How to Play Craps: the Basics and Strategies

Craps is a dice game played in a casino that requires a lot of activity and strategy, both with money and with the dice. But to learn how to play casino craps, a player must first understand who the craps table personnel is and where to find them. 

Table Crew

The most common table crew for craps games in casinos consists of 4 employees: a boxman, two base dealers and a stickman. The boxman is the game’s immediate supervisor and is in control of the craps table. The supervisor is also in control of the chips and is responsible for mediating any disputes between dealers and players.

The dealer to the boxman’s right is the second base dealer. The dealer to the boxman’s left is the third base dealer. Base dealers take and pay bets to those players who are at their half of the table.

The stickman is the dealer who moves the dice with a long-hooked stick. The stickman takes a seat in the middle of the table, right opposite the boxman. He is also responsible for paying the best to players in the central part of the table.

Players roll dice one after another. The player who is throwing the dice is usually called the shooter. There are various options on which you can bet by putting chips right on the specified sections of the field. 

Craps Strategies

Some craps methods will help you improve your basic tactics with extra bets and ways to decrease the house advantage and perhaps boost your payout chances. In particular, they will explore Dark Side methods, when participants wager against the shooter in a craps game.

Craps Odds Strategy

While seeking the finest mathematical craps strategy to deploy, players can do much worse than lay the odds. Like other Dark Side methods, laying the odds involves participants gambling against the shooter and players. While laying the odds, gamblers wager the shooter will hit a 7 before tossing a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10. They can only be produced after the Point has been made. The chances of these landing are statistically fair, thus there’s no house advantage on these bets. On the negative, the payoff chances for these are lower than other bets, with laying the odds against 4 or 10 giving 1:2 odds, 5 or 9 paying out 2:3, and 6 or 8 paying out at 5:6.

Craps Press Strategy

The Press approach also goes by the term Press-and-Pull. With this craps technique, players push their bets when the Place bet lands and withdraw their earnings after the bet lands four times.

Let’s imagine a player wishes to place a Place bet on 6. The payment odds are 7:6 on this bet, thus the player makes it a $ 6 wager. If the dice fall on 6, this stake pays out $ 7. With the Push method, the player will maintain $1 and then ask the dealer to push it to $12. If the 6 falls before the point again, the player wins $ 14. Using the Push approach, however, the player will wish to add $ 4 to the stake and urge the dealer to press it to $ 30. If the dice fall on 6 for a third time, the player will add $1 to the $35 winnings, bringing the Place bet total to $66. If the dice are thrown on a 6 for the fourth time, the player will collect $ 77 on that stake and withdraw their total winnings of $. 143 from the table.

The aim of the Press method is for players to earn significant sums with minimum expenditure from their bankroll. Instead, they utilize their gains to virtually increase their wagers each round. In the scenario above, participants only invested $ 10 from their bankroll. The hitch with the Press method though is that the probability of hitting a number three or four times in a row before a seven is minimal. This is an aggressive craps approach and players could stand to lose more than their bankroll with this tactic.

6/8 Craps Strategy

Progression betting techniques are common in craps because they generally offer a modest house edge. Players favor the 6/8 craps approach over other place bets because 6 and 8 have the second-greatest probability of landing on the dice (after 7). (besides 7). Using this technique, players put $ 6 placing a bet on 6 and 8. If the dice fall on one of the numbers, players withdraw the earnings and make the bet again. If their gamble fails, they make the bet again, except this time they raise the amount they wager. Some prefer to raise bets by preset amounts, while others double each time.

Like any progressive betting system, players may go long stretches without a victory, and they are partly dependent on a streak. Gamers should only test this craps betting technique if they are okay playing with money they can afford to lose.