Craps Strategy To Win Big
I’m writing a series of blog posts about casino games and the good and bad strategies for playing those games.
Craps is one of my favorite casino games, so I’ve been looking forward to writing this one.
And the beautiful thing about craps is that it’s a game of pure chance. The best strategy is just to choose the bets with the lowest edge for the house and have fun.
But I’ll have some things to say about some of the strategies and systems that other writers promote, too.
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They’re mostly bad craps strategies.
Here’s the Only Craps Strategy You Need
When you’re dealing with an entirely random game – like craps – the only strategy that matters is choosing the bets with the lowest house edge and having fun.
I’ll have something to say about shooters and whether they have control over the outcomes later in this post, but for now, let’s just agree that games like craps are purely chance.
In other games that are entirely random, like slot machines, you don’t even really need to decide which bet to place. It’s chosen for you before you sit down.
When playing craps for real money, you have a handful of good bets you can make, but most of the bets on the table are bad. Just skip the bad bets, and you’re all set.
The Bests Bets at the Craps Table
The best bets at the craps table are the pass line bet and the don’t pass bet.
The come and don’t come bets are also great wagers.
I always advise casino gamblers to try to limit their gambling to games where the house edge is lower than 2% — preferably 1.5% or lower.
The house edge for the pass and come bets is the same, 1.41%, which means they qualify.
The house edge for the don’t pass and don’t come bets is even lower, 1.36%, but the 0.05% isn’t worth worrying about. Most people prefer to root for the shooter to succeed.
The other bet to think about at the craps table is the odds bet. This is a bet you can only place after making one of the 4 bets I already mentioned and when the shooter has set a point.
This is one of the only bets in the casino that has no house edge. It’s a break-even bet, but it can be expensive.
It can also drive the effective house edge on the money you have in action down to almost nothing.
Here’s how that works.
How the Odds Bet Changes the House Edge for the Better
If you’re betting on the pass line and the shooter sets a point, you can expect to lose $1.41 for every $100 you bet. That’s on average and in the long run.
If you’re playing at a casino that only allows you to place an odds bet at 1X the size of your pass line bet, you can put another $100 into action.
Your expected loss remains $1.41, though, which effectively cuts the house edge in half, from 1.41% to 0.71%.
If you’re able to bet 2X your original bet on the odds bet, you can lower that even further to 0.36%. (You have $300 in action, but your expected loss is still only $1.41.)
The more you’re able to bet on the odds bet, the lower the house edge for all the money you have in action becomes.
It’s clear why betting on the pass line and taking the most odds that you can is an effective strategy. With the odds bet, you can get the house edge in craps lower than 0.5% at least some of the time at the table, making it an even better game than blackjack.
And what’s more, you don’t have to memorize basic strategy to get the low house edge at craps.
You just need a big enough casino bankroll to make the right bets, and you need enough sense to avoid the bad bets at the table – of which there are many.
Any Strategy that Involves Placing ANY Other Bets at the Craps Table Is a BAD Craps Strategy
There’s a reason gambling experts measure bets according to their house edge. That’s because it’s the single best indicator of how good or bad a bet is.
The house edge is a statistical estimate of how much money you’ll lose as a percentage of your original bet over the long run.
If the house edge is 1.41%, the casino expects to win an average of $1.41 every time you bet $100.
If the house edge is 16.66%, the casino expects to win an average of $16.66 every time you bet $100.
Which bet looks like the better bet for the casino?
And which one looks like the better bet for the gambler?
It shouldn’t be hard to make the distinction.
Even the best of the bad bets on the craps table are inferior to the 1.41% or 1.36% you can get from the pass, don’t pass, come, and don’t come bets.
And trust me on this:
You can have PLENTY of fun sticking with the basic bets at the craps table.
Betting Systems Where You Raise and Lower the Size of Your Bets Are Bad Strategies
The classic example of this kind of betting system is the Martingale System, where you double the size of your bets after each loss. When you do this repeatedly, you eventually win back the money you’ve lost along with a profit of one unit.
The problem with a system like the Martingale is that you’ll eventually run into a big enough losing streak that it will wipe out all those small profits and then some.
Most people underestimate how quickly a bet’s size gets when doubling after every loss.
They also overestimate how likely they are to avoid long losing streaks.
If you double a $5 bet once, that’s $10.
But if you run into a losing streak of 8 bets in a row, you’re looking at having to bet $640 to make up for your losses.
Also, every roll of the dice is an independent event. The odds don’t change based on how many times you’ve won or lost in a row.
