Craps
Craps is played with two dice, and two dice can land 36 ways. A round starts with the come-out roll: a 7 or 11 wins for the pass line, a 2, 3 or 12 loses, and any other total becomes the point. The dice then roll until that point comes again, which wins, or a 7 arrives first, which loses.
Around that simple round sits the busiest layout in the casino, with dozens of bets on the same two dice. They are not equally good. The cheapest costs nothing at all and the most expensive gives up 20.76% of every stake, so in craps the choice of bet decides far more than any system or superstition.
The guides below cover the rules, what each bet really costs and what strategy can and cannot do for you. Each price is worked out exactly from the dice, and it is labelled per bet or per roll wherever those two differ.
Craps, Explained
The round from come-out to decision, the first bets worth learning, the layout and the table's vocabulary.
Payout, true odds and house edge for each wager on the felt, measured two ways.
The cheapest ways to play, how much odds to take, and what the popular systems really cost.
No losing on the come-out, and what that rule costs on the pass line.
Craps tables to play in your browser with no money and no signup.
Craps Bets at a Glance
Ranges, cheapest group first. Each bet on its own row, with its payout, its cost per roll and the less common prices, is on craps odds and house edge.
Before You Play
Check three rules in the help screen. The cap on odds, the field's price for a 12 and the prize table of any fire bet each move the figures in the table above, and games differ on all three.
Let the odds carry the money. At any total stake, the share sitting in odds is the share that costs nothing. How to split a budget between the flat bet and the odds is worked through in craps strategy.
Leave the centre alone. Every one-roll proposition there takes 11.11% or more of each stake.
Live and Electronic Craps
Live craps is streamed from a studio with real dice and a real dealer. Because it is a broadcast, it has no free version, which is why none appears among the games here. The rules and the price of every bet are the same as on any other table, so everything on these pages applies to it.
Every free game on this site is a table whose dice are rolled by a random number generator. Some are drawn as a classic felt layout and some borrow the look of a studio; either way, each roll is independent and each total comes up exactly as often as the dice allow.
Free vs Real Money Craps
Try the round risk-free on any of the free craps games.
Craps FAQs
The odds bet, which carries no house edge. It can only be made behind a line bet, so in practice the best play is pass or don't pass with as much odds as you can afford: at 3-4-5x the pair costs 0.37% of all money staked on the pass side and 0.27% on the don't side.
Of the standard bets, any 7. A 7 turns up on one roll in 6, yet the bet pays only 4:1, so the house keeps 16.67% of every stake; because it settles on the next throw, that is its per-roll price too. The fire bet takes a bigger share per bet, 20.76% on the usual 24 / 249 / 999 prizes, though a single fire bet covers a shooter's entire turn.
Because craps can be priced three ways, per bet made, per bet resolved and per roll, and each is right for a different question. Priced per bet the pass line gives up 1.41%; spread over the rolls it waits through, 0.42%. The craps odds page explains all three and gives the two main ones for every bet.
A cap on the odds that grows as the point gets easier to make: three times the flat bet behind a 4 or 10, four times behind a 5 or 9, five times behind a 6 or 8. It is set that way so a winning odds bet returns the same amount whatever the point; the craps odds page shows the arithmetic and how the don't side reads the same cap.
By a hair: 1.36% per bet against 1.41%. The real difference is in how the two sides play rather than what they cost, which the strategy guide compares.
6 of the 36 possible pairs of faces make 7, so it comes up 16.67% of the time, about one roll in 6. No total is more common.
It depends on what the 12 pays. At 3:1 the field costs 2.78% per bet; at 2:1, 5.56%. Because it is decided on every throw, its price per roll equals its price per bet, which makes it one of the costlier bets away from the centre.
No. A system decides when to bet and how much, but the price of each bet is fixed by the layout, so the most a system can do is make the same game cheaper or dearer. The craps strategy guide costs out the Iron Cross, the 3-Point Molly and the Martingale.
