The Odds of Playing Craps:

Craps is a game of chance. Although its rules may vary from casino to casino, the main principles always remains the same: every new roll is not correlated with the previous one. While in blackjack, for example, each new round reduces the deck and raises the probability of certain cards to appear, the outcome of Craps does not depend on anything, but the chance. Therefore, there can not be any winning strategy for Craps. The only way to decrease, but not eliminate, the house edge is to take advantage of the Free Odds bet, which is given to a player after he establishes a point on a line bet. Free Odds bet has even odds, while all line bets regardless of the house rules have negative expectations. This page provides an analysis of the odds of craps and helps you to understand the principles of the game.

Martingale:

The so called craps systems do not guarantee anything. The most reasonable of them is Martingale betting strategy, which tells to start from the minimum bet and double it in the case of loss. So, when the player finally wins he recovers the money of the previous bets and wins a sum equal to the minimum bet. Martingale is perfect in theory, but in real circumstances it does not work. First of all, doubling even a small bet many times may reach large sums, and any real life player will sooner or later run out of money and will not be able to recover his losses. Well, if he is really wealthy, he can keep winning small sums for quite long time, but here comes another imperfection. All casinos have a maximum bet limit, and, no matter how rich the player is, he can not double his bet if it exceeds the maximum limit. How long one can keep following the Martingale system depends on difference between the minimum and the maximum betting limits.

Martingale Example:

For example, if the minimum limit is 1 dollar and the maximum is 100 dollars, the player can afford to lose 7 times in a row, betting 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 dollars. If he wins any of the first 7 bets, he actually wins 1 dollar. If the player loses the 7th 64 dollars bet, he can not double anymore because of the 100 dollars limit. Even if he goes for this maximum limit and wins, he only wins 100 dollars, while 127 dollars have been lost in previous bets. If he loses this 8th time as well, his loss is already 227 dollars. If the player decides to stop at the 6th lost game and try to recover the loss starting Martingale system from the beginning, he will need to successfully use the system for 127 times. Although 7 losses in a row may seem a rare case, they happen. The probability of such sequence to appear can be calculated by raising odds against the player to power 7. If there was no house advantage, such sequence would occur approximately once in each 128 games, while to recover the loss 127 Martingale cycles of 1 to 6 games must be played.

Misconceptions:

There are more misconceptions that are believed to guarantee winnings. Many people think that if a certain number did not appear during many games, it has better chances to appear. As was earlier, craps games are not correlated. And the numbers always have the same probability to appear, no matter how many times they appeared or did not appear previously. Before the game starts, it would be correct to say that number 7 will most probably appear during 100 games, but if 99 games have already been played and number 7 did not appear, it has the same 1/18 probability to appear as in any other single game.

Dice Setting:

Another interesting method is called dice setting. There are people who claim that it is possible to roll the dice in a special manner, so they will fall on certain numbers. The process seems to be very difficult to perform, especially in casinos that will not allow any suspicious manipulations and require rolling the dice the way it will hit the back wall of the table and change its direction. Since dice setting can not be scientifically disproved, it can be possible, especially because when played correctly, craps already have very small house advantage, and with a very small help the game can become profitable for the player.

Free Odds Bet:

However, the only 100% rational way to increase chances playing craps is to take advantage of Free Odds bet. The larger the sum wagered on Free Odds in relation to other bets, the more it reduces the house advantage. To not let players totally eliminate the house edge, casinos apply limits for Free Odds. The most typical limit is 3-4-5, which means that Free Odds bet can be 3, 4 or 5 times larger than the line bet that led to it. Which multiplication is used depends on the number the player wants to bet on.

100X Odds Bets:

During promotional periods some casinos may offer 100x Odds Bets. This reduces the craps house edge almost to zero. The only casino in Las Vegas to offer it is Casino Royale, while MGM, Bellagio and most other casinos offer standard 3-4-5 set. The Stratosphere casino offers 10X and Golden Nugget offers the unusual 6-8-10 odds. The worst variant of 2X can be found in Riviera, Orleans and Gold Coast. Offering such odds is strongly criticized by experienced gamblers along with 6:5 blackjack payouts.