I can’t quite follow your whole post. You’re trying to argue that odds is a bad bet, right? Because I don’t see it. You have a larger outlay when playing odds, but you can shave down the house advantage to near nil if the house lets you play triple or more odds. What am I missing here?
Ellis Dee great post. I appreciate the math and the easy explanations. However…
Are you trying to say that you would make one pass line bets (no odds) and two come bets (no odds)? Probability math isn’t my strong suit, but I do have an issue with this.
What are the odds that a number repeats before a 7-out? The odds of a 7 are the same for every role, I agree, but now you have to factor in a point having been established in relation to when a 7 appears. The point I’m trying to make is that if a 7 appears with all three bets out, you lose the same as much as if there was one bet out with 2x odds. However, if a number is repeating, the bet is only paying even money, whereas if the bet had odds, then you’re beating the 1-1 payout. I’m too busy to do the math, but isn’t this situation a better bet than trying to establish three points? I think it is. Perhaps, I’m thinking of it differently than you are.
I am also having a very hard time following Ellis Dee’s logic.
Once a point has been extablished you now can make any bet on the table. The odds bet is true odds, no other bet on the table is so clearly this is the best bet in terms of expected return. Of course you need to balance the favorable odds versus managing your money because you do want to play a while and have some fun. At least that is my thought.
If your goal is to gamble $101 on 50/50 shots (I assume that’s what it is, I don’t know craps very well, then certainly 100x odds is the cheapest way to do it. You pay about 1.5 cents per $101 bet, a pretty low house edge, lots of gamble in there. You’re just maximizing the variance while mimizing the expected loss - a good deal if your goal is to simply gamble.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
For clarity, there should’ve been a ) after “I don’t know craps”
Anyway, the odds bets are a free bet, which seems good when considering most people’s ideas and goals of gambling.
It has no edge to either side, it’s simply a variance bet. Flipping a coin. That’s what gambling is, right? Variance. So you “pay” for the $1 bet for the privilege of getting the $100 free bet. The house can absorb that variance with their massive bankroll, but they still make their money on the $1 (or whatever) bet with a house edge.
It costs you less, in terms of expected loss, to bet $101 with $1 on a come bet and $100 on odds, than $101 on a black on roulette or whatever, but you still get the same gamble more or less.
That’s the heart of the issue. Let’s assume a $5 table that allows double odds. Most people tend to feel more like they are playing for $5 stakes than $15 stakes, thus giving them a false sense of security with regards to their bankroll. This puts their session limit in jeopardy, as you can be out $45 in a matter of minutes.
The odds bets aren’t bad in and of themselves. But they do increase variance. Basic casino strategy, IMO, should be to enter with enough money to float three different sessions, each lasting at least an hour or two, taking breaks in between. I would recommend $1000 trip bankroll, with three $300 sessions. That gives you plenty of money to play at a $5 table for two hours, unless you are taking odds.
Here’s the thing. Odds have true payouts. But no matter what you do, the casino will realize its advantage eventually. What usually happens when you play max odds is that you run into a buzz saw that eats away hundreds of dollars quite quickly. It doesn’t take many bad shooters to do this, especially if you also play the come. Conversely, you also can get on a hot streak, sometimes doubling your money or more. However, both scenarios will typically actualize rather quickly, usually in less than an hour.
And that’s the problem. Gamblers aren’t there to buy stocks; they are there to day trade; the action is the point of it. So even if you double your money in a half hour, who can be satisfied with a mere half hour of action? So you stay for a little longer to have more fun, and then all of a sudden the huge variance has sapped away all your winnings plus your original buy-in in a ten minute span half an hour later. Then you scratch your head, repeat to yourself that you played the smartest bets, and just chalk it up to bad luck. But if you had come in with significantly more money to begin with, then the variance wouldn’t have been able to eat through your entire session limit in such a short amount of time.
This is magnified quite a bit by 3-4-5 odds, and to the extreme by 100x odds.
Sorry, I meant “editorial you”, as in anybody reading the thread.
