Bad, Bad Boys (and a few girls)

5 May 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Craps has so many bets I haven’t even memorized them yet. I actually don’t need to because who want to make bad bets? I don’t. I play too much to play too bad. I like my money.

ABBY: Using the word yet tells us something. There are so many BAD bets that they aren’t worth memorizing. I mean we have been playing craps for about 30 years and we know which bets to make and which bets to run away from and run away from really fast. You can’t beat craps making those bad bets. Maybe a session or two but in any extended run? Forget it.

CINDY: These are the bets that craps players learn – or, unfortunately, only some craps players learn – can whittle away at their bankrolls.

ABBY: Whittle? You mean hammer away at their bankrolls. You see so many players getting wiped out so quickly in many sessions. You’d think they’d learn.

CINDY: Most craps players like to make multiple bets. Craps is therefore an occasion to choose unwisely. To choose many unwise bets. House edges soar in the game. I mean they soar.

ABBY: You see the worst possible bets being made constantly by veteran craps players. I find that strange indeed. If you have played the game over the years aren’t regular defeats a clue that maybe you aren’t betting properly.

CINDY: Here is an incomplete list of the worst bets at craps, with house edges ranging from 5.56 percent to 25 percent (no particular order): Hardways 4, 10, 6, or 8, The Big 6 or the Big 8, The Fire Bet, the 3 or 11, Any 7 or Big Red, the C & E (meaning craps and eleven), Field Bet, Hop Bets, Hardways Hop bets, Horn bets, World or Whirl bets.

ABBY: I think many players do not realize that a house edge is easily translated into money lost over time. The higher the house edge the more money is lost.

CINDY: Take the Any Seven or Big Red wager. The house edge is 16.67 percent. What does that mean in terms of money? For every $100 you wager on Big Red, you can expect to lose $16.67. Now the loss will not be every $100 you bet but over time the average will come to that. How can you possibly beat the house on this bet over any real period of time?

ABBY: And that Fire Bet that appears on some tables is a staggering 20-25 percent! Figure losing one-fifth to one-fourth of all the money you bet on that bet. Horrible. But you see player gleefully throwing out their money on that bet. Why? Makes no sense to me. It will be the player burned by fire.

CINDY: Is there a way to get a better game than betting these bets? I think there is. Say you like to bet all the Hardways (meaning the Hard 4, 10, 6 and 8) at $10 each. You are risking $40 on bets hovering around 10 percent. Why not take that $40 and subtract four dollars and place the 6 or 8 for $36 and only have to overcome a 1.52 percent edge? Now that would make sense to me.

ABBY: Me too. You can have just as much fun playing craps by playing in a smart way as just flinging your money into the wind.

CINDY: True!