• Even the best of the bad bets on the craps table are inferior to the 1.41% or 1.36% you can get from the pass, don’t pass, come, and don’t come bets. And trust me on this: You can have PLENTY of fun sticking with the basic bets at the craps table. Betting Systems Where You Raise and Lower the Size of Your Bets Are Bad Strategies.
• Standard casino craps tables (i.e., not the oddly shaped or much smaller specialty tables) are typically 8, 10, or 12 feet long. Most casinos use the long 12-foot tables to accommodate the maximum number of players. Each end of a 12-foot table can hold up to eight players; therefore, the casino can have as many as 16 people playing at a time.
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1. What Is The Size Of A Casino Craps Table
2. What Is The Length Of A Craps Tables

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I’m writing a series of blog posts about casino games and the good and bad strategies for playing those games.

Craps is one of my favorite casino games, so I’ve been looking forward to writing this one.

And the beautiful thing about craps is that it’s a game of pure chance. The best strategy is just to choose the bets with the lowest edge for the house and have fun.

But I’ll have some things to say about some of the strategies and systems that other writers promote, too.

They’re mostly bad craps strategies.

Here’s the Only Craps Strategy You Need

When you’re dealing with an entirely random game – like craps – the only strategy that matters is choosing the bets with the lowest house edge and having fun.

I’ll have something to say about shooters and whether they have control over the outcomes later in this post, but for now, let’s just agree that games like craps are purely chance.

In other games that are entirely random, like slot machines, you don’t even really need to decide which bet to place. It’s chosen for you before you sit down.

When playing craps for real money, you have a handful of good bets you can make, but most of the bets on the table are bad. Just skip the bad bets, and you’re all set.

The Bests Bets at the Craps Table

The best bets at the craps table are the pass line bet and the don’t pass bet.

The come and don’t come bets are also great wagers.

I always advise casino gamblers to try to limit their gambling to games where the house edge is lower than 2% — preferably 1.5% or lower.

The house edge for the pass and come bets is the same, 1.41%, which means they qualify.

The house edge for the don’t pass and don’t come bets is even lower, 1.36%, but the 0.05% isn’t worth worrying about. Most people prefer to root for the shooter to succeed.

The other bet to think about at the craps table is the odds bet. This is a bet you can only place after making one of the 4 bets I already mentioned and when the shooter has set a point.

This is one of the only bets in the casino that has no house edge. It’s a break-even bet, but it can be expensive.

It can also drive the effective house edge on the money you have in action down to almost nothing.

Here’s how that works.

How the Odds Bet Changes the House Edge for the Better

If you’re betting on the pass line and the shooter sets a point, you can expect to lose $1.41 for every $100 you bet. That’s on average and in the long run.

If you’re playing at a casino that only allows you to place an odds bet at 1X the size of your pass line bet, you can put another $100 into action.

Your expected loss remains $1.41, though, which effectively cuts the house edge in half, from 1.41% to 0.71%.

If you’re able to bet 2X your original bet on the odds bet, you can lower that even further to 0.36%. (You have $300 in action, but your expected loss is still only $1.41.)

The more you’re able to bet on the odds bet, the lower the house edge for all the money you have in action becomes.

It’s clear why betting on the pass line and taking the most odds that you can is an effective strategy. With the odds bet, you can get the house edge in craps lower than 0.5% at least some of the time at the table, making it an even better game than blackjack.

And what’s more, you don’t have to memorize basic strategy to get the low house edge at craps.

You just need a big enough casino bankroll to make the right bets, and you need enough sense to avoid the bad bets at the table – of which there are many.

Any Strategy that Involves Placing ANY Other Bets at the Craps Table Is a BAD Craps Strategy

There’s a reason gambling experts measure bets according to their house edge. That’s because it’s the single best indicator of how good or bad a bet is.

The house edge is a statistical estimate of how much money you’ll lose as a percentage of your original bet over the long run.

If the house edge is 1.41%, the casino expects to win an average of $1.41 every time you bet $100.

If the house edge is 16.66%, the casino expects to win an average of $16.66 every time you bet $100.

Which bet looks like the better bet for the casino?

And which one looks like the better bet for the gambler?

It shouldn’t be hard to make the distinction.

Even the best of the bad bets on the craps table are inferior to the 1.41% or 1.36% you can get from the pass, don’t pass, come, and don’t come bets.

And trust me on this:

You can have PLENTY of fun sticking with the basic bets at the craps table.

