Craps Rules Explained: The Come-Out Roll, Key Bets, and the Odds

Craps is a dice game in which players bet on the outcome of a roll, or a series of rolls, of two six-sided dice. One player, the shooter, throws the dice, but everyone at the table wins or loses on the same results. Behind its noisy reputation sits a simple structure and, on a handful of bets, some of the lowest house edges in the casino.

That last point is the reason craps rewards learning. No other casino game spreads its odds so widely: the same table offers wagers with a house edge near 1.4% sitting inches from wagers that cost more than 16%. Knowing which is which is the whole game.

How a round of craps works

A round begins with the come-out roll. Before the shooter throws, most players bet the pass line, and that first roll resolves in one of three ways:

• 7 or 11 — the pass line wins immediately. This is a "natural."
• 2, 3, or 12 — the pass line loses immediately. This is "craps."
• Any other number (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) — that number becomes the "point," and the round continues.

Once a point is set, the shooter keeps rolling with a single goal: repeat the point before rolling a 7. If the point comes up again first, the pass line wins. If a 7 appears first, the pass line loses and the dice pass to the next shooter — the moment known as "sevening out." Everything else on the table builds on this loop of come-out roll, point, and the race between the point and the seven.

The best bet on the table: pass line and odds

The pass line is the natural home for a new player because it is simple and cheap. Its house edge is 1.41%, among the lowest of any casino wager, and it wins on the come-out roll far more often than it loses there.

What makes craps genuinely distinctive is the bet you can add once a point is set: the odds bet, sometimes called "taking the odds." After a point is established, you back your pass line bet with an additional wager that pays at true mathematical odds — meaning the house edge on that portion is exactly zero. It is the only bet on a casino floor with no built-in edge at all.

• On a point of 6 or 8, odds pay 6 to 5.
• On a point of 5 or 9, odds pay 3 to 2.
• On a point of 4 or 10, odds pay 2 to 1.

Because the odds bet carries no edge, adding it lowers the combined house edge of your whole pass line wager. A single unit of odds behind the line drops the effective edge to around 0.85%; larger odds multiples, where the table allows them, push it lower still. This is why experienced players keep their flat bet modest and put more money behind the line as odds.

Come, don't pass, and don't come

Once you understand the pass line, three close relatives follow naturally. The come bet works exactly like a pass line bet but can be made at any time after a point is established, setting its own personal point on the next roll. It carries the same 1.41% edge and can also be backed with odds.

The "don't" bets flip the logic. Don't pass and don't come wager that the seven arrives before the point — betting with the house, in effect. Their edge is marginally lower still, at 1.36%, and they too accept odds (this time "laying" the odds). They win quietly while the table groans, which is why they are less popular despite being fractionally better value. None of these bets beats the house over time; they simply cost the least to play.

The bets to avoid

The center of the table, where the boxman and stickman manage a cluster of tempting one-roll wagers, is where the house edge balloons. These proposition bets pay flashy multiples precisely because you will rarely win them.

• Any 7 — pays 4 to 1 but carries a house edge of about 16.7%, the worst standard bet on the table.
• Big 6 and Big 8 — around 9.1%, and always inferior to placing the 6 or 8 directly.
• Hard ways (rolling a pair for 4, 6, 8, or 10) — roughly 9% to 11%.
• Field — a one-roll bet on several numbers at once, commonly around 5.5%.

Place bets sit in between and reward selectivity: placing the 6 or 8 costs about 1.52%, but placing the 4 or 10 costs 6.67% for the same style of wager. The pattern across the whole table is consistent — the simpler, quieter bets are cheap, and the exciting long-shot bets are expensive.

Reading the house edge

The single most useful habit in craps is to think in terms of house edge rather than payout size. A bet paying 30 to 1 sounds thrilling until you notice how rarely it lands. Ranked from best to worst, the core wagers look like this:

• Don't pass / don't come: 1.36%
• Pass line / come: 1.41%
• Place 6 or 8: 1.52%
• Place 5 or 9: 4.0%
• Field: around 5.5%
• Place 4 or 10: 6.67%
• Big 6 / Big 8: 9.1%
• Any 7: 16.7%

Layer free odds on top of a pass, come, or don't bet and the blended figure falls further. According to PeakyCasino, this spread is exactly why craps rewards discipline more than most games: sticking to the line with odds keeps you among the best-value bets in the building, while drifting to the center of the layout does the opposite.

Playing craps online

Online craps keeps the rules identical but changes the experience in ways worth knowing before you start. In the standard software version, a random number generator produces each roll, you are the only shooter, and there is no table crew, no stickman, and no etiquette to learn — you place chips on the layout and click to roll. Crucially, the house edges listed above are unchanged, because they depend only on the mathematics of two dice, not on who throws them or where.

Live-dealer craps sits between the digital and the physical. A real table with real dice is streamed to your screen, and you place bets through the interface while a human crew runs the game. It recreates the atmosphere of a busy pit while keeping the pace comfortable and the stakes flexible.

For a newcomer, the online version is the gentler classroom. There is no pressure from a crowded rail, no tempo to keep up with, and time to check a bet's house edge before committing a chip. Many players learn the pass line and the odds bet online first, then carry that same discipline to a live table, where the cheap bets remain exactly as cheap.

What about dice control?

A persistent myth holds that a skilled shooter can "set" the dice and throw them to influence the result. In a regulated casino, where dice must bounce off a textured back wall, no controlled study has demonstrated a repeatable edge from this, and the maths of the game assumes fair, random rolls. Treat every throw as independent and random, because that is how the odds above are calculated.

The practical takeaway is reassuring rather than discouraging. You do not need a special technique to play craps well; you need to know which bets are cheap and which are expensive, and to stay on the cheap ones. Detailed odds breakdowns for casino table games are published on peakycasino.net.

Craps looks chaotic from the outside, but its logic is orderly: a come-out roll, a point, and a race to the seven, wrapped around a small set of bets whose costs vary enormously. Learn the pass line, add the odds, and ignore the center of the table, and you are playing one of the fairest games a casino offers. Play responsibly, set limits before you sit down, and only wager what you can afford to lose. Support is available through GamCare and GambleAware.