You CAN Whittle the House Edge on the Buy Bet

A reader has taught me a very valuable lesson: I don't know as much as I think I do.

Over the past few months, I've been writing a few articles about craps. It has been very easy, basic stuff just to give you the nerve to walk up to a craps table. I managed to discuss the pass line bet with taking odds and also the don't pass bet with laying odds. Then, gradually, I added to the discussion, and we talked about come bets with odds, place bets, hardways, horn bets, field bets, any 7 and any craps.

If you've played craps for any length of time, you probably already know that there are a lot more bets that I didn't discuss: put, buy, place to lose, Big 6 and Big 8, lay, three-way craps, horn high, world, single horn, hop and hopping hardway. Yes, it's mind boggling, and I wanted to keep it simple.

But I should have told you about one of those.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on the math involved in determining the house's edge on hardway bets. The next day I received an e-mail from a reader saying that he had figured the house edge on another bet, buying a 4 or 10, was only .952 percent, which is better than the 1.41 percent house edge on pass line bet. He outlined his calculations and asked if I agreed.

My first thought was that he was doing something wrong. The casino's edge on a buy bet is 4.76 percent, so how could he get it down to less than one percent? Well, as it turns out, I was wrong and the reader was right. In certain cases.

But let me first explain the buy bet. The buy bet is a little like a place bet, but with a buy bet, you are paid true odds. For example, if you make a $20 place bet on the 4 or 10, you'll be paid 9-to-5 or $36 if you win. But if you were to buy the 4 or 10 for $20, you would be paid 2-to-1 or $40. However, you have to pay the house a 5 percent commission, or $1 for a $20 bet. Your overall win is $39, but it's still $3 more than the $36 you'd win for placing the 4.

Even with the commission, or vigorish as it's called, buying a 4 or 10 at 4.76 percent house edge is better than placing a bet on the 4 or 10, which works out to 6.67 percent.

But there are scenarios where you can reduce the edge on the buy bet. For example, the 5 percent vig is usually charged on all buy bets, win or lose. But if you can find a casino that charges a commission only on winning that bet, then you've got the house edge down to 1.67 percent. That's a pretty hefty reduction.

Also, Frank Scoblete has written about pushing the casino into letting you buy a 4 or 10 all the way to $35 for that same $1 commission. That decreases the edge from 4.76 to 2.8 percent. Yeah, right. Like little ol' timid me is going to bully a big casino into letting me make a $35 bet for $1.

Call it southern hospitality, but most casinos here in Mississippi charge commission only on winning a buy, and most will also let you push them into accepting a $35 buy bet. That combo is what gets the casino's edge down to .95 percent.

I used to play craps nearly every day for a year. And I used to see other players buy the 4, but because I already knew it all, I just never paid much attention to the details of the transaction. Serves me right. More on buy bets next week. Until then, dice be nice.