Betting Systems Where You Raise and Lower the Size of Your Bets Are Bad Strategies

The classic example of this kind of betting system is the Martingale System, where you double the size of your bets after each loss. When you do this repeatedly, you eventually win back the money you’ve lost along with a profit of one unit.

The problem with a system like the Martingale is that you’ll eventually run into a big enough losing streak that it will wipe out all those small profits and then some.

Most people underestimate how quickly a bet’s size gets when doubling after every loss.

They also overestimate how likely they are to avoid long losing streaks.

If you double a $5 bet once, that’s $10.

But if you run into a losing streak of 8 bets in a row, you’re looking at having to bet $640 to make up for your losses.

Also, every roll of the dice is an independent event. The odds don’t change based on how many times you’ve won or lost in a row.

You might think the probability of losing that 8^th bet is lower than the likelihood of losing the first one, but the truth is that the dice have no memory. They have the same 6 sides, no matter how many times you’ve lost in a row.

Each bet in craps is an independent event, and any betting system will assume that the odds are changing based on how many times in a row you’ve won or lost.

Money Management Strategies Don’t Hurt Anything, but They Won’t Improve Your Odds of Winning, Either

Money management strategies involve having strict gambling discipline about how much of your bankroll you’re willing to risk before quitting the game. They also require you to stop when you’ve won an arbitrary amount of money.

Money management techniques are often used in conjunction with betting systems.

Here’s an example of a money management strategy in craps:

You decide your bankroll for the session is $250, and you’re playing for $5 per roll of the dice.

Your stop-loss limit is $100, so, if your bankroll drops to $150, you must quit the craps session and go do something else.

Your win goal is $250, so once your bankroll gets up to $500, you must quit the game and go do something else.

This kind of strategy might increase your chances of walking away from the game a winner.

But that’s only because a lot of gamblers will just keep playing until they’ve lost their entire stake. They just don’t generally have a lot of sense about that sort of thing.

The Jury’s Out on Dice Setting or Dice Control

I’ve seen multiple reputable gambling writers express interest and some belief that some craps shooters can influence the probability of specific outcomes. I’m skeptical – in the extreme – but I’ll give it an appropriate amount of credence.

The idea is that you hold the dice a specific way – “setting” the dice – then throw with a minimum amount of force – just enough to hit the back wall and eliminate most of the rolling action.

A controlled shooting expert doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, they’re trying to be like someone who’s playing darts. They improve the probability enough to change the negative expectation on a bet to a positive expectation.

You can buy books and videos explaining how to get an edge at craps this way, but I can’t imagine the amount of practice and record-keeping required to have any confidence in your ability to change the odds.

Imagine if you spent 1000 hours trying to learn how to control the dice and coming up short. Maybe you just don’t have the knack for it.

That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

I’d rather learn to count cards in blackjack.

What Is The Size Of A Casino Craps Table

Conclusion

Those are the best and the worst of the strategies I know of for playing craps in the casino. I know plenty of people who would disagree with every recommendation I’ve made, but the math behind the game doesn’t lie.

The best strategy is to stick with the bets with the lowest house edge and have as much fun as you can.

The most obvious piece of information a savvy craps player needs to know is where everything sits on the craps table and which bets can be placed where. Craps tables are fantastically well-labeled, with each betting zone colorfully and prominently divided and labeled. A few table layouts add designated spaces for some of the more unique proposition bets, but all craps tables contain the same basic design.

What Is The Length Of A Craps Tables

Attributed to John H. Winn, the dice maker who took craps from the steamboats on the Mississippi into popular casino play in the 1800′s, this table layout was originally called the Philadelphia layout. Winn is responsible for introducing the Don’t Pass and Don’t Come bets, allowing a player to bet against the shooter as well as for the shooter on a particular dice roll.

Physical Layout of the Table

Players stand facing the craps table along the sides and front of the rounded-corner, rectangular table. The front, or bottom, of the table is the edge from where you can read all the words and numbers properly. Most of the craps table crew including the dealers and boxman sit at the top of the table and read upside down. A standard size casino craps table will comfortably hold up to twenty standing players around it.

The felt and base of the table sits down several inches from the rail along the edge. Below this rail are places for drinks and ashtrays, to keep any food, beverages, and cigarette ashes off the playing surface. The table is large enough that bets are placed at their marked spots on the table for all the active players. Dice are rolled onto the table as well, hence the recess allows for keeping the dice on the table most often.

