Craps for Beginners: The Best and Worst Bets on the Table

Craps looks like chaos, but it's two dice and some arithmetic. The best bets on the table carry a house edge under 1.5%, and one of them, the free odds bet, carries none at all. The worst sit in the middle of the layout and cost up to 16.67%. Knowing which is which is most of the game.

Dice math: the only table you need

Two six-sided dice give 6 × 6 = 36 equally likely combinations. Every craps edge comes from this table.

Seven is king. It's the most common total and decides most bets on the table.

How a round works: come-out and point

1. The come-out roll. A new round starts. The shooter rolls once.
2. Instant decisions. A 7 or 11 is a "natural": pass line wins. A 2, 3 or 12 is "craps": pass line loses.
3. The point. Any other total (4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10) becomes the point. The dealer marks it with a puck.
4. Rolling for the point. The shooter keeps rolling. Hitting the point again before a 7 means pass wins. A 7 first, called a seven-out, means pass loses and the dice pass to the next shooter.

Everything else on the table is a side bet on how those rolls land.

The pass line, derived

On the come-out roll, pass wins immediately with 8 of 36 combinations (six 7s, two 11s) and loses with 4 (one 2, two 3s, one 12). Otherwise a point is set, and the race is point versus 7.

Take point 6. It has 5 ways and 7 has 6, so P(6 before 7) = 5/11. Do the same for every point and add it all up:

You win 49.29% and lose 50.71%. The difference, 7/495, is the 1.41% house edge, a textbook case of expected value at work.

Don't pass is the mirror image, with one twist: a come-out 12 is a push instead of a win. Without that tie, don't pass would favor the player. With it, the edge is 1.36%. Come and don't come work the same way, just started on any roll after the point is set.

Free odds: the zero-edge bet

Once a point is set, you can add an odds bet behind your pass line bet. It pays exactly the true odds of the point being made, so the house has no edge on it.

Example: $10 on pass, point is 6, you add $20 in odds. If the 6 comes first, you win $10 on pass plus $24 on odds. If a 7 comes first, you lose $30.

Place bets and the field

A place bet picks a number to roll before a 7. The house pays a little less than true odds.

• Place 6 or 8 pays 7:6. Per $6: (5/11 × $7) − (6/11 × $6) = −$1/11, an edge of 1.52%.
• Place 5 or 9 pays 7:5, a 4.00% edge.
• Place 4 or 10 pays 9:5, a 6.67% edge.

The field is a one-roll bet that wins on 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 or 12. That's 16 of 36 combinations, which sounds like a lot, until you notice it loses on 5, 6, 7 and 8, the 20 most common.

If the 12 pays 3:1 instead, the sum improves by one, to −1/36 ≈ −2.78%.

Every common bet, ranked

The Big 6 is a lesson in reading payouts. It wins on exactly the same rolls as a place bet on 6, but pays even money instead of 7:6. EV = 5/11 − 6/11 = −1/11, or 9.09%, six times the cost of the place bet.

The center of the table

Proposition bets in the middle of the layout are mostly one-roll wagers with big-sounding payouts. Check them against the dice table:

• Any seven pays 4:1 on a 6/36 chance. Per $1: 6 × $4 − 30 × $1 = −$6 over 36 rolls, or −16.67%.
• Yo (11) at 15:1 on a 2/36 chance: 2 × $15 − 34 = −$4, or −11.11%.
• Aces or twelve at 30:1 on a 1/36 chance: $30 − $35 = −$5, or −13.89%.

What craps costs per hour

A busy table sees about 100 rolls an hour. A pass line bet takes about 3.4 rolls to resolve on average (1 come-out roll plus, when a point is set, the rolls to settle it), so that's roughly 30 pass decisions an hour.

• $10 on the pass line: 30 × $10 × 1.41% ≈ $4.20 an hour.
• $10 on any seven, every roll: 100 × $10 × 16.67% ≈ $167 an hour.

Same table, same dice, roughly 40 times the cost. Compare other bets with the house edge calculator, and see house edge explained for how these percentages turn into dollars.

The bottom line

Craps rewards knowing the menu. Pass, don't pass, come and don't come cost about 1.4%, odds behind them cost nothing, and place 6 and 8 are close behind. Most proposition bets cost ten times as much or more.

The house still has an edge on every bet except the odds, and you can't bet the odds alone. Play smart, and craps is one of the cheaper games in the building; play the center, and it's one of the most expensive.