Stalking
the Willy Craps Vipers
Dear Mark,
I have been told the Stratosphere, in Las Vegas, has a
crapless craps game.
So if the button is OFF and a 2, 3 or 12 are rolled,
these numbers do not
lose, but they are established as points. Is this
correct? This seems too
good to be true. How does the casino offset this to its
advantage? Should I
stay away from this game? Ryan D.
Sentence number 4 above dead on, Ryan. Sentence number
6 -- yeah, big time.
Crapless Craps, or Ruse Craps, is exceptionally good for
the shareholders of
any casino that can sell it to their customers.
Also known as Never Ever Craps, Crapless Craps is
another example of a
casino offering designed to cost you dearly when you
belly up to the
crapless crap table, deciding how many Jaguars youıll
buy with your
sure-shot winnings.
In this modified variation of a regular crap game, you
do not lose on the
come-out roll when the shooter tosses a 2, 3 or 12.
Instead, it
automatically becomes the point, just as 4, 5, 6, 8, 9
and 10 do on a
standard game. You also do not win if the shooter throws
a natural 11. It
too becomes the point. With these additional frowzy
rules, the house holds a
5.4% edge on your pass line bet versus the 1.4% edge in
a typical crap game.
Prudent readers of this column, consider Crapless Craps
as also Playless
Craps.
Dear Mark,
When playing craps, I pretty much stick to your
recommended pass line wager
with odds, or placing the 6 and 8. But on my last outing
before I started
playing, I saw two players making a killing betting both
an "any craps" and
the "horn" bet. Please describe the
differences between an "any craps" bet
and a "horn" bet, and, which, if any, of those
two bets should I have played
alongside those lucky players? Brian K.
Just because the dice were sizzling in the short term
with 2s, 3s, 11s and
12s before you jumped in, doesnıt mean they will still
radiate BTUıs when
you decide to tackle wagers with a house edge over 11%.
Your dice-game
timeline - - the period you are on the game will
always be different from
that of the earlier (and, in this case lucky) players.
When you join a game
in progress, you initiate your own personal sequence of
rolls, the
randomness of nature likely returning it to a more
normal pattern. (A
flipped fair coin can come down the same face up many,
many times. But would
you bet that all your buddyıs pocket change, dumped on
your kitchen table,
would all show heads on the first try? Well...)
This column, Brian, proselytizes for making wagers with
a reduced casino
advantage, and an "any craps" or
"horn" wager ainıt one of them. An "any
craps" bet is wagering that 2, 3, or 12 will be the
result of the next roll.
With a payoff of 7 to 1, the house edge is 11.1%.
A "craps-eleven," or "horn" bet as
itıs typically called, is a bet that on
the next roll will turn a 2, 3, 11, or 12. If any other
number rolls, you
lose. Though the payoff varies from casino to casino,
the house edge on a
"horn" bet is always more than 12%. Bucking,
Brian, for the top 10 sucker
bets list, both of them.
Online Gambling quote of the week: "Whenever you switch
from Deuces Wild to Jacks
or Better, the first four of a kind will be
Deuces." Skip Hughes
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