When you visit Leelanau Sands Casino you don’t want to miss the craps table. Since it’s one of the most exciting tables games on our casino floor, you’ll often hear cheering around the craps table. Not sure how to play? Let us help!
Craps is a fairly simple game but can get complicated with the sheer number of bets you can make on the table and odds you need to keep track of.
Head out to explore any casino floor and you’ll invariably come across a packed craps table. The scene here is usually straight out of a Hollywood depiction of the gambling world. Instead of the silent, robotic play you’ll find on the slot machines or blackjack tables, a craps game is almost always loud, boisterous, and tons of fun. How to play craps and how to win is explained by casino gambling expert, Steve Bourie, in this first part of a three-part series. Topics covered include: how. Craps rolls are one of the most interesting events that happen on the Casino floor. This Craps strategy guide for beginners helps you understand the ins and outs of the pass or come bet.
Allow our experts to guide you through the basic rules of craps and teach you how to play…
What You Need to Know About Craps
Craps is one of the only games in the casino where a player is in charge of their own hand. Meaning, instead of you being dealt cards, you get to select and roll your own dice. The goal in craps is to predict how the dice will land.
The table is played in rounds with two phases in a round; the come out and point. Each player’s turn to roll the dice moves clock-wise around the table at the end of each round. There can be up to 20 players at a craps table and everyone will get a chance to throw the dice. If you don’t’ want to throw the dice, you can still play, but you bet on the shooter, or the person throwing the dice.
How Do You Play Craps at the Casino?
When it’s your turn to roll, you’ll be presented with five dice on the table, pick up two of them. You can only handle and throw these dice with one hand. Before you throw you must place a bet on the pass line or don’t pass line (more on this later).
First Phase in Craps: Come out
This is the first roll of the game and the black puck in the middle will say “Off.” A dice roll of 2, 3 or 12 (rolling these numbers is also known as craps) ends the roll and the players lose their bets on the Pass Line, but you get to roll again! A come out roll of 7 or 11 results in a win for bets on the pass line (this is the only time in craps where 7 is good!). The shooter will continue to make come out rolls until they roll a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10. When they land on one of those numbers, it becomes the point. When this happens, the dealer moves the ON button to the point number on the table and this signifies the beginning of the second round.
- Now that you know how to play casino craps, it is time to figure out the location that you want to play your craps. It is always best to find a casino that is close to you because then you can play the games as often as you want. When you are playing online, you will be able to play the game whenever you want, however, you may also find that.
- This video briefly covers how to approach the game and the most basic bet of the pass line. Enjoy and subscribe! Leave comments and questions below.
To recap: Pass line bets on the come out roll: 7 or 11 wins; 2, 3, and 12 lose.
Second Phase in Craps: Point
In the second round, it’s the shooter’s goal to roll the point number they established in the first round.
If the shooter rolls a point number, it’s a win for bets on the pass line and you get to roll again. If the shooter rolls a seven before their point number they “seven out,” and have lost; bets on the pass line lose and the round ends.
To clarify, the first roll in a round is the come out roll and is the beginning of a new game. A come out roll can only happen after the previous shooter makes their point or rolls a seven. When this happens, the dice move to the left of the shooter (clock-wise).
Craps Table Layout
A craps table is divided into two sides, both a mirror image of each other, to allow bettors on each side of the table to play without reaching all over the table.
Each area on the table signifies a different bet.
How to Place Basic Craps Table Bets
There are dozens of bet variations you can place on a craps table, and we won’t cover all of them here.
1) Pass and Don’t Pass Bets
Two of the best and safest bets in craps are bets on the Pass and Don’t Pass lines. When you bet on the Pass line, you’re betting that the shooter will win. The opposite is true for the Don’t Pass line.
To place these bets, simply place your chips in these areas on the table before the come out roll. Once the point is established, you cannot remove your pass line bet. Be sure to ask the dealer if you have any questions before placing your bet!
2) Odds Bets
Once the point is established, you can place odds bets or “bet behind the line.” The odds bet is a great bet because the casino has no advantage. To make this bet, simply place your chips behind your bet in the pass or don’t pass line. These bets can be removed or changed at any time during the round.
