Craps Strategy
In craps you choose three things: which bets to make, how much to put on each, and how long to play. Nothing you choose touches the dice. Every roll is independent of the last, and every bet on the layout except the odds bet pays a little less than its true price. So a craps strategy cannot turn the game in your favour. What it can do is decide how much the game costs you, and that difference is large: the cheapest bets on the table are many times cheaper than the most expensive ones.
This page covers the choices that matter, then puts the popular named systems through the same arithmetic. The figures for every individual bet, measured both per bet and per roll, are on the craps odds page.
The Short List: The Cheapest Ways to Play
Cheapest first, ranked per bet; the two line-bet rows assume full 3-4-5x odds on every point. Why the per-roll column can tell a different story is explained on craps odds.
Pass or Don't Pass
The don't side is slightly cheaper: 1.36% per bet against 1.41% for pass, and 0.40% per roll against 0.42%. With full odds the gap widens a little, to 0.27% against 0.37% of all money staked at 3-4-5x.
The price of that saving is the shape of the bet. After the point is set, the don't side is the favourite, so laying odds means risking more to win less: on a point of 4 you lay 1:2. You win more often and lose bigger. Over a session the two sides cost almost the same; they feel very different.
At a physical table, betting against the shooter can draw looks. Online nobody is watching, so the choice is only about which pattern of wins and losses you prefer.
How Much Odds to Take, on Either Side
Full odds on every point; a don't-side row lays whatever it takes to win the stated multiple. Whatever the row, the average loss stays at 0.0141 of a flat bet a round on the pass side and 0.0136 on the don't, so each extra unit here buys swing, not cost.
Choosing the Flat Bet and the Odds Together
The table above suggests a simple rule. Decide first how much money you are comfortable having on the table in a round. Then make the flat bet small enough that the full odds fit inside that amount, rather than making a bigger flat bet and skipping the odds. Two players with the same total at risk can pay very different prices: the one with more of it in odds pays less.
It works the other way too. If taking full odds would push your total stake past what you meant to risk, taking less odds is the right choice, not a mistake. The odds bet is free, but it is not small, and a run of sevens against full odds empties a budget much faster than a flat bet alone.
Named Systems and What They Really Cost
No system changes the edge on any bet it uses. It only chooses which bets carry the money and how much of it, so its cost is the cost of those bets, weighted by what is on them.
Why the Iron Cross Feels Like It Works
The Iron Cross covers every total except 7. With the field covering seven totals and place bets on the 5, 6 and 8, it wins something on 83.33% of rolls. That winning streak is what sells it.
The wins are small and the loss is not. On a 5, 6 or 8 the whole spread gains 2 units after the field bet loses; on a field number it gains 5 units, and 10 on a 2. On a 7 it loses all 22 units at once. Averaged over all 36 outcomes, the spread gives up 1.77% of its stake every roll where the field pays 2:1 on 12, and 1.14% where it pays 3:1.
Compare that with a pass line bet, which costs 0.42% of its stake per roll. The Iron Cross keeps more money in action on every throw and charges a higher rate on it. It is a way of paying more to win more often.
Martingale on the Pass Line: The Rare Loss
A series starts at one unit and doubles after every pass line loss; a win ends it one unit up. Add the many one-unit wins to the occasional wipe-out and the result is the pass line's own 1.41% of every unit wagered, at every table maximum — the average series still ends at -0.1033 units at the lowest limit. A higher limit makes the failure rarer and bigger, never cheaper.
What a Session Costs
The expected cost of a session is simple to estimate once you think per roll: the money you have in action, times the per-roll edge of the bets carrying it, times the number of rolls you play. Doubling any of the three doubles the cost. That is why the per-roll column on the odds page matters as much as the per-bet one: the field is charged in full on every throw, where a pass line bet's charge is shared across 3.3758 rolls.
It also shows where systems really cost money. Most of them work by keeping more bets working on every roll. Even at a modest rate per bet, more money in action for the same number of rolls means a bigger expected loss.
A plan that holds up is the dull one: pick a total you are prepared to lose before you start, choose the cheapest bets that you enjoy, and stop when that total is gone or your time is up. The free craps games are the place to try any approach first, since the rules and the odds are identical and nothing is at stake.
Superstitions at the Craps Table
"This table is hot." A run of passes is what random dice produce from time to time, and it says nothing about the next roll. The table has no memory, and online it has no physical dice either.
"A 7 is due." A 7 comes on 16.67% of rolls, no matter how long it has been absent. Waiting for it, or avoiding it, only changes when you bet, not what the bet costs.
"You can control the dice." Online there is no throw to control: every result is produced by the game's random number generator. The idea has no place in an online game, and the bets it is used to justify cost exactly what the odds page says.
Craps Strategy FAQs
No. Every bet except the odds bet carries a house edge, and the odds bet can only be made behind one that does. Short sessions can and do end ahead; the longer you play, the closer your result moves to the edge on the bets you chose. Strategy decides how slowly that happens.
As a way to win often, yes; as a way to make money, no. Each 7 takes back the whole spread, the small wins between sevens do not make up for it, and the section above shows the result: an average loss per roll several times the pass line's.
Only in the narrow sense of price, where it is a little ahead (1.36% against 1.41%). It is not a smarter read of the dice: both sides face the same rolls, and neither knows anything the other does not.
The table minimum on the pass or don't pass line, and odds only as far as the budget allows. If the odds would stretch it, a place bet on 6 or 8 at 1.52% is a close second that needs no come-out roll. Leave the propositions in the middle of the layout alone.