That’s all. I know someone who claimed that craps was the way to go because you can get “on a roll”. Of course that is stupid gambling talk.
Yes, the idea of “getting on a roll” is basically the Gambler’s Fallacy.
There is an analysis of house odds for craps (as well as many other casino games) at The Wizard of Odds website.
Generally, blackjack gives you the best odds, if you play Basic Strategy (although the house still has the advantage). If you count cards, you can get a slight advantage over the house. If you were free to make wild variations in your bets, counting cards would give you a significant advantage, but you’ll quickly be tossed out of the casino if you try that strategy.
If you bet on Don’t Pass/Come and lay 3x-4x-5x odds then the house edge is 0.273% per bet taken, or 0.081% per roll.
I have a cousin who claims that if you know how to play craps, the odds can be the best in the casino. He’s not the type to believe in the dice ‘owing’ you or any such nonsense. Then again, he lives in a modest home with his wife and has never appeared to be rolling in dough, so either he knows the secret and chooses not to play, or his full of shit. Several major casinos are within about an hour’s drive for him, so it’s not for lack of opportunity.
You cannot win money playing craps, i.e., it is the house which (naturally) has the edge. There is no secret.
It is hard to compare odds between games unless you know the exact rules used at the exact casino.
Buford claimed his system wins every time. I doubted him then, and I still doubt him. If there was a a system that guaranteed winning, casinos would not offer the game, would they? They’re in the business of taking money, not handing it out.
I suppose the point is that some of these joints offer free hotel rooms and free chips and stuff like that, but, yes, this is all designed around taking as much of the punter’s money as possible, not the other way around.
Played correctly, Craps has a low house advantage. The problem is playing correctly is very boring and without some luck, you will eventually lose all your stake.
If you play craps correctly, which isn’t very difficult, the odds are less against you than almost every other casino game. So you will lose less money over a long period of time. There’s a fair amount of variation though. There is obviously no system that will be a long term winner.
Yeah, my friend explained how he played but not understanding the terminology it was lost on me.
There are a number of craps simulators available. Have him show you his strategy on one of them, and then explain to you why he loses money when playing on the simulator.
Eh. I don’t see him that often, and I’m not interested enough to disprove his ‘system’. It may well be that his system really only reduces his loss rate to the point where he gets value back in entertainment.
The other big advantage to blackjack is that it plays relatively slowly. Every hand you play (or roll of the dice or spin of the wheel, or whatever), statistically, gives the casino a little money, and so the more hands you play per hour, the more money per hour the casino makes from you. Craps throws are quicker than blackjack hands, and so you do more of them, and so you lose more money.
There is one craps bet that is actually fair, where the house has no advantage at all on that bet itself. But you only get the opportunity to play that one by first making another bet that does have a house edge.
The bubble craps machines that are all over the place in Vegas these days are much slower-paced than a live game.
Casino gambling is always a losing proposition, but if you want to lose money relatively slowly and don’t want to have to memorize optimal strategies, craps is probably your least bad option as long as you stick with basic bets.
This is the answer. But craps is a more social game than some others, so there is some social pressure to do the standard pass bet, so ideal betting at a crowded table may ruffle some feathers. Just like how if you sit to be dealt the first card in blackjack other players may get mad if they think you made the wrong decision, while AFAIK it doesn’t actually matter, its just superstition.
As someone from the land of gambling (which means I very rarely gamble and don’t study the strategy too hard so much as learn from osmosis), the by far best odds game is Pai Gow Poker, because its slow and you get free drinks from the waitress. You generally tend to not win big or lose big and trend towards breaking even. Also this game has been offered in casinos for quite some time but the general public doesn’t know the rules, so as long as you’re not there on prime hours (and maybe not in the really big Vegas casinos), the dealer can basically slow it down and give advice about good strategy, given random cards.
I question this. As Chronos noted, the rate of betting is faster in craps than it is in games like blackjack or roulette or poker. So the lower percentage loss per bet is offset by the fact you’re making more bets in a given amount of time.
I’m not sure about that, though I’m sure it has been studied in detail. A craps table can have many more players than a blackjack table, and there are a lot of possible ways to bet, so paying out the winners is more complicated. My guess is that the games involve a roughly similar number of bets per hour.
I’m not sure that this is true but I don’t have data. As far as loss per hour, the number of individual wagers per hour is a factor.
I’m not sure about the betting rate either. For example, the betting rate for blackjack varies by a factor of 7 depending on how many people are sitting at the table. I think a full blackjack table, especially with a lot of novice (that is, slow) players, is going to give you less bets per hour then a craps table.
But if your goal is to play as few bets per hour as possible, just stand next to the table and don’t play. I don’t think minimum bets per hour is really a goal for very many people, even those who understand the true odds.