Craps is a game with enough nuance that players always are looking beneath the surface for ways to win.
Take place bets and buy bets on 4 or 10. If you place those numbers, you face a house edge of 6.67%. But you can buy the numbers instead – you pay a 5% commission, but winners are paid at true odds. When you buy 4 or 10, you lower the house edge to 4.76% if you pay the commission on each wager.
To drill down another level, some casinos charge the commission only if you win. When that happens, the house edge drops to 1.67%.
A recent e-mail from a craps player named Owen hinted at another level.
“When I buy numbers, I have to pay a 5% commission,” he said. “If I bet $20, it’s a $1 commission, and if I bet $40 it’s $2. What if I bet $25 or $30? What commission will they charge?”
Casinos don’t stock craps tables with change. If you bet $25, they don’t want to charge you a $1.25 commission and have to deal in quarters.
The question is whether the casino will accept a $1 commission for a $25 bet, or if it will bump the commission up to the $2 it would charge on $40.
That’s an issue Frank Scoblete and Jerry “Stickman” have tackled in the "Casino Craps: Shoot to Win!" and "I Am a Dice Controller" books. They have found tables that will accept $1 commissions on $25 wagers, and less commonly, on wagers up to $35 and $39.
What’s that do to the house edge? Let’s use 4 as an example, though the same arithmetic applies if the number is 10.
When your number is 4, you win one of every three decisions. There are three ways to make four – 1-3, 2-2 and 3-1 – and six ways to make a loser 7.
If you make a $25 bet and add a $1 commission, then per three decisions you invest $78. Winners are paid at true odds of 2-1, so on your one win, you keep the $25 wager and get $50 in winnings. After the three decisions, you have $75 of your original 78. The house has $3 – the three commissions.
Divide the $3 house take by the $78 invested, then multiply by 100 to convert to percent, and you get a house edge of 3.84%, better than the 4.76 it would be if you bought the 4 for $20.
What if the house charges the commission only on winners? Then, per three decisions, you wager $25 three times but pay only one $1 commission, for a total investment of $76. After your one win, you still have $75 of your investment, but the house has only $1.
The house edge is $1 divided by $76, multiplied by 100. That comes to 1.32 percent, lower than the 1.67% when buying the 4 for $20 with commissions paid only on winners.
The larger the wager while holding the line on a $1 commission, the lower the house edge. If you find the rare casino that will charge only $1 when buying for $39, house edge are 2.5% with the commission on all wagers, or 0.85% with commissions only on winners.
Such things are not publicized. You’d have to ask at the table if you can buy for $25 or some other amount of less than $40 with a $1 commission, and not every casino will accept. It’s all part of the process as craps players try drill into the game’s inner depths.
Look for John Grochowski on Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/7lzdt44) and Twitter (@GrochowskiJ).
