Online Craps versus Casino Craps

17 November 2019

By John Grochowski

QUESTION: I’ve played Craps at casinos for many years. Recently I’ve seen online craps games being offered by a few of the casinos in Jersey. My question is are there differences in house edge etc between online vs live craps? And are there any advantages with either?

ANSWER: The odds in online craps are exactly the same as in live craps, with the same house edge on every bet. The house edge is still 1.41 percent on pass or come, 1.52 percent on place bets on 6 or 8, a horrendous 16.67 percent on any 7, an so on through the list of possibilities.

The big difference is that instead of being rolled by a live shooter, the dice are rolled by a random number generator.

There are hot streaks and cold streaks that grow out of normal probability, but you'll never run into a shooter who gets into a rhythm where it seems like he just can't miss. For those who buy into dice control, no such thing exists when the shooter is an RNG.

For most players, that won’t make a big difference in the game. Given random results, the odds are the same and wins and losses come in the same proportions online as in a live game.


QUESTION: I have visited Las Vegas but not played in any other American states. Most of my gambling has been in Europe, where I reside, or on cruise ships.

My question is about slot machines. I understand that in Nevada, if you raise your bet by moving to a higher denomination machine, the payback percentage is higher. That is, the return is higher if I play a dollar machine instead of a penny machine.

Is that true in locations other than Nevada? If I’m playing in France or Germany or Italy, is the payback higher when you bet more? It seems to me as if it’s the opposite, that you get more back on the lower bet machines.

ANSWER: In the United States, it holds true in all jurisdictions with licensed casinos that average payback percentages rise as you increase the coin denomination of the machine. That’s not restricted to Nevada. Higher denomination games return more in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi and every other state where information is available.

That information comes from state gaming board reports, meaning it’s readily available for commercial casinos but usually not for tribal casinos.

That doesn't mean every high-denomination game yields a higher return than every lower denomination game, but we see higher average paybacks at higher denominations in the monthly statistical reports from jurisdictions throughout the U.S.

However, we don't have access to statistical reports from every nation or from cruise ships. I can't say for certain that casinos in Germany, Italy and other European nations, or slots on ships, follow same patterns as American casinos.

Anecdotally, readers have reported for decades that returns are lower on cruise ships than in licensed American casinos and that there's a captive audience factor at work. Unfortunately, the statistical evidence to back that up isn’t readily available.

My best guess is that regardless of whether paybacks are higher or lower than in the United States, slots in other jurisdictions follow the pattern of higher payback at higher denominations. The separation occurs because casinos want to provide an incentive for players to make bigger bets. But with no statistical evidence to back that up, I can’t say for certain that overseas casinos follow the same payback patterns as those in the U.S.