Craps

The long table, seen from the shooter's end, with the layout's boxes pressed in cream clay and a pair of clay dice. The chips are play chips: the house gives you a hundred when you are under a hundred, nothing here is money, and your balance carries across the casino and onto the leaderboard.

How it plays

Lay chips on the pass line and roll. On the come-out roll a seven or an eleven wins even money and a two, three or twelve loses; any other total becomes the point, and the puck moves onto it. From then on the shooter rolls until the point comes again, which wins the line, or a seven, which loses it.

With a point up you can lay odds behind the line, up to twice your line bet, and they pay at true odds: two to one on a four or ten, three to two on a five or nine, six to five on a six or eight. The house takes nothing on the odds, which is why they are the best bet on the table. A come bet is a pass-line bet of its own made after the point: it wins on the next seven or eleven, loses on craps, and otherwise moves to its own number, where it takes odds too. The field is a one-roll bet on two, three, four, nine, ten, eleven or twelve: even money, with the two paying double and the twelve triple.

Tips

The line and full odds behind it is the whole game for most people; everything else gives the house more. The field looks generous and is not: five, six, seven and eight come up more often than all its numbers together. A come bet with odds is the way to have more than one number working at once.

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