Craps Trainer

This craps trainer shows you a bet, a hard 8 or a place 5 or a yo, and asks what it pays, what the house edge is or whether it belongs in your game at all. It’s free and uses no money. After every answer it shows the number of ways the dice can win or lose, which is the whole secret of the game.

The first time you walk up to a craps table it looks like a tax form printed on felt. Most of it, it turns out, is just counting how many ways two dice can land, and once you’ve got that in your fingers the flashy bets in the middle stop looking quite so tempting.

Craps trainer: what you practise

You’ll get payouts, house edges or a simple “is this bet any good?” question, either mixed together or one topic at a time from the menu. Every bet shows up next to a roll that would win it, with the puck on if a point’s been set. Click your answer or use the number keys. Get it right and another bet appears a second later. Get it wrong and it hangs around till you’ve read why.

For the good-or-bad question we’ve split bets into cheap ones under 2%, middling ones up to 5%, and the rest. If you take one thing away from this page, let it be knowing which bets live in that cheap group.

Craps practice starts with 36 rolls

Two dice give 36 combinations, and the 7 has the most of them at six. Everything else is measured against that. Take the 6. Five rolls make it, six rolls make a 7, so a fair price for placing the 6 would be 6 to 5. You get 7 to 6 instead. That little shortfall is the casino’s 1.52%. Hard 6 is worse. There’s exactly one way to hit it (3 and 3) and ten ways to lose, yet they pay 9 to 1, not 10 to 1. That missing unit is a 9.09% edge.

The one bet with no edge at all is the odds bet you can add behind the pass line once a point is set. It pays exactly what the dice say it should, and that’s why you’ll see regulars at the table put the minimum on the pass line and pile their money into odds behind it.

The bets worth avoiding

Any seven pays 4 to 1 on a 5 to 1 shot and costs you 16.67% of every bet, the worst price on the table. The one-roll bets in the middle, yo, any craps, aces and twelve, all sit between 11% and 14%. They’re fun because they settle instantly, and that speed is exactly what makes them expensive over a night.

To see these numbers play out with a bankroll, try the CasinoCalcs craps simulator, and the craps house edge chart lists every bet side by side. Dealers can drill place bets and odds in the dealer payout trainer, and the rest of our trainers are on the casino game trainers page.

Knowing the maths doesn’t remove the house edge. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.