Description
Classic casino offering Craps, available via leading operator 888, may look complicated or confusing at first glance, but in fact, it’s a pretty simple game to get your head around.
Not only that, but this exciting dice game offers excellent odds and a low house edge or advantage, making it a firm favourite among players of table games, even if it’s still not played that often online.
It has its roots in a twelfth-century game called Hazard. You bet on the outcome of the roll or rolls of a couple of dice. In a casino setting, players bet money against a bank.
And don’t be put off by the terminology or number of available bets; it really is all a lot easier than you’d think.
How to play
Players take it in turns to roll the two dice, with the thrower known as the shooter. The first roll of the dice, or the first in a new betting round, is called the come-out roll. Throw the dice online by hitting the ‘Roll’ button.
Outcomes could be as follows:
- Natural: The result of your roll here is a 7 or 11. You win and can roll again.
- Craps: When you’ve rolled a 2, 3 or 12. Although you don’t win, you get another roll.
- Point: You’ve rolled anything from 4 to 10 apart from 7. Roll again – you’ll win if you have the same total as before, even if with a different combination of numbers. Unfortunately, 7 means you’ve lost, and the round finishes.
The craps board
The layout has a few different areas for the various betting options:
Pass or Don’t Pass bets
You can place a bet on the Pass Line or Don’t Pass Line. The former means the shooter will win (or pass) by throwing a natural or winning the point before rolling a 7 and crashing out.
The Don’t Pass Line means exactly the opposite: a bet that the shooter will lose. That will happen if they get a 2 or 3, or don’t manage to roll the point again before throwing a 7.
Equally, if a 12 is rolled, this is a Push which is neutral so that there’s no win or loss – nothing happens.
Once the point has been thrown, and the shooter has to roll again, you place a Come or Don’t Come bet.
Come and Don’t Come bets
This wins if a Natural is thrown, and works similarly to the Pass bet, so the point needs to roll before a 7 does. And, similarly to the Don’t Pass Bet, in a Don’t Come bet, your luck is in should the shooter roll a 2 or 3, but not if they roll an 11 or seven. Once again, a 12 here is a Push.
Proposition bets
You can place these (mostly) single-roll bets on any roll. They have a string of names, but essentially you are betting on whether a shooter will throw various numbers between 2 and 12.
An Any Craps bet is for them to roll a 2, 3 or 12, while for a Horn bet those numbers are 2, 3, 11 or 12.
A Hard Ways bet is not on a single roll. You win if you roll a 4, 6, 8 or 10 (choose one) with a pair of similar numbers (e.g. 2 and 2) before a 7, or any combination making up the chosen number.
This is just a selection of the bets you can place. Others include Place, Field and Big 6 & Big 8 bets, paying out at 1:1 and which you can master once you’ve played a few times.
Return to Player (RTP)
This can vary from one casino to another. But, like many table games, the house edge is low, meaning an RTP or Return to Player of typically around 98.59%. In fact, it’s regularly higher than for many other table games.
Verdict
While it may feel at first as though there are numerous betting rules to remember, these do start to come naturally the more you play. And you could find craps makes a refreshing change from other games, especially if you haven’t played it before.
Give it a go in free demo mode before parting with any real cash – and let us know what you thought.
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