Craps Strategies.

Trying to teach some simple principles for strategic play in Craps is tantamount to teaching calculus in the space of an hour; 99% of the time, it will be hard, hard, hard!!!

Here are the basic rules for employing the best strategies in Craps; make the best choices that you can, choose to augment your Chances of winning and play intelligently. In Craps the best Chance that you have of winning is to bet on the "Pass" and "Don't Pass", "Come" and "Don't Come", because they give the house the least advantage. All other bets are reserved for those players of little patience, who are imprudent and risk taking......but these bets often fail.

The Best Bets:
A lot of people say that betting on the Pass gives the house an advantage of 1.41%, and that a No Pass gives less than 1.40%. The latter are the Line Bets and are at the heart of winning strategies in Craps, because with the other bets you will lose more money. For example:

1. The loose field= 5.6%
2. Big 6/Big 8= 9.1%
3. Horn =12.5%
4. Craps 3/Craps 12= 13.9%
5. Any 7= 16.7%

Can you see what we are trying to say? Craps is connected to the dice, and the dice have a connection to the percentage of the house advantage, depending on the numbers rolled. The intelligent player will let as little money escape them as possible and this means wagering on the Pass/Don't Pass bets of around 1.4% house advantage. This type of strategy is why the ameliorators are the subject of this article.

It is also worth pointing out, here, that you should always bear in mind that the Come/Don't Come bets follow the same logic and have the same Chances. The only difference is the timing of the bet.

Improve your bets:
So you have established that the intelligent bets are the Pass/Don't Pass and the Come/Don't Come. Then, how do you improve your Chances of winning with these bets in Craps? By taking advantage of you Chances of winning according to the bet; when you buy into a Pass bet, you are focusing your Chances of winning, when you buy into a Don't Pass bet you are spreading your Chances of winning.

The latter are placed in addition to your original bet after the Come Out Roll and the reason why they improve your Chances of winning, without giving an advantage to the house. The only opposition you have here are the dice themselves.

The word is, that in Las Vegas the big gambling houses take the approach that it is not their job to inform players of all the different betting options, therefore the different probabilities are left hidden from the punter; research is your only way of finding out.

Also, it is highly likely that the players that you encounter online are also keeping quite about the different odds of winning because it goes in their favour for you not to be aware.

This is an easy strategy to employ, and it ensures that the house advantage is cut by as much as possible.

Placing the right bet:
A bet that improves your Chances begins by adding to your Pass/Don't Pass bet from the start once you have passed the Come-Out. The bets are placed next to your original Pass/Don't Pass line. In Las Vegas it is typical for the house to restrict these bets in order to reduce the Chances, which means to say that you can equal your Come-out bet with an equal amount. And as said earlier, this is equivalent to half the commission of the house.

The good news is that online casinos let you double your initial bet if you want to. This is called Double Chances and it reduces their commission even more. This will make it about 40% of the initial bet. Thus the 1.4% that is their advantage at the beginning is reduced to 0.6%. It is an intelligent way of playing. Generally speaking, and assuming that you can pull it off, buy the Chances at the every opportunity, because the higher the bet, the more you take away the commission of the house from your initial bet.

Buying Chances:
When you buy Chances, you complete a Pass bet and win. You obtain your basic wins from points. Thus, assuming that a Pass bet is worth $5:

Buying double Chances $10
Points           Odds         Wins
4 or 10          2:1           $30
5 or 9            3:2           $25
6 or 8            6:5           $22

This only concerns the cases where your Chances do not bring in the total. In other words, on a bet of $5, where the come out roll is 10, your total win will be $40: your $4 from the start, reimbursed plus a win of $5, plus your Chances ($10) and this results in $20.

Posing Chances:
Reciprocally, when you pose a Chances you complete a Don't Pass and win what follows (assuming a Don't Pass bet of $5):

Posing double Chances ($10)
Points         Odds            Win
4 or 10        2:1              $15 ($5)
5 or 9          3:2              $16 ($6)
6 or 8          6:5              $18 ($8)

So, by following the example above, the buying Chances section, an initial wager of $5 and a come-out roll of 10 will bring you a winning total of $25: the reimbursement of your $5, plus a win of $5, the reimbursement of $0 and a Chance bet of $5.

Now, here is another quick strategy. Most casinos pay only in small denominations, such as $1. in other words you lose a fraction of a dollar that you would otherwise have received all of. Because of the posing of your Chances, 3:2 and 6:5 in particular, you will lose a fraction if you bet given the above because most of the multiples of 10 are not devisable by three or 6. on the 5/9 points you lose $0.67 and on the 6/8 points you lose $0.33. you are probably asking if we are going to give you any good news. But we are trying to advise you not to lose too much to the house. Let us now observe another scenario:

Now, let us imagine that you placed a Don't bet of $6 instead of $5. in this case your Double Chances bet can be $12. And as you will be able to note by observing the following table, you will not lose any fraction of this bet. You keep all the profit that is coming your way, because all the multiples of 12 are divisible by 3 (as in the Chances with 3-2) and by 6 (as in the Chances with 6-5).

Posing Double Chances ($12)
Points      Odds  Win
4 or 10     2:1    $18 ($6)
5 or 9       3:2    $20 ($8)
6 or 8       6:5    $22 ($10)

Thus the message that we are trying to convey is that if you are going to pose Chances, make it so that your initial Don't Pass is a multiple of 6, and bet all on a Double Chance with a multiple of 12.

In fact, the same logic applies to buying Chances. Make sure that your Pass bets are multiples of $5 so that your double Chances are multiples of $10. this is optimal because your divisions will be in the order of 1, 2 and 5.

Testing the strategy:
Most players prefer to play straightforwardly and buy the Chances because the wins that can be made seem fairly significant, but after this you will find yourself playing against Chances that are not significant. If you are hardcore when you are playing to win you would do well to take into account the Don't play, by taking the lowest commission of the house and rectifying it. The gurus of Craps would say that playing straightforwardly and buying Chances is that which is the most popular strategy, but also the most risky.

Playing Don't and posing Chances is less popular within the crowd of Craps players, but this cuts the commission of the house to a minimum and is quite common to those players with a big bank roll and who have the patience to rectify the profits progressively.

We tested this strategy on a number of online casinos, and what we discovered is that the method of playing Don't and posing Chances is the preferable method of play. When it comes to the Double Chances, this is very alleviating to the spirit, if only in terms of the reduction of the commission to the house.

If you look at the frequency of the points you will see that there are three ways of rolling a 4 or a 10; four ways of rolling a 5 or a 9; five ways of rolling a 6 or an 8 and finally sic ways of rolling a 7. in other words, when you bet on the Don'ts and you place Double Chances, 6 and 8 are the numbers that re most likely to come out and you will lose your bet. In short it is a game of nerves to play this way, and this is not really enjoyable. Thus, what we did was place a double Chance on a 4 and 10 and leave the rest to roll.

What we did then, is to bet rather conservatively because the points 4 and 10 have the least chance of coming out and in this way the Don't bets are more likely to win you a double. This will create a rather slow paced game, but you are more likely to win. This might not be to everyone's preference, but when you see your pile of chips growing, even if it is slow, it is still very, very enjoyable.....it is a style of play that suits a patient temperament.

Conclusion:
In brief: Pass/Don't Pass (or Come/Don't Come) only, in conjunction with playing the highest Chances the you are able to get with that particular casino, and you will reduce the commission of the house. Modify the technique to suit your tastes, like the example above, where we started betting on the Don'ts and the 4 or 10 points. And finally, make sure that you always use the right denominations, in order to not give any fraction of your money to the house. Level Them!