As you know in craps there are two popular types of bets – a pass line bet and a don’t pass bet. These bets are almost antagonists, but they both are referred to as Flat bets. It means they are made before the come out roll. Finding the zone for don’t pass bet on a table in nothing difficult as usually the section is located above pass line zone and marked as “don’t pass bar 12″. It can be also called “the black line”, but this happens really rare.
Both pass line and don’t pass bets share the same betting limits. For example, you see a red placard telling a bet of $5 is the minimum while $2,000 is the maximum, so you should bid at least five dollars and your bid cannot exceed two thousands.
The don’t pass line bet is one of so called “self-service” bets, what means in order to bet you should move chips to the table’s don’t pass zone.
The come out roll can bring 4 possible outcomes that define whether your don’t pass line bet wins or loses. Please note right now we’re discussing don’t pass line bets, so pass line ones are almost the opposite.
- 7 or 11 are rolled, your don’t pass line bet loses and the game is over;
- The rolled numbers are 2 or 3, your don’t pass line wins and the game is over too;
- 12 is rolled; such situation is called “a tie”, your bet neither wins, not loses and the game is over;
- One of the following numbers appears – 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10; this situation is also known as “a point” and the dices are rolled once again. If the next roll is point again, the don’t pass bet loses; 7 makes don’t pass bet win; all other cases require throwing dices again.
So when you select the don’t pass bet, you want the shooter to roll craps on the come out roll. In case of point you need 7 to be rolled.
When you look at a craps table, you may see a “Bar 12” near the don’t pass label. This means 12 rolled on the come-out roll causes a tie. Some casinos have “Bar 2” instead of 12. This means 2 will bring a tie. Such practice is not a widespread one, but even if you see it, there’s no much difference as both 12 and 2 can be made only with one dices combination, so your odds stay the same. However, in some really rare cases 2 is replaced with 3. If you see such table in casino I recommend turning back and moving to another table as there are two ways to make a 3 and this small difference increases the house advantage from standard 1.4% to 4.4%. The casino already has an advantage, so why should they increase it and lessen your chances to win.
Finally, some more differences between pass line and don’t pass bets. If you have made a flat don’t pass bet, you are free to remove it at any time after point and you cannot do it with pass line bet. However, opposite to pass line bet, with don’t pass one you are not allowed to “put” a bet or increase it after point.
Craps systems – do they really work?
Almost any craps player sooner or later has come to a thought of so called craps systems. Beating the casino is an obvious wish of many players and so there are many systems that try to do this. This article is an attempt to determine the efficiency of such approach to the craps game.
Craps strategy and craps system are not the same, so at first let’s distinguish these two terms. Usually strategy can have several aims. First, this can be getting as much fun as possible for the least money. Craps strategy can be aimed at controlling the dices and calculating the odds so they will be in favor of the players. Finally, some people may play craps not for money, trying to impress players of the opposite sex, so their primarily aim is to look cool.
Caps system is a little bit different. Player tries to win by manipulating winning chances and trying to bid when it’s the “right time”. As vast majority of such systems are based on an erroneous assumption, they do not work on a long run. Erroneous assumption is a way of predicting future events depending on the events that have already happened. Thus such approach implies the existence of the connection between past and future dice rolls.
The truth is such games as craps or roulette are nothing else but a series of independent events. It doesn’t matter, what is rolled this round as this result cannot affect the future one. If a player has thrown 7, he or she is not more or less likely to throw 7 again. The odds of throwing 7 are mathematically fixed and this chance is 5 to 1.