Playing Craps Online
Craps is a game of chance; sometimes you win sometimes you lose. But casinos are not prepared to rely on chance when it comes to business; they will try to secure a certain edge against the players. The edge is built-in into the game.
Beating the House
Unfortunately, there is no strategy you can deploy to get around this. What you can do, however, is to reduce the house edge to a minimum and get as much enjoyment as possible out of your craps session.
Among all the bets that are available in Craps, some offer worse odds than others, some much worse. On the other hand, some bets give you odds that make you more or less even money against the house. If you can find these bets and stick to them in the midst of chaotic Craps action, your money will last longer, and you may very well leave the casino a winner.
Bad bets in Craps
House edge for some of the worst Craps bets:
| - The Field | 5.6% |
| - Big 6/Big 8 | 9.1% |
| - Horn | 12.5% |
| - Craps 2/Craps 12 | 13.9% |
| - Any 7 | 16.7% |
Good bets in Craps
House edge for the best bets in Craps:
| - Pass | 1.41% |
| - Don't pass | 1.36% |
| - Come | 1.41% |
| - Don't come | 1.36% |
Note that these are all so-called simple bets.
Combining good bets with better bets
The house edge of the simple Craps bets is already very decent for a casino game. But don't run off to the table just yet, you can actually do even better than that. There is a bet that you won't even find indicated on the table, the Odds Bet. No staff member will ever ask if you'd like to make an Odds Bet; it is simply too good! An Odds Bet is a supplemental bet that you place in addition to your simple bet. Once a point has been established, you can place odds bets on any of the simple bets:
| - Pass |
| - Don't pass |
| - Come |
| - Don't come |
Usually Odds Bets are limited to two or three times your original bet. For example, if you have made a $10 Pass bet, you could bet another $20 as a 2X Odds Bet. This reduces the house edge to 0.6%. However, once in a while online casinos run promotions that allow much higher Odds Bets, which then bring the house edge even closer to zero, as you can see in this table:
| Pass bet | 1.41% |
| with 1X odds bet | 0.85% |
| with 2X odds bet | 0.61% |
| with 3X odds bet | 0.47% |
| with 5X odds bet | 0.33% |
| with 10X odds bet | 0.18% |
So a strategy that will give you the reputation of an expert Craps player and reduce the house edge to an absolute minimum is to play simple Pass or Don't Pass bets, and always follow up with as high pot bets as possible.
Playing online craps is also a good way to learn the game and improve you gaming skills. A craps session at a live casino can be quite an exhilarating experience, if you come prepared. To play craps online is a good and exciting way to prepare yourself.