Craps the Right Way

14 December 2023

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: I am a lover of the game of craps…

ABBY: Me too!

CINDY: The game has power in it. I think part of that power is the fact that players get to pick up those “bones” and roll them in their attempts to beat the house. Hands on experience of the best kind.

ABBY: Just in case you aren’t familiar with the term “bones,” it means the dice cubes. In the early times of craps – way, way back in time – dice were made from the bones of sheep and maybe even people who had been killed as enemies in war or such. Maybe they were thought to have some kind of mystical powers or such. Or maybe the gods spoke through them. I don’t know. I just know that the dice, the bones, go back to ancient times long before the Roman Empire.

CINDY: If you have never played craps why not give it a chance? The game has several excellent bets where the house has edges below two percent. In comparison to other casino games, the players are getting a pretty good deal by playing craps.

ABBY: It also has some of the very worst bets in the casino and these bets can cripple a player’s bankroll. Too many craps players just throw their money away on the bad bets.

CINDY: Let’s go through the bets at the game. I’ll start with two of the best bets. These are the pass line and the come bets. These two bets have house edges of 1.41 percent. There are another couple of bets called the don’t pass bet and the don’t come bets. Here you are rooting against the point number that the shooter has thrown or against any number that the don’t come bet lands on. The players who bet the latter two bets are few and far between because other players are thinking that such bettors are rooting for them to lose. The “don’t” bettors are also called “darksiders.” Betting this way isn’t fun. That’s just my opinion.

ABBY: You do have some other decent bets too. You can “place” the six and eight. Those two bets come in with a house edge of 1.52 percent. Just as an aside, bettors who want their numbers hit are called “rightsiders” and make up about 95 percent of all craps players.

CINDY: I’d keep the bets down to the ones we have mentioned. From this point on all the bets start to look bad or even worse. You can have bets with double-digit house edges too! That’s just awful.

ABBY: Just get a book about craps and scores of bets will be discussed. None are really worth mentioning here and now because they can hurt you if you decide to bet them over even a short period of time. Most craps players fall into betting them too.

CINDY: Yet, you hear those craps tables cheering and applauding every so often because if a shooter of the “bones” gets hot, meaning making numbers, players will be making money.

ABBY: I’d say learn how the game is played, bet the best bets, and shoot the dice. You’ll open yourself up to some really great playing fun.