But why? That’s my whole point. The generally accepted logic is that because they are true odds, they are great, but once you start raising the limits on odds, it suddenly becomes unwise. If odds are so great, that would not be the case. I could wholeheartedly recommend single or half odds, but once you begin increasing your high expectation bet by a factor of three when it has become a low expectation bet, you have dangerously (to your session limit) increased your variance. That’s the exact reason you feel 5x odds are getting into crazy territory. I draw the line at anything more than single odds. In fact, since the comeout is far and away the most favorable position in the casino, I say keep all your action there.
Oh so true. My favorite “warmup” session is to play the bottomless $10 darkside. You go to a $10 table, which are usually less crowded, and put $200 in the tray. Bet $10 darkside (Pass or Come) every single roll. Put all chips returned to you in a different rung on the tray. Once the original $200 chip “stack” has run dry, finish out the current point and walk away. It’s rather amazing how consistently you end up with about $180, (thus you lost $20), but it probably took over an hour, and you had the most action (and activity) going on the table. Since you almost can’t win money this way, but almost never lose anything of consequence, it’s a great warmup to get you into the flow of things. this came to mind when reading your post because it never fails to annoy the crap out of me that the seven out actually loses the Don’t Come bet that hasn’t been established yet. That just feels wrong to me. 
That “incredibly stupid” (which I tend to agree with) logic is the exact same logic that recommends taking double odds. Why is tripling your bet ever a good idea? Doubling down in blackjack is a cause to sit up and take notice, but tripling it in craps is for some reason no big deal.
Obviously you didn’t mean the 4, as that’s an outside number. My favorite Place bet is to put $10 on 5 and 9. Tossing an extra dollar down I bump whichever hits first to $25, and on the next hit of either I press the remaining bet to $25 as well. I leave them up until the shooter sevens out. This is a fun strategy, in that you only risk (at most) $22, but each time a $25 bet hits you get $35 back. Sure, you need multiple wins to get it going, so it does fall into the “silly and stupid” category, but then again how different is the $22 outlay from the $15 double odds bet?
I meant no disrespect in my post to your expertise, and I apologize if I came off that way. Quick question to the dealer if you don’t mind. My usual way of tipping is to toss a nickel out and say “all 4 hardways for the dealers”. What’s your favorite way to be tipped in craps, if it’s only going to be at most a $5 tip on a $5 table? I’ve never seen a dealer happy about a $5 Pass bet for the dealers…
In a nutshell, my point is this: You are at the casino to experience the fun (rush?) of the gambling experience, and hopefully not lose too much money. Therefore, walking in the door and placing all your money on a single bet is not a smart move, even if it’s a bet with a reasonable house edge. That same line of thought leads me to the conclusion that max odds in craps will, in general, elevate your level of variance beyond the point where you can expect a reasonable amount of time at the tables.
You are perilously close to the gambler’s fallacy in that paragraph. First off, the number you are looking for is approximately 3.4 rolls per decision. I did a simulation once, and I don’t remember the exact result, but I remember it was between 3 and 4 rolls, on the low side. So every line bet gets resolved, on average, in 3.4 rolls.
To consider the rest of the paragraph, here’s another distressing issue with odds. In your repeating numbers example, you don’t get all your odds winnings. If you do a bottomless lightside, you don’t get paid your come odds on a pass line comeout roll; they are simply returned to you. That can be frustrating for the player who only considers their action to be behind the line.
Basically, what you are asking is that if you hit a table that is currently in a 5 trend, for example, where a lot of 5s are coming up, then you can best take advantage of this with odds, because the odds pay better than 1:1. But I would respond that a Place Bet pays even better than double odds, so you’d be best served (in that situation) staying off the line altogether. So I would say if you are trying to capitalize on a trending table, stay off the lines and make Place Bets. Look at it this way: you don’t need a number to come up twice to win a Place Bet, but you do need a number to come up twice – with no 7 in between, no less – to win the Pass and Come bets.
Playing the lines with no odds is a good bet on a hot table, a cold table, a choppy table, and just about any other flavor you care to name. Odds bets require a certain flavor – namely a hot table – in order for you to be able to last at it for a longish amount of time.
