Bad Craps Strategy: Bets You Should Avoid
While some bets are good bets, others are not. Here are some bets it’s best to avoid when playing craps:
Big 6 and 8
Big 6 and Big 8 bets are bets stating that a specific number (6 or 8, depending on the bet) will be rolled before a 7 is. No other numbers effect this bet, it is simply a race between 7 and 6 or 8 depending on the bet.
These bets can be laid at any stage, and payouts are 1:1 if you win, with a house edge of around 9%, making this a less mathematically safe bet than many others. These are not considered ‘good’ bets in craps and are avoided by almost all experienced players.
Hardways, 4, 6, 8 and 10
Hardway is a term for any point number made up of a pair of matching numbers, which can only be 4 (2x2), 6 (2x3), 8 (2x4), and 10 (2x5). The numbers 2 and 12 are both crap numbers so don’t count here. Payouts are good here: 9:1 for a hard 6 or hard 8, and 7:1 for a hard 4 or hard 10. However, with a house edge of over 9% for hard 6 and hard 8, and well over 11% for hard 4 and hard 10, there is little point in these bets unless you’re after a high-risk, high-reward bet, and even then it isn’t advised.
Proposition Bets
It is the job of a stickman at a craps table to entice you into proposition bets, for a simple reason: the house is most likely to win on these bets. This makes them highly unadvisable. The stickman will say something like “anybody on 8”, suggesting you bet on the next roll coming up on that number. The payout is high, at 15:1, but with a house edge of over 16% in some cases, and never under 11%, it is rarely worth the risk.