. (3 ways to win, 8 ways to lose.)

The come-out roll is where the Pass Line (without odds) makes its money, while the odds version needs to make its money hoping that the point hits. Hitting points is a <50% proposition, which is why they pay you more than you bet.

The come-out roll is death for the Don’t Pass, with that dreaded “Bar 12.” Only 3 ways to win and 8 ways to lose? Ouch. You pay dearly for the privilege of getting a dark side point established.
I have played countless hours both on the light side and the dark side, and dealers have invariably been friendly and nice to me. I have been in a single session long enough to see the dealers completely cycle the table twice, both with light side and dark side. Unless you’re being rude or not tipping, I can’t imagine why the dealers would be rude to a dark side player.

Note that the Don’t Pass is the truest 50/50 proposition in the entire casino, so if you ever want to play a 50:50 mathematical system, always play it on the Don’t Pass. Just don’t play the Martingale.

69

Thanks for the responses everyone, hell I don’t need to buy a book on craps after all! :smiley:

I’ve downloaded and played 3 different online free craps games, using just pass line bets, max odds bets, and odds bets equaling my pass line bets, all three with interesting results:

Crapspage.com—Great graphics, good gameplay, but amazingly, I seem to win a fortune every session with this one. This may be cynical, but I cant help but wonder if its a gateway to some of the “not so free” online websites it advertises, the “see? you are good at this game!” gambit . . .

My Craps iPad app-- Looked like a great app, advertising true odds and random formulas, even listing every single roll for your reference . . . . until I started losing a lot of points . . . . and noticed almost 25% of the rolls were 3s!

Finally, there is a 15 or 17 in 1 Casino app on my iPhone I started playing weeks ago, but again, in this one, no matter what system I play, I eventually lose all of my money. Seems to be a SLIGHTY disproportionate amount of sevens in this one . . .

Well, anyway, looks like I will be hitting the tables at the end of the month, and I’ve determined based on the advice here, the book I read, and the online simulations that I have resolved myself to the fact that this is a fun game where in the long run I will lose money but still have a lot of fun, I seem to be most comfortable with playing the Pass line, and then laying the same bet on odds (not taking max odds) on the point.

70

Here are the downsides to playing Pass Line with Odds and nothing else:

  1. You need a lower-limit table, which are often hard to find and very crowded.
  2. You do a whole lot of nothing as you wait for each point to resolve.

It takes ~3.4 rolls for each pass line decision. If you’re on a busy table, those 3.4 rolls can take a while as everyone is plunking down place bets, taking odds on come bets, etc… It can start to feel like you’re a spectator.

A couple psychological things start to come into play. Since you’re playing odds, the come out feels trivial and incidental; you make your money by hitting points. Hitting points happens less than half the time, so most of the time you’re standing around losing money. It’s not a very fulfilling or engaging strategy.

The dreariness really gets driven home if you play the Doey-Don’t, which is almost pure odds. Bet 1 unit on the pass and 1 unit on the Don’t, then take double odds on the pass line. The only thing that hurts you is a Bar 12 on the come-out, which loses the Pass but doesn’t pay the Don’t. That’s exactly 1 unit (half the 2-unit bet) down every 36 rolls, but mathematically it’s not technically a 2.78% (1/36) house advantage. Instead it’s -1 unit every 71 units bet, (1/71 = 1.408%) which is unsurprisingly the exact average of the Pass and Don’t lines combined. It’s not unusual to play for a while and never see a 12, though, but the times I played this strategy I was bored out of my skull. It’s not a particularly bad strategy, but it is boring as all get-out.

71

A search on my posts shows I’ve already posted extensively about craps on this board. Here is the best jumping off point, with links to my strategies and also to a debate on the virtues of taking odds bets.

I’m realizing I haven’t been to a casino in over 5 years. That’s way too long, especially since I’d forgotten much of what I posted in those older threads. Like regarding the importance of the come-out roll to the line bets. 45% of all Pass Line winners happen on the come-out roll. That’s just nuts. Why in the world would you want to minimize 45% of your winners by taking odds?