3) Numbers Bets
During the points roll, you can place bets on certain numbers that are on the table. If they come up during the points roll, you win! Different numbers have different odds. When you want to place a bet on a number, place your chips in front of you and tell the dealer where you want your bet placed.
4) Field Bets
If you want to play the field, place your chips in this area on the table. If the dice lands on any of the numbers in the field (2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 12) you win! These are one-roll bets, meaning they removed after the dice is rolled.
Tips for Playing Craps
- Never say the number seven at the craps table. It’s bad luck!
- When rolling the dice, roll them hard enough to hit the back wall of the table.
- When on the other end of the table, keep your hands and arms clear to avoid contact with the dice.
- Don’t intentionally hit the chips at the end of the table with the dice
- Don’t make late bets! Know how much and when you want to place a bet.
Play Craps in Leelanau County
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Jacks or better casino. For decades, craps was the most popular table game in any casino. Its popularity was usurped by blackjack in the 1960s with the rise of both basic strategy and card counting, but craps remains one of the big 3 table games in any casino:
- Blackjack
- Craps
- Roulette
But in Oklahoma, casinos aren’t allowed to use dice to power games of chance. The laws restrict table games to the use of playing cards to generate random results. Someone somewhere figured out how to create a craps game that uses cards instead of dice and maintains the same bets and probability.
The playing cards determine the results, which are then displayed using animated dice on a television monitor above the craps table. It would be easy to think that a random number generator computer program is creating those results, like it would with an online casino, but if you pay attention, you can watch the dealers actually drawing and manipulating the cards.
They use a scanner to read the cards, and that scanner converts those cards into the corresponding dice totals.
The purpose of this post is to explain how to play craps with playing cards in Oklahoma.
The Basics of Craps in General
Live Casino Craps Videos
Whether you’re playing street craps or casino craps, the basics of the game are the same. You start with a “shooter,” someone who rolls the dice. The game is played in “rounds,” and each round begins with a roll of the dice called the “come-out roll.”
Most people bet “with the shooter” or “with the dice.” This is an even-money bet called the “pass line bet.” It wins if the dice succeed, and it loses if the dice lose. Winning and losing are defined as follows:
On the come-out roll, if the shooter rolls a 7 or an 11, the dice immediately succeed, and the pass line bet pays off at even money.
But if the shooter rolls a 2, 3, or 12, the dice immediately fail, and the pass line bet loses. A new shooter starts a new round after this.
If the shooter rolls any other possible total, a “point” is “set”. The possible points are:
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 8
- 9
- 10
The shooter’s goal on subsequent rolls is to roll the point number again before rolling a 7. If he achieves this goal, the pass line bet pays off at even money. If he rolls a 7 first, he fails, and the pass line bet loses.
That’s the basic game in a nutshell. I know it seems more complicated than that when you’re watching, but that’s because there are so many possible bets you can make. Most of the bets at the craps table are awful for the player, though. You should just skip them.
One of the bets, though—the odds bet—is special. It deserves its own section:
The Odds Bet in Craps
The house has a mathematical advantage on every bet in the casino. The pass line in craps is no different. In fact, we know the exact mathematical edge the casino enjoys on this bet—it’s 1.41%.
When a point is set during a round of craps, though, another bet becomes available that has no house edge. This bet pays off at the same odds as of winning. It’s called the odds bet.
The odds bet is placed behind your original pass line bet. The amount is a multiple of your original bet. Casinos place a maximum amount on this bet as a multiple of your initial bet.
2X is as common a max as you’ll see, which means if you bet $5 on the pass line, you can make up to a $10 bet on the odds bet. If you placed a $10 pass line bet, you can bet $20 on the odds, and so on.
In casinos with higher maximum odds, you might be able to bet 10X or even 100X the size of your pass line bet. So if you bet $5 on pass at a 10X max table, you could bet $50 on the odds bet.
The payoff on this bet is based on the point that’s been set. And the payoff odds are the same as the odds of winning the bet.
- If the point is 4 or 10, the payoff is 2 to 1. The odds of winning are also 2 to 1.
- If the point is 5 or 9, the payoff is 3 to 2. The odds of winning are also 3 to 2.
