Play Craps Better: The Myth of Pass, Don’t Pass

Whenever you play craps old timers will tell you the benefits of going with Don’t Pass as theoretically you are playing with the house and against the player. You are also likely to be looked badly by other craps players upon so does it make sense to make the Don’t Pass bet? We’ll take a look at this from a statistical point of view and for non-maths lovers this is a craps version and we’ll keep it as simple as possible.

We’re only going to analyse this from the flat portions so before the shooter’s come out.

A pass bet wins if a shooter throws a seven or and 11 and loses on a two three or 12, so for a pass bet to win one of the 6 options for a seven must come out 6/36 or one of the two 11s 2/36, therefore the probability is 8/36 – pretty good so far compared to the 4/36 for the losing 2s,3s, or 12.

Points when made are a little more tricky but we will keep it as simple as possible:

Two stages: point established, point wins.

6 and 8:

Chance of point established 10/36 as there are five ways each can appear.

The chance the number will then win is the five ways it can show out of the sum of its five plus the six ways a seven can appear — that is, 5/11. Conversely, the chance the number will lose as a point is 6/11.

Based on a figure of 1,980 statistically correct rolls we can expect: 10/36 x 5/11 x 1980 = 250 wins and 200 losses

If we do this for fives and nines we see 4/10 for a win and 6/10 for a loss: 8/36 x 4/10 x 1980 = 176 wins and 264 losses.

Carrie don for four and ten we see that the total wins on Pass are 976 with 1004 losses which equates to the house edge of 1.41% ($28/1980 = 1.41 cents per roll per dollar)

If we follow this all through for Don’t Pass we come up with a figure of 1.40% making it slightly better but only slightly and with the looks from other craps players it probably isn’t worth it. If you are playing online craps though you can get away with it!