A New Shooter Has the Dice

Call it Craps, or Dice. It’s really “Bank Craps” as played in a casino. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, it can look intimidating. A complicated appearing table where the play takes place, combined with players yelling, “dealers” moving chips (actually called “checks” in a casino Craps game), and the most intimidating component: fast play. Here’s another fact that the casual Craps player may not know: The best bets in the casino are found on the Craps table. These bets are the easiest to make, to understand, and to follow as the action unfolds. In a Craps game, you don’t have to roll the dice to be part of the betting action. You can bet on each roll or a series of rolls that another player is making. And you can bet with her or you can bet with the house (I’ll talk about that option a little later). It’s one of the few games in which you can walk up to a table and make an immediate bet. . . . The game turns on each roll of the dice. Once you understand the probabilities of each possible number occurring, you can wager accordingly. The casino has some true “sucker bets” (usually single roll bets), some better odds bets, and then a few bets that can be made on the table that pay out “true odds.” These “true odds” bets are not noted on the table layout. I’m going to tell you what those bets are, and how to make them. If you’re an experienced craps player, you already know the when and how of those bets. But I will give you a formula for managing your money and your time, so that you can maximize your opportunity to “cash in” when your luck is running your way. . . . Let’s get this out of the way. There are some bets you should never make at a craps table. It’s not so much that the payout doesn’t match the true odds (as you’ve seen, there are MANY bets in a casino that fall into this category!), it’s that you’re at a craps table, and you CAN make a number of better bets than these. The table layout offers some particularly bad bets. Do not be tempted to do any of the following. . . These bets are not the bets you will make if you want your money to last long enough for good luck to visit your end of the Craps table. You will stick to a very specific type of bet combination, and this combination isn’t spelled out on the table like those high house edge bets.