Craps bets: payouts and house edges

Sooner or later every player asks the same question: out of thirty-odd spots on this layout, is there something better than the boring line bet?

The short answer is no. The long answer takes up this page.

Every craps bet in one table

Read the columns in pairs: on the left, what the house would pay if it paid honestly; on the right, what it actually pays. Rows are sorted from the cheapest positions to the most expensive.

Every one of them can be tried at our free table — with nothing at stake.

Line bets: the foundation

The line bets are the ones without which craps does not happen at all. They also carry the lowest house edges anywhere on the felt.

Pass Line — 1.41%

The most common bet in craps. It goes down before the come-out roll and predicts that the shooter runs good. It wins two ways: immediately, if the first roll is a 7 or 11, and later, if an established point repeats before a 7. It loses on a come-out 2, 3 or 12, and on a seven-out once a point is set.

It pays 1:1: a $10 bet returns your $10 plus $10 in winnings. The house edge is 1.41%, and it comes from the fact that your win probability is not 50% but 49.29%.

Don’t Pass — 1.36% and a social footnote

Almost the exact opposite of the Pass Line:

• it wins on a come-out 2 or 3, and after a point is set, if a 7 arrives before the point repeats;
• it loses on a come-out 7 or 11, and after the point, if the point repeats first;
• it is a push on a come-out 12: the bet simply comes back.

That produces a small paradox. The win probability here is 47.93% — lower than the Pass Line’s — but the barred twelve removes a slice of losing outcomes, and the house edge falls to 1.36% at the same 1:1 payout.

Come and Don’t Come — your own Pass Line mid-round

Functionally these are the Pass Line and Don’t Pass, placed after a point has already been established. The next roll becomes your personal come-out: whatever number lands becomes your own point, and from there it plays out exactly as usual.

Come and Don’t Come bets live independently of the line bets. If the round ends, they do not disappear — they carry over. Come matches the Pass Line for payout and house edge; Don’t Come matches Don’t Pass.

Free odds — 0% and the player’s only real lever

Odds are not a standalone bet but an amplifier. They are added to a Pass Line, Don’t Pass, Come or Don’t Come bet once a point is set, and they win or lose alongside it. What makes them unique is that they are paid at honest prices — a house edge of exactly 0%.

The payout depends on how rarely the point in question comes up (in brackets, the win on a $10 odds bet):

• 4 or 10 — 2:1 ($20);
• 5 or 9 — 3:2 ($15);
• 6 or 8 — 6:5 ($12).

The smaller payout on the 6 and 8 is not a catch: those numbers simply appear more often.

How often each point appears. The more common the number, the lower the odds payout — by exactly enough to keep the house edge at zero.

Which leads to the one practical conclusion that matters: the larger your odds relative to the line bet, the lower the combined house edge.

Place, Buy and Lay: numbers of your choosing

Three families of bets for players who want to back specific numbers rather than just the point of the round.

• Place — a bet on any number you pick (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10). It can be made at almost any time after a point is set, wins if the number comes before a 7, and stays on the felt until you take it down.
• Buy — the same wager with different mechanics: the win is paid at true odds and the casino charges a 5% commission (vig). The crucial condition is that the vig must be charged on wins only.
• Lay — the mirror of Buy and a relative of Don’t Pass: a bet that a 7 arrives before your chosen number. The win is smaller than the stake, but it comes more often.

Place or Buy — which to take on each number

The rule is simple: Place the 6 and 8, Buy everything else¹. But only where the vig comes out of winnings. If the casino takes its commission up front on every bet placed, Buy loses its point entirely.

Lay — betting the seven against a number

Note the inversion: the numbers that are most expensive for Place and Buy are the cheapest for Lay. Same reason — the 4 and 10 are the rarest, so the 7 beats them most often.

The Field — one roll, seven numbers

The Field is a single-roll bet: it settles on the very next throw, unlike every multi-roll bet discussed so far.

You win on 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 or 12 and lose on 5, 6, 7 or 8. Most winning numbers pay 1:1, while the 2 and 12 pay 2:1 or — considerably more interesting — 3:1.

Big 6 and Big 8 — the beginner’s tell

This is the bet the crew uses to spot a first-timer. Big 6 and Big 8 win and lose in exactly the same circumstances as Place 6 and Place 8, but they pay 1:1 instead of 7:6². One line in the rules, and the house edge climbs from 1.52% to 9.09% — six times higher.

Hardways — matching pairs

Hardways are offered on the 4, 6, 8 and 10 and win if the number arrives as two identical dice (2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5) before a 7 and before that same total shows up any other way.

The appeal is a big win from a small stake, and in that role the bet has a place. Treat hardways as occasional entertainment, never as part of a plan.

Proposition bets — the centre of the layout

The middle of the table, run by the stickman, holds the one-roll bets with the big payouts. They are what draws in an inexperienced player, and they are what feeds the casino.

• 2 or 12 — wins if that number is the very next roll;
• 3 or 11 — the same for the three and the eleven;
• Any Craps — wins on 2, 3 or 12;
• Any Seven — wins on a seven.

The mechanism is identical each time: the true odds are one thing and the payout is lower, and that gap is the house edge³. Any Seven, at 16.67%, is the worst bet on the table among those you will find everywhere.

The Fire bet — a lottery on the layout

The Fire bet is not offered at every table. The idea: the shooter has to make several different points before sevening out. The payouts look extraordinary — roughly 24:1 for four points, 249:1 for five and 999:1 for six.

The price matches. The house edge is around 20.8%, and higher where the payouts are trimmed. It is the most expensive position on the entire layout.

What an hour at the table costs

House-edge percentages mean nothing to your wallet until you convert them into money. The conversion takes one step: multiply the percentage by your turnover — the total of every bet you make, not the size of your bankroll.

Take a steady pace: a hundred $10 bets in a session, so $1,000 of action. Here is what the same evening costs depending on where the chips land.

Top row to bottom row is $204.30 of difference across the same evening: same dice, same luck, same number of chips pushed forward. The only variable is which patch of felt they land on.

What you should actually be betting

Any bet can get lucky — but if the goal is not to hand over a session’s budget in twenty minutes, the logic runs like this.

1. A line bet plus maximum odds — the compulsory programme. Everything else is optional.
2. Place 6 and Place 8 — the only Place bets worth their money (1.52%).
3. Buy 4 / 10 with the vig on wins — acceptable even after commission (≈1.67%).
4. The Field — only where the table pays 3:1 on the twelve. At 2:1 it is 5.56%, and there is no reason to touch it.
5. Everything else — entertainment. Paid entertainment, and the prices are in the table above.

Bear in mind that craps is not always the classic game: the rules page covers the base mechanics, while Crapless Craps and Bubble Craps change some of the terms. Ready to play for money — pick a site from the craps casino rankings.