I would like to point out that your entire question is predicated on the unspoken assumption that the Pass Line is generally determined after it has been established. Remember that one of my main thrusts is that this is not the case; the comeout portion of the point is much more important than most people give it credit for. 45.1% of your winners come without odds ever being in the picture.
It is much easier to scale the proper wager amount against your bankroll when you do not take odds, because you only get to take odds two thirds of the time, making your wagers more variable and difficult to gauge.
We are in agreement. Just as I would not recommend a $300 bankroll playing $15 line bets with no odds, I would recommend against double odds for the same reason. However, $500 sessions on a $5 table would probably be okay for max odds, even on a 3-4-5 table. I guess my real thrust is to point out how important (and deceptively tricky) it is to scale your wagers to fit your bankroll in craps. If nobody takes away anything from this except that point, that’s completely fine.
No, I think there’s a disconnect in there. The point of gambling is not variance, it is action. The thrill of the ride. If all you wanted was variance, you could do any number of other things. Why go to a casino at all when you could just buy scratch-offs at the local gas station. Because it’s fun to gamble at a casino. The main attraction of table games is to be there with other people. The main attraction of craps is that it is a social game, where you often get entire tables cheering, clapping, and whistling for a hot shooter. Gambling is not about variance; good gambling tries to minimize variance in the effort of extending bankroll and extending fun. If you want a high return, like odds has, then you are already setting yourself up for many more losses than wins. Why is that fun? Try my bottomless darkside style one time and you’ll be amazed at how much more fun it is than playing a couple points with odds, and it has the bonus of having virtually no variance.
It seems appropriate to link to this thread here. Gangster, is my position (and hopefully my chart) in that thread easier to understand in light of this thread?
Good catch, no, I didn’t mean the 4. For some reason, where I’m working right now, 4,5,6,8,9 seems to be a very popular set of place bets.
Again, it’s the house PC. Over the short term, there really isn’t that much difference, but in the long haul, say if you have a large bankroll, play several sessions in a given period of time, or manage to find a $1 game with 5x odds (3x 4x 5x hasn’t really caught on downtown yet) your money will last longer. You’re going to have sessions when it’s nothing but point-seven, but you’re also going to catch a decent roll once in a while.
'salright. If you didn’t mean to offend, then you didn’t.
Anyhoo, most of the dealers I’ve worked with would actually prefer a $5 pass line (or don’t pass, if you’re playing the darkside) to a dollar on each of the hardways, just because those are more likely to hit, resulting in a $10 tip. Rule of thumb, bet for the dealers where you’re betting for yourself, only in smaller increments. Also, if you’re losing your ass, we’ll understand if you don’t tip. If you’re winning, tip about 10% of your winnings. So, if you’re betting the pass line or don’t pass, bet for the dealers there, too. Ditto for the hardways. One or two place, come, or don’t come bets are nice if the shooter is rolling up a duke, but you won’t be considered a stiff if you don’t bet them for us.
Having said that, craps dealers are just as prone to stupidity as the public at large. There are a lot of dealers who see a dollar on each of the hardways as a potential $36 tip, which it is, but the odds are 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 against any one of them hitting. I once worked with a boxman who would insist that a dollar hand-in (money tipped but not placed as a bet for the dealers) should go straight into the toke box rather than set up as a dealer-chosen bet, which the dealers would have preferred. His thinking, and I agree with it, was that if we simply pocketed it, it was a guarunteed dollar and since we usually got quite a few of them during the course of a day, it would add up to us making more money than if we bet it, since the odds against it winning were so high, and dealer bets are subject to the house pc, too.
Ellis,
It’s hard to know exactly where to go in your post (and my quoting ability is precarious), but you are making a couple of assumptions that aren’t justified. First, you examine everything in terms of bankroll. Not everyone thinks that way. As I said several posts ago, if you look at this in terms of money you get one answer, if you look at it in terms of percentages or expected outcomes you get another. Secondly, you assume everyone is there for action, which is just not true. Your analysis may be dead on, but only for certain people with certain gambling goals.