The casinos I go to are around 90 minutes away by car, so it’s basically an all-day event. I typically bring $1000 for the trip, and play four different sessions with noticeable breaks in between. (Eat, smoke a cigar, whatever.) The first session is effectively free, then the next three are all exactly $300. All my action is on $10 craps tables, and I never take odds.

$10 Don’t. It’s for a $10 craps table, and requires a $200 bankroll. Bet $10 Don’t Pass / Don’t Come every roll of the dice. You get paid (every established bet on the table wins) by the Seven Out. You can “get hurt” by the initial come out rolls when the point is off. (8-3 against you when coming out.) All money coming back goes to a different rack from the original $200. In other words, you make 20 bets. (Dip into the other rack to finish off the final shooter.) This system is good in two ways: It is very fun, because you get to make a whole lot of bets. And it is very, very low variance. You are almost guaranteed to walk away from this system with between $175-$215. Sure, that isn’t great, but nothing is. But, if you are down to your last $200, and your friend wants to keep playing, this can keep you at the table, and very active, for an extremely long time (assuming you only keep a single rack.) I play this system when I first get to the casino. This is an excellent way to ease into gambling, and I always have over $900 left of my $1000 trip budget.

My “win money” strategy isn’t as active, but it does get its fair share of heart-pounding action. After the first “$10 Don’t” session I play the following for three $300 sessions then go home:

Aggressive Let It Ride. I always play this system on the Pass Line, because it feels better on the “light side” than the “dark side”. It requires a $10 table, and a $300 bankroll. Bet $10 on the Pass. When it wins, leave the winnings up and add in another $10, for a total of $30. (The initial $10, $10 winnings, plus an additional $10). If it wins again, leave it up again and put in another $10. If it loses at any point, start over with the basic $10. You are waiting for a 4th win in a row:

10 30 70 150

The 4th win is a $150 bet plus a $150 win, which is the $300 you started with. Put those $300 in chips in your pocket, and continue the system until you are out of your original $300. (Pocketed chips never get bet again in that casino trip.) Either you lose $300, break even, or win $300 (or more!). All you need is 4 wins in a row, which can happen immediately at a craps table. Say the first shooter rolls 7, 11, 7, 7. You’ve just won $300 (actually, $260) in the span of about 30 seconds. Quite fun. On the flip side, you cannot possibly lose quickly. It takes a couple hours to get through your $300, and though you don’t get much activity, you get to play for a very long time, and you get several heart-pounding big bets to keep you interested.

That’s my normal strategy. I have a ton of systems I’ve played over the years, and still try some out occasionally if the mood strikes me or the situation dictates it. Here is a detailed list of them.

EDIT: Note that the irony of my previous post is not lost on me. heh.

72

Eh, it happens. I’m sure it gets frustrating trying to discuss something you know a lot about with someone who barely understands your terminology. :smiley:

True. However, it all comes down to what your goals are: mine happen to usually be minimizing my losses. In a choice between $3 and $0, I’ll take the three.

Nope, that sounds about right to me! :smiley:

Further emphasizing that the most important thing in determining what strategy to use is what your goal is for the gambling session. What’s right for somebody who wants to minimize losses, like me, is not what’s right for someone who wants to maximize plays/excitement, like you.

Thanks for this monster post! Really interesting stuff.

73

Ah, but wait: the beauty of don’t pass is the number of bets you have on the table at the same time. Obviously, it’s better to have all the points when the roller craps out. On the other hand, the more points there are, the more you lose when you play pass. In the strategy I learned, you want 3 or more points on the table at a time playing don’t pass. Conversely, you want 3 or less points on the table playing pass/come. It’s the ability to win 3 or more bets vs losing 3 or more bets with a single roll that makes don’t pass/come superior.

Yes, the first roll, the come-out roll, is bad for wrong bettors. That’s why I usually place a come bet first, then don’t come after a point is established.

Another way to think about it: if you play pass, what do you have to do? You have to make 10 or more consecutive rolls while avoiding 4 numbers (7, 2, 3, 12.) Ideally, your roll should look like: 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4. Playing don’t pass, the ideal roll looks like this: 4, 5, 6, 8, 7. Which one do you think is more likely?

74

If minimizing losses is the highest priority, you can’t gamble in the first place. For all practical purposes, in order to minimize losses you absolutely must define your session bankroll, win limit, and loss limit, and then tailor a system within those criteria.