You might think the probability of losing that 8th bet is lower than the likelihood of losing the first one, but the truth is that the dice have no memory. They have the same 6 sides, no matter how many times you’ve lost in a row.
Each bet in craps is an independent event, and any betting system will assume that the odds are changing based on how many times in a row you’ve won or lost.
Money Management Strategies Don’t Hurt Anything, but They Won’t Improve Your Odds of Winning, Either
Money management strategies involve having strict gambling discipline about how much of your bankroll you’re willing to risk before quitting the game. They also require you to stop when you’ve won an arbitrary amount of money.
Money management techniques are often used in conjunction with betting systems.
Here’s an example of a money management strategy in craps:
You decide your bankroll for the session is $250, and you’re playing for $5 per roll of the dice.
Your stop-loss limit is $100, so, if your bankroll drops to $150, you must quit the craps session and go do something else.
Your win goal is $250, so once your bankroll gets up to $500, you must quit the game and go do something else.
This kind of strategy might increase your chances of walking away from the game a winner.
But that’s only because a lot of gamblers will just keep playing until they’ve lost their entire stake. They just don’t generally have a lot of sense about that sort of thing.
The Jury’s Out on Dice Setting or Dice Control
I’ve seen multiple reputable gambling writers express interest and some belief that some craps shooters can influence the probability of specific outcomes. I’m skeptical – in the extreme – but I’ll give it an appropriate amount of credence.
The idea is that you hold the dice a specific way – “setting” the dice – then throw with a minimum amount of force – just enough to hit the back wall and eliminate most of the rolling action.
A controlled shooting expert doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, they’re trying to be like someone who’s playing darts. They improve the probability enough to change the negative expectation on a bet to a positive expectation.
You can buy books and videos explaining how to get an edge at craps this way, but I can’t imagine the amount of practice and record-keeping required to have any confidence in your ability to change the odds.
Imagine if you spent 1000 hours trying to learn how to control the dice and coming up short. Maybe you just don’t have the knack for it.
That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.
Craps Strategy To Win Biggest
I’d rather learn to count cards in blackjack.
Conclusion
Those are the best and the worst of the strategies I know of for playing craps in the casino. I know plenty of people who would disagree with every recommendation I’ve made, but the math behind the game doesn’t lie.
The best strategy is to stick with the bets with the lowest house edge and have as much fun as you can.
With only a little searching on the internet, you’ll find pages that claim to have “solved” craps.
You’ll also find sites promising to teach you how to win “consistently” at craps.
They claim that you can make profits on a regular basis by shooting dice and betting on other shooters.
This isn’t one of those pages.
That’s because I’m not a liar.
Here’s the truth about how to win at real money craps almost every time you play.
Winning Craps Systems
I can tell you where to find the winning craps systems. They’re right next to the unicorns in the zoo and the mermaids in the aquarium.
How do craps systems work?
They use a combination of bets that are meant to hedge against losses. They also usually involve raising and lowering the size of your bets based on what’s happened on previous rolls and previous bets.
Often, they try to capitalize on hot and cold streaks.
Here’s the problem:
Some of those negative numbers are bigger than others, but they’re all negative.
And if you double or triple those bets because of something that happened on a previous bet, you still have a negative number.
And yes, you will see winning and losing streaks at the craps table.
The problem is that you have no way to predict when these winning and losing streaks will begin or end. They’re only available in hindsight.
The nature of gambling games – craps especially – is to be streaky.
But a streak can win or end at any time.
Here Are 10 Easy Steps to Beat Craps – Yeah, Right
I don’t have a problem with writers offering tips for how to beat craps. Heck, I offer tips for craps players in some of my posts, too. My problem is the overselling of these tips.
But heck, even that’s not too bad.
What’s really bad are people who take your money in exchange for some kind of unbeatable craps system. These craps systems are NOT unbeatable. In fact, in the long run, they can’t win.
You can’t defeat the math at the craps table by combining various bets at the table. There are NO craps bets with a positive expectation. The closest you can get is a bet called the odds bet which has no house edge at all.
But just because that bet is a break-even bet doesn’t mean it can help you get an edge at the other bets. In fact, you’re not able to place an odds bet unless you’ve placed a pass bet first, which has a house edge.
But there’s one possible exception to this…
Taking the Odds Bet on Someone Else’s Bet
I read a book by Frank Scoblete where he suggested becoming the “odds man.” I haven’t tried this in a casino, so I don’t know if it’s a viable strategy or not. I do know that it won’t get you an edge over the casino.
Here’s how it works:
You find a craps player who’s betting the pass line or the don’t pass line – but who isn’t taking or placing odds.