- If the point is 6 or 8, the payoff is 6 to 5. The odds of winning are also 6 to 5.
Of course, the net effect of having a pass line bet and an odds bet in play at the same time is to reduce your overall house edge on the 2 bets. Here’s what the house edge looks like on the combined bet at various multiples:
- 2X Odds – 0.85%
- 3X Odds – 0.47%
- 5X Odds – 0.33%
- 10X Odds – 0.18%
- 100X Odds – 0.02%
Keep in mind, this is the house edge for the 2 bets combined. No matter how much you bet on the odds, you can never reduce the house edge to 0 or less in craps. The initial pass line bet always gives the casino an edge.
Also keep in mind that at least 1/3 of the time, the pass line bet will be resolved on the come out roll anyway. You’ll be able to take an odds bet most (2/3) of the time. But that’s not the same as being able to take the odds bet every time.
But How Do You Play a Dice Game with Playing Cards?
If I were designing a card game based version of craps, I’d just use 2 tiny decks of cards with an ace through 6 in each deck. You’d draw one card from each stack. This would give you the same potential combinations that you have in a regular craps game. There are 36 possible combinations, even though there are only 11 possible totals:
- 2 – One possible combination: 1, 1
- 3 – 2 possible combinations: 1, 2 or 2, 1
- 4 – 3 possible combinations: 1, 3 or 2, 2, or 3, 1
- 5 – 4 possible combinations: 1, 4 or 2, 3 or 3, 2 or 4, 1
- 6 – 5 possible combinations: 1, 5 or 2, 4 or 3,3 or 4, 2 or 5, 1
- 7 – 6 possible combinations: 1, 6 or 2, 5 or 3, 4 or 4, 3 or 5, 2 or 6, 1
- 8 – 5 possible combinations: 2, 6, or 3, 5 or 4, 4 or 5, 3 or 6, 2
- 9 – 4 possible combinations: 3, 6 or 4, 5 or 5, 4, or 6, 3
- 10 – 3 possible combinations: 4, 6 or 5, 5 or 6, 4
- 11 – 2 possible combinations: 5, 6 or 6, 5
- 12 – One possible combination: 6, 6
The problem with using my solution of 2 decks of 6 cards is that such a deck would be hard to shuffle. You’d also need to keep the 2 tiny decks separate from each other. That wouldn’t be impossible, but both of these challenges would require more finesse than you might be expected to need.
The casino’s solution is to use a deck of cards with 36 cards in it. Each of those cards corresponds to a specific combination of dice. This duplicates the probability you’d have with a standard craps game.
The cards used for this purpose are the ace through 9 of each of the 4 suits. The table has a card reader with a camera in it. How to play odds in craps. This device recognizes the card and compares it to see which combination that card corresponds to. The boxman is the person at the craps table who handles the cards and the card reader.
The cards are dealt using a shuffling machine. Once the cards are shuffled, the boxman spreads them out across the table and uses the middle card as the determining card. Once it’s been scanned, the television screen above the table displays the animation and the result. The stickman also announces the result at the table.
All the other rules for the game are the same as for a standard craps game. I’ll cover the rest of the basics below, but if you already know how to play craps with dice, you can just skip that section and go play.
The Only Other Craps Bets Worth Making
The only craps bets I’ve covered until this point were the pass line bet and the odds bet.
But you have another good bet you can make before the come out roll. It’s called the “don’t pass” bet.
This is a bet that the shooter will fail.
It wins even money on the come out roll if the shooter fails, although a roll of 12 on the come out roll is treated as a tie (or a “push.”) A push is a situation where the bettor gets his initial bet back, but he doesn’t get any winnings.
The house edge for this bet is 1.36%.
You can lay odds on the don’t pass bet, too, but the payouts are reversed. Instead of getting 2 to 1 for the odds bet on a 4 or 10, you get 1 to 2. Instead of getting 3 to 2 for the odds bet on a 5 or 9, you get 2 to 3. And instead of getting 6 to 5 for a 6 or 8, you get 5 to 6.
Combining the don’t pass bet with the odds bet has the same effect on your house edge as combining the pass line bet with the odds bet. It reduces it dramatically.
