Craps

Bryce Wilson played craps. I never knew him but I’m sure he did. Its his kind of game—earthy, exciting, real. Not like Blackjack, which most lawyers play instead. Blackjack is boring; the players are bored, the dealers are bored. Card-counters and system players have sucked the life out of it. And since you play it sitting, people stay until they’ve lost far too much money but are too drunk to want to get up. Craps is fun, it offers the lowest house edge in the casino, and if you get too drunk you fall down and can’t play any more.

So why do people play Blackjack? Because they know how. But not many people on this side of the criminal justice system play craps outside a casino any more, so they don’t know how. And the craps table and layout (the "layout" is the colored felt top of a gaming table, with the lines, boxes, numbers, and the casino’s logo painted on it) look big, complicated, and intimidating.

Don’t be fooled. Craps is easier than Blackjack. The layout is complex because it offers many different types of bets, but most of them are sucker bets you can forget. There are only two bets to remember: “pass” and “come.” That makes things very simple.

The shooter rolls the dice (the “come-out” roll). If he rolls 7 or 11, you win. If he rolls 2, 3, or 12, you lose. If he rolls any other number—4,5,6,8,9, or 10—the object of the game becomes to roll that number (called the ‘point”) again before rolling a 7; if he does, you win and if he doesn’t, you lose. The shooter rolls as many times as necessary until he either repeats the point (“passes’) or rolls 7 (“craps out”).

To play the game, buy some chips from the boxman (who sits at the middle of the table) and make a bet. To start out, find a $1-minimum table and bet $5 (why $5? I'll explain later). To make a pass bet, put the chips directly in front of you on the layout, in the area (a long, curved strip) marked ‘PASS” or “PASS LINE.” You don’t have to do anything else (unless you’re the shooter) except wait to win or lose. If you win, you’re paid even money—i.e., you receive twice as much as you bet.

What do you do while you’re standing there waiting for the shooter to pass or crap out? You make the “come” bet, by putting your chips ($5 again) on the layout in the space marked “COME.” Come works exactly like pass except that you’re betting on the next roll rather than on the come-out roll; in other words, 7 or 11 win, 2, 3,or 12 lose, anything else establishes a point. The come and pass bets are entirely independent; what happens to one does not affect the other.

When you are comfortable with pass and come betting you should graduate to the most important part of casino craps. After the come-out roll, when a point has been established and the shooter is going to roll again to try to repeat it, you can, in effect, increase the amount of your pass bet. This is the “odds” bet. To make it, put the additional chips you are betting on the layout beside your original bet but just outside the pass line rater than inside it (this region may be marked “Free Odds.” “Single Odds,’ “Double Odds” or something similar).

How much should you bet? At a casino that offers ‘single odds” you can normally bet no more than the amount of your pass bet (a few places have “double odds,” which lets you bid up to twice the amount of the pass bet). But the odds bet pays off not at even money—i.e., one dollar for every dollar bet—but at the true odds. The odds against rolling either 6 or 8, for example, are 6 to 5; the odds bet on those numbers will pay $6 for every $5 bet. But the house won’t make fractional payoffs. If your odds bet is $1, for example, it won’t pay $1.20 because it doesn’t have twenty-cent chips; instead, it will simply pay even money. To avoid that, bet an amount that lets the house pay you the true odds. That’s why you bet $5.00 in the first place. To make it simple: for a $5 pass bet, if the point is 4, 6, 8, or 10 make the odds bet $5; if the point is 5 or 9 bet $6 (that’s more than the original bet—technically a violation of the “single odds” rule—but most casinos will let you do it).

You can also add odds to your come bets. The rules are the same; the only difference is how the bet is physically made. When a point is established for your come bet, the dealer moves those chips to the square on the layout marked with the number of the point; so, if the come point is 4 your chips will be sitting in the box marked “4." To make the odds bet, give the bet to the dealer (by laying it on the table in front of him, not by handing it to him) and say “odds” or something similar to give him the idea. He will put those chips next to the come bet.

Try craps and you’ll find that my explanation is more complicated than the game is. Before too long you will feel like an old hand and can go onto the mysteries of “don’t pass” and “don’t come.” (Don't ever make any other kind of bet, no matter how much the stickman tries to talk you to it.) Bryce Wilson — wherever he is — will be proud of you.