Betting management at craps

19 February 2019

By Frank Scoblete

Money management at random games is just a technique to save money, or, as in craps, it is simply making the best bets to keep the house edge as low as possible. How much money should you have in reserve to play a session of craps? Make it 10 times your average bet. So if you are betting $24, have $240 to play with.

Now to the heart and soul of money management: proper betting!

We have to make a distinction between ploppy players, savvy players and dice controllers in terms of betting and expectation. Competent dice controllers who bet properly will have a positive expectation over the casinos. In short, they should win over time. Is learning to control the dice easy? No. Most players who attempt it will not succeed either because they can’t learn how to do it or they refuse to bet properly.

If you never learn how to control the dice, you can still be a tough player for the casino to deal with if you follow the betting advice I am going to give you. Will you win if you follow this advice? Your mathematical expectation is to lose whether you are a savvy player or a ploppy player, especially if you play over long periods of time in your craps career. But the key for the savvy player is that you will lose much less money (much, MUCH less money) and have just as much fun, and you’ll also know that you have given the casino the ride of its life, as the casino has given you just such a ride.

You are a gambler if you play a negative-expectation game, no doubt about that. No betting system can turn that around and anyone who says there are such winning betting systems is either a liar or a ploppy, probably both.

But you can be a smart gambler or a ploppy gambler – the choice is yours. If you get caught up in the hysteria of craps and make all sorts of suicidal bets whose edges are through the roof, don’t be shocked when you find you lost the ranch because you bet the farm.

A good bet is a much more exciting prospect than a bad bet because you have a better chance to be ahead making such bets – or at least be less behind!

Ploppy bettors, while they may have a stunning night now and again, or stunning moments that imprint themselves on other players’ minds (“This guy is so hot; he hit three twelves in a row!”), will have their mushy heads handed to them big time in the long haul. Short spurts of magnificent luck will never overcome the bloody drain of time on the ploppy’s bankroll.

So don’t be a ploppy. That’s my first piece of advice.

Visit Frank’s website at www.frankscoblete.com. (The above is excerpted from the book Casino Craps: Shoot to Win! by Frank Scoblete)