You ask that player if you can make odds bets on his bets.
If the casino allows this, and if the other player allows this, you can place or take odds without having to make the negative expectation bet that precedes the odds bet.
But this still doesn’t give you an edge.
The odds bet is, in the long run, a break-even proposition.
There’s a big difference between breaking even and making a profit. Sure, in the short run, you might see a quick profit, but over enough time, this strategy is just a break-even strategy.
A break-even strategy is far better than a losing strategy. I suppose if you take advantage of some comp drinks, it might even be considered marginally profitable.
Why Does the House Have a Mathematical Edge in Craps?
The mathematical edge in craps resembles the mathematical edge for every other casino game. It’s just a function of offering bets that pay off at less than the odds of winning.
The easiest example to understand is the even money bet.
Most people realize that if you place an even money bet and have a 50% probability of winning that bet, you’ll break even in the long run. By definition, a 50% probability of winning means you’ll win as often as you lose.
And since even money means you’re betting the same amount you’ll win, you’ll eventually see results close to a net loss or win of $0, regardless of the size of your bets.
But you don’t have a 50% probability of winning the even money bets in craps. The probability of winning an even money bet in craps is always slightly less than 50%.
In this case, the probability of winning the pass line bet is 49.3%, which is close to 50%, but it still gives the casino an edge. The casino will win this bet 50.7% of the time.
In the long run, you can’t win with those odds.
And that’s arguable the best bet at the table. (The probability of winning the don’t pass bet is higher by 5/100 of a percent, but that’s such a small number that it’s not especially interesting.
What if I Hedge My Bets?
Hedging your bets doesn’t work. The idea is that you bet on one outcome, but you also place a bet on another outcome that will compensate for when your initial bet loses.
This sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t work in the long run for one simple reason:
Your original bet AND your hedge both have a house edge.
In other words, you’re just adding one negative expectation bet with another hoping to get a positive expectation.
But that’s not how negative numbers work.
Add any set of negative numbers together, and you’ll get a negative sum.
Okay, But What if You Could Control the Outcome of the Die Rolls?
The biggest potential I see for beating craps is learning how to exert some control over the outcome of the die rolls. The idea is that by holding the dice in a specific position (“setting the dice”), and then by throwing the dice without a lot of force (“a controlled throw”), you can reduce the probability of losing by enough to shift the already low house edge in favor of the bettor.
Is this possible?
Frank Scoblete thinks so, but he suggests a lot of hare-brained strategies, so I don’t lend him much credence.
But I’ve also seen Michael Shackleford say that he’s seen some pretty impressive demonstrations, and I have a lot of respect for him.
Do I think it’s practical to become a controlled dice shooter?
Let’s talk about what that would involve in the next section.
What Would It Take to Become a Controlled Shooter?
I’ve seen being a controlled shooter called different things. Scoblete calls such shooters “rhythmic rollers.” I’ve also seen them called “dice setters.”
The verbs used to describe this approach varies, too. I’ve seen it called “controlled shooting” or “dice setting” more often than anything else.
The idea is to learn how to roll the dice well enough that you can reduce the odds of rolling a 7 by a significant enough margin that you flip the odds from favoring the house to where they favor the bettor. (This assumes that you’re betting the pass line, of course.)
The first thing you would need to do to learn how to set dice is to find an instructional video, a book, or a coach. Those aren’t hard to find, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of money on such a thing.
The next thing you’ll need is somewhere to practice. This includes having a realistic craps table with similar dimensions to what you’d find in an actual casino. It also includes having room for that craps table.
Then you need to practice what you’ve learned from the video, book, or coach on that table.
Craps Strategy To Win Big Ten
Finally, you’ll need to track your results. This is where the rubber hits the road. To be statistically sure of how well you’re affecting the odds, you’ll need at least 1000 trials.
And the more trials you record, the more accurate your accounting of your skill at dice throwing will be.
One more thing…
I suspect that dice control might be like other feats of athleticism or skill. Some people just might not have a knack for it. It’s possible that some people just might be able to learn how to do it, even if it is possible, and even if they do practice.
95% of poker players lose money in the long run. This means that only 5% get an edge.
My guess is that a similar percentage of dice shooters have the knack for controlling the dice. It might even be a smaller number than that.
Conclusion
Craps is a great game, and I love it. And you can win a fortune playing craps in almost no time at all.
But the idea that you win at craps consistently or “almost every time you play” is ludicrous.
If the casinos thought you had a way to beat craps, they’d back you off the game – just like they do with card counters.
When’s the last time you saw the casino tell a craps player he’s too skilled?
Yeah, me neither.