If you bet on the pass line, you’re called a “right bettor,” but if you bet “don’t pass,” you’re called a “wrong bettor.” Most craps players prefer to bet with the shooter and the dice. Most of the other bettors at the table are doing so, and this gives you all the opportunity to root for the same result.
Also, most gamblers prefer to place bets where their payoffs are greater than the amount they bet. When laying odds, your payoff is always less than the amount you’re risking. That’s just plain uncomfortable for a lot of gamblers.
The difference of 0.05% in house edge is so negligible that it’s probably worth it to be a right bettor if you enjoy the camaraderie provided by that situation.
Those aren’t the only bets worth making, though.
You can also place bets called “come” and “don’t come” after a point has been established. These are bets that treat a roll later in the round as a new come out roll. The “come” bet is the same concept as the “pass” bet. It just comes at a different point in the round. The “don’t come” bet is the same concept as the “don’t pass” bet, too.
And you can place or lay odds with either of those bets just like you would with a pass line or don’t pass bet. The house edge for these bets are the same, too.
Those are the best bets at the craps table:
- Pass
- Don’t pass
- Come
- Don’t come
- Odds
Most of the other bets at the craps table have a much higher house edge. There’s not much point in making any of those bets, because the odds favor the house so much.
I’ll look at a random set of those bets below so you can see just how much they benefit the house.
Sucker Bets at the Craps Table
To understand why so many of the bets at the craps table are such a bad deal for the player, you need to understand a little about how the odds of winning such a bet are determined. You also need to understand that the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds are what create the edge for the house.
“Odds” in probability are just a way of expressing how likely something is to happen. It compares the number of ways something can’t happen with the number of ways something can happen. For example, if you say the odds of winning a bet are 2 to 1, that means there are 2 ways to lose for every one way to win.
Let’s look at a real example from the craps table, though. All the bets being promoted by the stickman are proposition bets. The house edge on these bets is terrible.
One of the bets he’ll try to convince you to place is a bet on hard 8. (It could be a bet on a hard 6 or 10, either. They’re all terrible bets.)
This is a bet that the shooter will roll a total of 8 using the combination of 4, 4 (a pair) before rolling a 7. It’s a multi-roll bet. It doesn’t pay off until one of those 2 outcomes happens, regardless of how many rolls it takes for it to happen.
The odds of rolling a hard 8 before rolling a 7 are 10 to 1.
The bet pays off at 9 to 1.
To calculate the house edge, you just assume a perfect set of 11 bets. You win this bet once, and you lose it 10 times. You also assume that you’re betting $100 every time.
You’ll win $900 on the one roll where you win. And you’ll lose $1000 on the other 10 bets. That’s a net loss of $100 on 11 spins.
The average amount you’ve lost per spin is $100/11 spins or $9.09/spin.
Since we were dealing with an amount of $100, it’s easy to convert that $9.09 to a percentage. It’s obviously 9.09%.
How To Play Craps Casino
Compare that to a house edge of 1.36%. The difference is huge.
It means that every time you bet $100 on that bet, you’ll lose an average of $9.09. Compared to losing an average or $1.41, the superiority of one bet over the other is clear.
This huge difference between the payout odds and the odds of winning is what makes all these other bets at the craps table such a great deal for the casino. It’s also what makes them such a bad deal for the player.
If you stick with the 5 bets I suggested in the previous section, and place or lay the maximum amount on the odds bet, you’ll have more fun and more winning streaks at the craps table than you can possibly imagine.
It’s still a negative expectation game for the player, so eventually, you’ll be a net loser. It will just take longer to get there, and you’ll be likelier to have the occasional winning streak.
Conclusion
Learning how to play craps with playing cards in Oklahoma casinos isn’t any harder than learning to play craps with dice in a Las Vegas casino. In fact, if you already know how to play craps with dice, you just need to understand how the results are generated using playing cards.
If you’re new to craps, you should still consider learning how to play. The game is too good to not play, even if the learning curve is slightly steeper because of the difference between using cards and using dice to generate results.
If you stick with the 5 bets I mentioned earlier in this post, you’ll be facing some of the best odds in the casino.
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