How Craps Works

How craps works is hard to guess from across the casino floor, where all you see is a scrum round a table and somebody yelling at a pair of dice. Underneath it’s one simple game with a lot of optional side bets bolted on. Get your head round two bets, the pass line and the odds, and you can join in without touching any of the rest. For numbers on the other stuff, the free CasinoCalcs craps calculator has every bet on the layout priced up.

How craps works: the come-out roll

Whoever has the dice is the shooter, and they chuck two of them down the table. A new round opens with the come-out roll, which is when most newcomers drop a chip on the pass line.

Seven or eleven on that roll and pass line bets get paid on the spot. Two, three or twelve, known as craps, and they’re taken away. Roll anything else (4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10) and the dealer drops a puck on that number, which is now the point.

The point

Once there’s a point, the shooter keeps rolling. If the point comes up again before a 7, pass line bets win even money. If a 7 arrives first, they lose, and the dice pass to the next shooter. That’s the whole core of the game.

Seven matters so much because it’s the most common total with two dice: six of the 36 combinations make it, one in six rolls on average. The craps odds chart shows every total.

Pass or don’t pass?

Don’t pass flips all that round. On the come-out it’s happy with a 2 or 3, unhappy with a 7 or 11, and shrugs at 12, which is a push. After a point’s set, it’s rooting for the 7. The house takes about 1.41% on pass and 1.36% on don’t pass, so there’s barely anything in it. Some regulars think betting the don’t is bad form, cheering for everyone else to lose, so pick whichever side you’re comfortable with.

The free odds bet

Once a point is set, you can back your pass line bet with an odds bet, and this is the best bet in the casino. What makes it special is that it pays what the dice are actually worth, so the casino makes nothing on it: two to one when the point is 4 or 10, three to two on 5 or 9, six to five on 6 or 8.

Picture a tenner on the pass line, and the shooter has set 6 as the point. Add £10 in odds, and if the 6 comes before a 7 you collect £10 on the line plus £12 on the odds. The more of your money sits in odds rather than on the line, the lower the edge you’re paying overall.

Bets to skip

The middle of the table is full of one-roll proposition bets with big payouts and bigger edges. Any seven pays 4 to 1 but should pay 5 to 1, which gives the house about 16.7%. Hardways and the horn bets aren’t much kinder. Place bets on 6 and 8 at 7 to 6 are a reasonable middle ground at around 1.5%. Our craps payout chart lists them all.

Roll a few thousand rounds in the craps simulator.