Craps Odds
Your winning odds depend on how you play the game. Are you placing the bets with the lowest house edge? Are you backing up pass and come bets with free odds? How much are you betting? All these have an impact on how much you can win and whether or not you'll be broke by the end of the night. If you want to better your craps odds, there are a number of things you can do.
First of all, you must not make any 'sucker' bets. These refer to the bets that are the most tempting to make because of the high payout rate, but they're also the ones with the highest house edge.
 There are only 36 combinations of numbers that can be made with a pair of dice; the total of the two dice can be anywhere between 2 and 12 inclusive. Have a look at the probability chart to see what the odds are for a given number. Analyzing the chart above, you'll be quick to see that 7 is the number that is the most likely to come up on a roll, hence the name 'luck seven'. Well, in craps it can be lucky or unlucky. Either way, focusing on the seven is important as most of the game revolves around it. A great many bets are paid if the number you're betting on comes up before a seven, and we know a seven is always the most likely number to be rolled. Craps odds are determined for many bets on the probability of rolling a number before a seven, or the probability of rolling a seven before a particular number. So if a seven is always more likely to come up, why doesn't everybody play against the dice, so that they win on a seven? Lets have a look:
| You already know that the 7 is the most likely number to come up (6 in 36), whereas for example the four only comes up 3 in 36. So, the chances of the next roll being a 7 are more than two times better than those of a 4 coming up. The problem is, if you are betting against the dice (so betting on a seven before a 4) the casino will charge you a percentage of your win, so the advantage is not reflected in the casinos idea of craps odds. |
Using the dice chart can clear up a lot of things for you, including why the bets that I consider to be crappy really are bad, especially the hardway bets. When betting on a hard four, or hard anything (meaning you want a 'hard four' or one made of two twos instead of a three and a one, to be rolled before a soft four, which is a three and a one), the chances of winning that bet are 1 in 36, since there is only one way to make up one of those number with both faces showing the same number. And, on top of it all, the payoff (8:1 or 10:1 depending on which hardway bet it is) doesn't even match these low craps odds.
To sum it all up: For the best craps odds, only place the pass and come bets with odds. Beyond that, placing the six and eight are the next best thing from an odds perspective.
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