When you look at the table layout, you first notice that there is a central zone and two, symmetrical left and right halves to the table. This helps maximize the number of players placing bets in the most commonly used zones. You also notice that every area is labeled with its area and bet name as well as payout odds for some particular bets. Not everyone of the almost forty possible bets is “visibly listed” on the table, but the vast majority and the most commonly used are.

From Outside In: Bottom Left and Right Zones

The ring on the outermost loop of the table layout is the pass line betting area. Working on mirror-image 90º angles, the pass line curves down both the left and right sides, along to the lower left and right corners. Pass line bets are made on the come out roll only. One of the most frequently used bets, the pass line asserts that the shooter will roll a natural (7 or 11) or a point (four, five, six, eight, nine or ten) before rolling craps (2,3 or 12).

Just inside the pass line loop is the Don’t Pass line loop, with the Big 6 and Big 8 bets at the lower junction corners of the don’t pass line area. Don’t pass bets are those betting wrong, against the shooter on the come out roll, asserting that the shooter will roll craps before the natural or point. Big 6 and Big 8 bets are proposition bets that cumulative state that the shooter will hit a six or eight before he sevens out.

Pass line and don’t pass line bets have the lowest house edge of the visible bets and are some of the best bets for players to make. Big 6 and 8 have very high house edges and are such a poor bet for players that Atlantic City casinos actually removed this bet from the craps table. Players are wiser to use Place bets on six and eight.

Middle Left and Right Zones

The next section adjoining a smaller surface area within the don’t pass loop is the field box. Playing the field means placing single roll bets on one or more of the field numbers. A field bet indicates that the shooter will show, on their immediate next roll, either a two, three, four, nine, ten, eleven or twelve. If one of those numbers appears, the field bet wins. Field bets on two and twelve pay double the bet; the rest of the field box numbers pay even money.

Bottom Central Section

The center of the table holds the spaces for the proposition bets. This is the non-mirrored zone on the table and houses a box divided into several different proposition bets. These are all one roll bets, asserting the outcome of the next immediate dice roll.

At the top of the prop bets box is the “any 7″ bet, which will pay a win on the next roll being a seven. At the bottom of the prop bets box is the “any craps” bet, calling for the next roll to be 2, 3 or 12.

Just below the any seven section is the box for hardways bets, which actually can hold over several rolls rather than just one. Hardways bets call for a matched pairs dice combination on each even number four through ten. Hardways bets are hard four (two 2′s), hard six (two 3′s), hard eight (two 4′s) and hard ten (two 5′s). To win a hardways bet, these pairs must appear before seven or an an easyway combination of the same number. A few additional unique hardways bets can also be placed in this area such as a buffalo bet or hoping hardway (two 1′s), but these are not listed on the table.

Below this section is the horn bet box. Horn bets are multi-part bets, which place money on the next roll being one of the least rolled dice combinations, a 2, 3, 11 or 12. Individual craps bets can be placed on any single one of these numbers as well. Horn high bets split two parts of the bet toward the 12 being rolled, and leave one part each for the 2, 3 and 11.

In between the proposition bets box and the outer loops, some tables include specifically labeled areas for C-E and E.T. bets, which are proposition multi-part bets on craps or eleven (C-E) and eleven or twelve (E.T.) being the next rolls showing numbers. Even if these sections are not labeled on the table, players may place these bets also.

Upper Left and Right Table

At the back of the table, or the upper left and right corners are another series of boxes. Just above the field box is the come box. Immediately above the come box is a row of boxes, from the outside in that are the don’t come box and the ten, nine, eight, six, five and four place bet boxes.

Come bets parallel pass bets but may be made anytime after the point is established on or after the come out roll. Come bets are right bettor, pro-shooter bets that state the shooter will hit the point or seven before craps. Don’t come bets parallel don’t pass bets. Don’t come bets are the wrong bettor side stating that the shooter will hit craps before the point or seven. Come and don’t come bets, like pass and don’t pass bets have the lowest house edges, closest to true odds.

Place bets are made on one or more of the individual numbers at the top of the table, stating that the shooter will roll one of these before sevening out. Place bets have the second best house edge for players, behind pass/come, don’t pass/don’t come bets.

There are numerous other non-visible bets, including one of the best for players: free odds bets. Free odds bets are made after and in addition to a standing pass/come, don’t pass/don’t come bet, stating that the original bet will win. Free odds bets have almost zero house edge. Other non-visible bets include aces, midnight and other single roll proposition bets.

Once a player sees the craps table layout, he knows where to bet. The visually rich table layout keeps the bets clearly before shooter and players around the exciting craps game.