Debating without those ideas at the forefront is irrelevant and often misleading, since real-world limitations change what is or is not the best strategy. As a general rule, though, there is no such thing as “minimizing losses.” Whatever your loss limit is for a session, that’s what you have to plan to lose.

Also, there is no difference between being down to $0 or $3, ya cheapskate. Who doesn’t toss those last three chips in for the dealers? Geez.

75

No, it doesn’t. Your understanding of the line bets is a little off. As to this particular point, I gave an example upthread: win 10, win 10, win 10, lose 30 is the same as lose 10, lose 10, lose 10, win 30. The only difference is whichever suits your personality or session goals the best.

My experience has shown me that it’s pretty much always better to lose a little at a time and win a lot, since that keeps you at the table longer. If you win a little and lose a lot, you could go bust within a matter of minutes on a bad table. Then again, I (and most people) have to drive over an hour to get to a casino, so going bust within 20 minutes and having to drive home is simply not an option. But even if I lived in Atlantic City, I still wouldn’t see the point in going to a casino for just a half hour.

That has no effect. Don’t Come bets have the exact same come-out process as Don’t Pass bets. In fact, the Come and Don’t Come bets are EXACTLY the same as Pass and Don’t Pass bets. The only difference is that when there is no point, you bet the line, and when there is a point you bet the (Don’t)Come.

You might consider reviewing how craps bets work on wikipedia.

Not sure where to begin with this. I notice you say the Pass Line has to “avoid 7, 2, 3, 12.” Why didn’t you include the Yo (11)? If you’re talking about established points, 2, 3 and 12 are ignored.

Obviously once points are established it’s more likely to seven out than hit the point. That’s why Pass odds pay more than 1:1 and why you have to lay odds on the Don’t. But you’re totally ignoring the come-out, or possibly misunderstanding how it works altogether.

Remember that 45% of all Pass line winners comes on the come-out roll. Conversely, 45% of all Don’t Pass (and Don’t Come) losses happen during the come-out roll. This come-out roll cannot be avoided by establishing a Pass Line bet first and then betting the Don’t Come. Each Don’t Come bet has its own come-out.

I whipped out the craps felt and clay chips last night to try out my systems. I was super cold at first, winning $60 on the first “$10 Don’t” session, then hitting nothing on the first $300 session until my last $30, which hit four Passes in a row for a total of $280. So that session was down $20. Then the next session I hit four passes in a row halfway through, kept going and got to three in a row with my last $30 again but this time didn’t get the fourth, so that session broke even.

At this point, up $40 and with $300 left to bet I decided to go with the 5s and 9s strategy and made a killing. The dice were hot and I was pulling back $35 wins left and right. Up several hundred I finally stopped, though virtually any light side system would have cleaned up. EXCEPT the pass line, which rarely hit.

The moral of the story: If you only play the pass line (with or without odds), be prepared for a super hot table to win everyone around you countless fortunes while you lose your shirt. It’s not unusual or even unlikely to hit a bunch of numbers other than the point before sevening out. That sucks.

76

Very true. Perhaps a better way to put it would have been, “When I gamble, I generally like to play the bets that have the best odds.”

Maybe the reason I wanted the last $3 was so I’d have something to tip with. :smiley:

77

Yep, so if the roller is hot, I switched to pass/come.

I’d guess that out of the ~100 or so hours I played craps, maybe 1 hour of that was a “hot” roller.

78

This is no joke. I don’t know what it is about casinos, but hot tables are few and far between.

The worst is when the cold tables hit a lot of 7s and 11s on the come-out, meaning you can’t even win on the dark side.

79

Semantic point but I don’t think that that’s a better way to put it since it runs counter to the argument you’ve been making all thread long.

I think what you might have meant is something like, “When I gamble, I generally like to play the bets with the smallest house edge.” (i.e. a come bet has better odds than a point bet but worse house edge.)

80

Hey Ellis, in that Mensa book I’m reading they do warn that the “don’t pass” bet may be seen as confrontational, and at best, you don’t get to be part of the cheering when the shooter hits the point. Have you ever been made to feel uncomfortable by another player for betting Don’t Pass?