crapsking - 03 March 2009 07:28 PM
I think a lot of people are intimidated by craps but it’s actually simpler if you try it out for yourself. With a little practice, you can get into it pretty easily. I think so, anyway.
I too initially shunned casino craps as being too complicated even though I knew the rules for the street version of the game. It was not until I was given Mike Goodman’s “How To Win At ...” book, four years into my gambling “career”, that I learned what all the bets were, and that the game was not really all that complicated after all.
The key to understanding casino—or if you prefer, bank—craps is that it is the only game in the pit where you are typically betting on the outcome of a sequence of events instead of a single event. In roulette, for example, everyone bets on their number(s), the ball drops into a pocket (the single event), and all bets are resolved. In blackjack everyone makes their bet, the cards are dealt, the players make their playing decisions, the dealer completes his/her hand (the single event), and all bets are resolved. (Yes, players can lose by busting, and at the table the dealer takes their bets before the round is completed, but that is merely a mechanical shortcut, equivalent to the home team in baseball not taking their swings in the ninth inning when they are ahead at that point.) In craps the more popular bets are that something will happen before something else happens, and there can be events (rolls) where neither of these things happen. I think it is this possibility of neutral rolls, where not all bets are resolved, that makes the game seem more complicated than it is.
When I teach someone the game, time permitting, I have them imagine we are observing cars entering the casino parking lot. The game we are playing depends on what color the next car to enter is: if it is white they win, if it is not they lose. That is how all the other games in the casino, and the one-roll craps bets like the field, work. We can also play a different game involving car colors, namely they win if a white car shows up before a black car shows up. In that game, if a red car arrives they neither win nor lose (i.e. the game isn’t over). That is how place bets work.
Finally, suppose the game is that the player wins if a white or pink car is the first to arrive, loses if a black car is the first to arrive, and remains in the game if a car of any other color arrives. (OK, wise guys; we’re assuming single-colored cars here! It’s my game, after all.) To find out if the player wins or loses when a green car, for example, is the first to enter the lot we have to continue to observe more cars until another green car shows up, and the player wins, or a white car shows up and the player loses. That’s right: a white car wins if it’s the first to enter, but loses if it’s not. No other color is significant, including pink and black, even though a car of those colors would have resolved the game at the beginning. That is how Pass and Come work.
Not everybody gets it immediately, of course, but colors are concrete concepts and numbers are not.
Craps Forum
