A craps table is the most chaotic-looking layout in the casino. Forty-plus bets, half of them with names that don't describe what they do (Big 6? Hardway? Yo?). The stickman is calling action while three dealers settle bets, and a new player has no idea which of those squares is friendly and which is a money fire.
The truth is simpler than the layout suggests. The bets you want fit on a single index card. Everything else is the casino's profit center. This article ranks every common craps bet by house edge — from the 0.00% bet most players skip, to the 16.67% bets the stickman pushes hardest.
The 0.00% bet most players skip: free odds
Behind every Pass Line bet, after a point is established, you can place an additional wager called the odds bet. The casino pays this bet at the true mathematical odds — 2:1 on points of 4 or 10, 3:2 on 5 or 9, 6:5 on 6 or 8. There is no house edge on the odds bet. None. The casino offers it as a loss leader to encourage you to play more total action.
The catch: you can only take odds after you've already made a Pass Line bet (1.41% edge), so the combined edge is a blended average. Taking 3-4-5 times odds drops the combined house edge from 1.41% to about 0.37% per dollar wagered. Taking 100x odds (rare; some downtown Vegas casinos) takes it to 0.02%.
Pass Line: 1.41% — your anchor
The Pass Line is the bet you make at the start of every shooter's roll. Win on come-out 7 or 11, lose on 2/3/12, otherwise the number rolled becomes your point and you win if it rolls again before a 7.
- Probability of winning: 244/495 = 49.29%
- Probability of losing: 251/495 = 50.71%
- House edge: 1.41%
- Always available, always at this edge — no betting strategy can lower it
Pass is the social bet. Everyone at the table is rooting for the shooter. You should make this bet, take maximum odds behind it, and consider that your whole craps strategy.
Don't Pass: 1.36% — slightly better, socially awkward
The mirror image of Pass. You lose on come-out 7 or 11, push on 12, win on 2/3, and otherwise win if a 7 rolls before the point. The push on 12 (instead of a win) is where the casino's 0.05% edge advantage over Pass comes from.
The 0.05% edge improvement is real but tiny. Across a thousand $25 Pass-vs-Don't-Pass decisions — $25,000 in action — Don't Pass saves you about $12.50 in expectation. Most players make Pass instead because the table cheers when the shooter rolls a point, and you'd be cheering against the room. Take Don't Pass if you don't mind playing against the table.
Place 6 and 8: 1.52% — the quiet worker
Once a point is established, you can Place the 6 or the 8 separately, paying 7:6 if it rolls before the next 7. House edge is 1.52% — slightly worse than Pass but in the same general neighborhood, and these bets are working immediately (no come-out roll wait).
- Must Place in multiples of $6 (so a $5 minimum table requires $6 minimum on 6/8)
- Pays 7:6 — bet $6, win $7
- Stays up until it loses (rolls a 7) or you take it down
- 1.52% edge — the best Place bet by a wide margin
If you want more bets working without raising your overall edge much, Place 6 and 8 are the right pick. Place 4/10 are 6.67% (terrible), Place 5/9 are 4.00% (also terrible). Stick to 6 and 8.
The 3-4-5 odds sweet spot
Almost every Vegas Strip casino offers 3-4-5 times odds: 3x on points of 4 or 10, 4x on 5 or 9, 5x on 6 or 8. This is not random. It's designed so that no matter which point you have, taking max odds wins you exactly 6 units when it hits. The casino does it for accounting simplicity; you do it because it gives you the lowest combined house edge available on a normal Strip table — about 0.37% per dollar wagered.
Where the edge climbs to 5%: Field, Big 6/8, Hardways
Now we leave the friendly part of the layout. These bets look like the rest, but their math is meaningfully worse.
- Field bet: 5.56% house edge (sometimes 2.78% with triple-12 payout) — covered in detail in its own post
- Big 6 / Big 8: 9.09% — same proposition as Place 6/8 but pays 1:1 instead of 7:6. Never make this bet; Place the same number instead
- Hardway 6 / Hardway 8: 9.09% — must roll the doubles (3-3 or 4-4) before any other 6/8 or any 7. Pays 9:1
- Hardway 4 / Hardway 10: 11.11% — same idea, pays 7:1. Even worse
The Hardways are stickman bets — he announces them, he places them, he gets tipped when they hit. The atmospherics make them feel social and fun. They are not.
The 16.67% trap: Any 7, Hop bets, Yo
The proposition bets in the middle of the layout are the worst bets in the casino, full stop. Worse than Caribbean Stud's side bets, worse than slot machines.
- Any 7: 16.67% — one-roll bet that the next roll is a 7. Pays 4:1, true odds are 5:1
- Yo (11): 11.11% — next roll is 11. Pays 15:1, true odds are 17:1
- Any Craps: 11.11% — next roll is 2/3/12. Pays 7:1, true odds are 8:1
- Hop bets: 11.11% to 13.89% depending on which combo — next roll is a specific pair
- Horn / World / C&E: blends of the above, no better than the components
A one-page cheat card
Memorize this list and you can ignore 90% of the table:
- Pass Line (1.41%) — make this every shooter
- Free odds (0.00%) — take max odds behind every Pass bet
- Place 6 and 8 (1.52%) — if you want more action working
- Don't Pass (1.36%) — if you can stand cheering against the table
- Everything else — don't make it
That's the entire correct strategy. Five bets. The other 35 squares on the layout exist because the casino needs them to extract a 4-17% edge from players who don't know which is which.