TABLE GAMES
Craps: two cheap bets, one free bet, and thirty expensive ones
The pass line costs 1.41% and don't pass costs 1.36%, and behind either of them the odds bet has no house edge at all. Everything else printed on the felt is priced between four and seventeen percent.
Assumes pass and don't pass with odds available behind. Change the ruleset and every figure on this page moves.
Every bet, with what it costs
| Bet | Pays | House edge | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Don't pass / don't come | even money | 1.36% | The cheapest line bet on the table |
| Pass line / come | even money | 1.41% | Five hundredths more, and everybody is on your side |
| Odds behind the line | true odds | 0% | The only bet in the building priced at zero |
| Place 6 or place 8 | 7 to 6 | 1.52% | The best of the place bets |
| Field | 1 to 1, 2 to 1 on 2 and 12 | 5.56% | Looks like it covers half the numbers |
| Any seven | 4 to 1 | 16.67% | The most expensive bet on a standard layout |
| Hardways | 7 to 1 or 9 to 1 | 9.1% | The bets the stickman calls out for a reason |
Cheapest and most expensive on the same table are 0% and 16.67%. Nothing about the room changes between those two rows; the only difference is which one you tapped.
What an hour costs
Stake, times rounds an hour, times the edge. That is the whole formula and pace is the term people forget: the same game dealt twice as fast costs twice as much. The full table across every game is in what an hour costs.
The come-out and the point
First roll of a sequence: seven or eleven wins the pass line, two three or twelve loses it, anything else becomes the point. After that the shooter is trying to roll the point again before a seven shows up, and the pass line is riding on it.
Don't pass is the mirror of that, minus a push on twelve, and the missing push is what makes it a fraction cheaper. It is also why nobody at a physical table likes a don't pass bettor, which matters not at all on a phone.
The odds bet
Once a point is established you can put an additional bet behind your line bet that pays true odds. Two to one on a four or ten, three to two on a five or nine, six to five on a six or eight. No house margin at all.
Because it is priced at zero, the odds bet dilutes the edge on everything you have out there. A pass line with 3x odds behind it costs about 0.47% overall instead of 1.41%. The table will not tell you this and the button is deliberately unglamorous.
What an hour costs
A hundred rolls an hour, C$10 on the line, works out at roughly fourteen dollars of expected cost. Add 3x odds and the total staking goes up while the expected cost goes down, which is a genuinely strange sentence and completely true.
Spend the same hour on hardways and any-seven and the bill is somewhere north of a hundred. Craps has the widest gap between best and worst available bet of any game in the lobby.
On a phone
- A craps layout is designed for a table two metres long. On a phone the proposition box in the middle is a thumbnail, and it is also where the expensive bets live, which is an accidental kindness.
- Use the bet-list panel rather than the felt. Most live builds have one and it names each bet in words instead of asking you to hit a diamond.
- The odds bet is often hidden behind a small plus button next to your line bet. It is the single best thing on the table and it is the smallest touch target on the screen.
- Live craps runs about a hundred rolls an hour and a solo RNG build runs three times that. The pace is the cost.
Where the tables are
40 of the operators on our board carry live tables, 5900 between them. More tables mostly means a shorter wait at your stake level rather than a better product.
Craps questions people actually type
What is the house edge in craps?
1.36% at pass and don't pass with odds available behind. That is C$1.36 for every C$100 staked, and the worst bet on the same felt costs 16.67%.