Ah, yeah, well then your post makes sense. But I (and others) have been arguing on purely mathematical grounds, which does bear out that a passline bet with huge odds decreases the house advantage to near nil. No, it’s not a practical or particularly fun way to gamble, but mathematically, it’s sound. That said, I don’t play craps at casinos in general, usually sticking to worse bets (slots) with the occassional game of video poker and blackjack thrown in.
Ellis I understand your point. In fact I think most here would agree that managing your bankroll is one of the keys to a good time at the Craps table. But that is always the case no matter what game and it is purely subjective. That is one reason why Craps, though a huge amount of fun keeps some people away because it can eat your bamkroll really fast.
Last time I was in Vegas I took $1000 and by the ned of th efirst night (maybe one hours worht of gamblig at the Craps table) I was fdown $600. The mistake I made was playing at a table with limits that were too high (I knew theywere too high, but I couldn’t help myself :wally ). The next night found the $3 minimum 100x odds tables at the Casino Royale and ran into tsome hot rollers on three seperate occsiona dn left that weekend up $600, that was a $1200 turnaround. My main strategy was to try and have one pass line and two come bets with 10x odds out on all of them when possible. I realize there are other strategies, but that was simple and let me still enjoy the game. Once in awhile I would play the hardways or yo, just to spice it up.
I can accept that.
Then in purely mathematical argument, can you convince me that playing 100x odds is a smart bet?
Assume a $303 bankroll at a $1 minimum table with 100x odds. According to the purely mathematical argument, since this reduces the house edge to virtually nil, it should be a smarter bet. But I would argue that it is not as smart as playing no odds at all, for many reasons.
I think the only real way to answer this question, as the math for a proper analysis is beyond me, is to write a simulation. I’ll put one together in the next few days using VBA in Excel, so that any of you interested in the question can easily copy and paste it and run it for yourself.
I predict that my Aggressive Let It Ride strategy will produce better results for the gambler than taking 100x odds will. The problem is that the ALiR strategy has a fixed amount of wagers to place, and it never varies. Since the only possible outcome for the ALiR are to lose everything, break exactly even, or double (or more) your money, I’ll use the same criteria in the session limits for the odds bet. In other words, once the odds player has doubled (or more) her money, she will consider that session a win and walk away. Is that a fair enough comparison? Please respond if you feel this is an unfair test, because I don’t want to spend a couple hours writing a program only to have people attack the original premise.
See, the Martingale is a mathematical “can’t lose” system that simply doesn’t work, and the reason isn’t so much because of the table limits, but rather the extremely high variance. I bet nobody has ever played the Martingale and lost because they ran into the table limit. I believe Martingale players run out of money long before they hit the table maximums, and that running out of money is the real reason it simply doesn’t work.
So if you have an unlimited supply of chips to wager, then odds are great. But because buyins are limited, odds are unwise. That is my position. I believe this to such an extent that I predict a large number of trials will bear out the true odds of the Pass Line when simulating the ALiR system, but the true odds will not be realized for the 100x odds style. Is that even mathematically possible?
OK, Ellis. Give it a shot. Average out the winnings over a large number of trials of the two systems. The odds bets should average out higher winnings then your aggressive let it ride. I don’t see how it could possibly be otherwise. Mathemetically, it just doesn’t make any sense.
The program Wincraps is available to do craps simulations. You can find it at www.cloudcitysoftware.com. You would be able to program it to do the comparisons you want.
What are you trying to compare here? Almost any strategy will allow you blow all your money or double it.
“Smart” in this context is absolutely subjective and depends on your goals.
If you’re looking to get the maximum gamble for the least cost (least negative expectation) then max odds bets are they way to go.
Your strategy sounds like nonsense, but feel free to simulate it. I say that because no matter what patterns of bets you make, you’re making a bet with a higher expected loss than a 100x odds bets, and therefore, if you’re going to bet the same amount of money, you will lose more.
Sorry I’m responding to an old post but this really helped me and my friend who is currently having in doubt and question with casino’s rule with the matter.
Ah, I remember when I used to gamble. wistful