Craps System
The following craps system will teach you exactly what the place numbers
bets are when it comes to craps. There is a high price for intolerance
in craps in the form of a higher house edge. To further develop the
impatient or ignorant player there can be two or three different bets
on the exact same thing, and they will all pay dissimilar odds. You
might think players would only bet on the option with the best odds
but you would be quite wrong, it is custom to see players throwing their
money away on the higher house edge versions of the same bet. For example
the place bet on 6, the buy bet on 6, and the big 6 all are betting
that a 6 will be rolled before a 7 but pay 7-6, 23-21, and 1-1 respectively,
for house edges of 1.52%, 4.76%, and 9.09%. Precise descriptions of
the various bets are below.
• Big 6: A bet that a 6 will be rolled previous to a 7. Pays even
money. house edge of 9.09%. Note that this is precisely the same as
a place bet on 6, only the place bet pays 7-6 and has a house edge of
only 1.52%. Only a fool or someone ignorant of the game would bet on
the Big 6.
• Big 8: The same as the Big 6 only that an 8 will be rolled before
a 7.
• Buy bets This is fundamentally the same as the place bet, only
with a dissimilar payoff. The player may "buy" any of the
points (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10), which means to bet that the number will
be rolled before a 7. When making a buy bet you must pay a 5% commission
and your bet will pay fair odds if it wins. Fair odds are 2-1 on the
4 and 10, 3-2 on the 5 and 9, and 6-5 on the 6 and 8. A buy bet should
be an increment of $20 so that the 5% commission can be an even dollar
amount. An additional way to look at it is that the buy bet pays 39-21
on the 4 and 10, 29-21 on the 5 and 9, and 23-21 on the 6 and 8. If
the bet is not divisible by $20 the commission will be rounded up or
down to the nearest dollar. The house edge on all buy bets is 4.76%.
The house edge on the 5, 6, 8, and 9 place bets are all lower than the
buy bet, thus the buy bet on these numbers should be avoided.
Note 1: If the commission is rounded down the player can cut down the
house edge by betting just under $40 for a commission of $1. A buy bet
of $39 on the 4 or 10 has a house edge of 2.5%. A buy bet of $38 on
the 5 or 9 has a house edge of 2.56%. A buy bet of $35 on the 6 or 8
has a house edge of 2.78% which is still not as good as the place bet.
Note 2: Some Las Vegas casinos, the Golden Nugget to name just one,
charge the commission on the buy bet on 4 and 10 only if it wins. This
lowers the house edge to 1.67%.
• Hard ways: There are four diverse hard way bets. For example
a hard 4 bet is betting that a pair of twos will be rolled before a
7 or any other way to roll a total of 4. This is called "the hard
way" because it is harder to roll two twos than a one and a three.
Equally you can bet on a hard 6,8, or 10, each of which is a bet that
the hard way of rolling the given number will occur before a 7 or any
"easy" way.
The casino pays 7-1 on a hard 4 or 10 with a house edge of 11.11%.
The casino pays 9-1 on a hard 6 or 8 with a house edge of 9.09%. |
