Craps: How It Works, Odds and Payouts

Craps is a dice table game. In Cashout Arcade you place one bet per round, either on the Pass Line, Don't Pass, Field or Any 7, and the dice are rolled until the bet is settled. You do not roll them yourself and there are no decisions once the bet is placed.

Coins are virtual and have no cash value. Every roll is drawn on our servers; the dice animation shows what was drawn.

How a round works

1. Choose a bet: Pass Line, Don't Pass, Field or Any 7.
2. Roll. For Pass and Don't Pass this is the come-out roll; for Field and Any 7 it is the only roll.
3. Pass and Don't Pass continue until the point is made or a 7 appears. Field and Any 7 settle on that one roll.

The line bets

On the come-out roll, a total of 7 or 11 wins the Pass Line, and a 2, 3 or 12 loses it. Any other total (4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10) becomes the point. The dice are then rolled again until either the point repeats, which wins the Pass Line, or a 7 appears, which loses it.

Don't Pass is the opposite: it wins on a come-out 2 or 3, loses on 7 or 11, and on a come-out 12 it pushes, so your bet comes back. Once a point is set, Don't Pass wins if a 7 appears first.

The one-roll bets

Field wins if the next roll is a 3, 4, 9, 10 or 11 (1.99x), a 2 (2.99x) or a 12 (3.99x). Any other total loses. Any 7 wins only if the next roll is a 7 and pays 5.82x.

Odds and payouts

Every bet returns 97% on average: for example, Pass Line 0.4929 x 1.9678 = 0.97, and Don't Pass 0.4793 x 1.9658 + 0.0278 x 1 = 0.97. The multipliers the app shows are rounded down. The shared limits for all games are on the odds page.

Where the Pass Line chance comes from

On a two-dice roll the totals are not equally likely: a 7 can be rolled 6 ways in 36, a 6 or 8 five ways, a 5 or 9 four, a 4 or 10 three, a 3 or 11 two and a 2 or 12 one. After a point is set, only the point and 7 matter, so the chance of making it before a 7 is (ways to roll the point) / (ways to roll the point + 6).

Add 22.22% to the six point rows (2 x 2.78 + 2 x 4.44 + 2 x 6.31 = 27.07%) and you reach the 49.29% Pass Line chance (rounded). Note that Pass wins less than half the time on its own, which is why it is priced at 1.96x and not 2x.

A worked example

You bet 100 coins on Pass Line. The come-out roll is an 8, so the point is 8. Rolling continues until an 8 (5 ways in 36) or a 7 (6 ways in 36). The chance of the 8 coming first is 5 / 11 = 45.5%. If it does, you win 1.96x, about 196 coins; if a 7 comes first you lose the 100. Before you knew the point your overall chance was 49.29%. Once the 8 is set, it drops to 45.5%, because 8 is a weaker point than the average.

Max win and caps

The biggest Craps payout is 5.82x, on Any 7. That is well under the game-wide limits of 50,000x the bet and 250,000,000 coins per round.

What is the same as other table games

Like Roulette: How It Works, Odds and Payouts and Baccarat: How It Works, Odds and Payouts, each Craps bet is individually priced to return 97%, so the choice is about how often you win and how big the swings are, not value. Any 7 is a coin-flip-like long shot, like a single number on a wheel. Pass and Don't Pass are close to even-money. Dice: How It Works, Odds and Payouts is the simpler dice game, where you pick the chance yourself. A fuller walkthrough is in How to Play Craps: Pass Line, Odds and Bets.

Tips that hold up

• Pass and Don't Pass are almost equal in value. They differ in the shape of the results, not in the return.
• Field looks generous and is not. It wins 44% of rolls and the bigger pays on 2 and 12 only partly make up for the many rolls it loses.
• Any 7 is the swingiest bet. It loses 5 rolls in 6.
• Do not track the dice. Past totals say nothing about the next roll.

Play with limits

A fast one-roll bet like Any 7 can be repeated very quickly. Set a coin and time limit before you start and see Play Safely in Cashout Arcade: Limits and Breaks for tools. Cashout Arcade is for adults aged 18+, uses virtual coins and has no real-money prizes.