Craps Myths

Separating fact from fiction

The Casino is there to take your money as fast as it can.

The casino actually offers you an almost-even game with the house, as long as you’resmart enough to make the right bets. Betting the Pass Line and full double oddsmeans your mathematical expectation is to win back 99.4% of what you wager. That’sa far cry from taking your money as fast as possible. Also, while the casinomay hope you lose, the casino employees don’t. The Dealers are rooting foryou to win because that is the only way that they will get tipped (toked). Dealersare happy when players are winning. For a dealer there is nothing worse thanworking all day watching players making stupid bets and losing their money.

The House changes dealers intentionally to change your luck.

Dealers on the Craps Table are rotated every 20 minutes — 20 on stick, and 20-20on the two base positions. Then a dealer takes a 20 minute break. The only othertime that dealers are changed is on shift changeover, or when a job candidate auditions,or when a break-in dealer is overloaded with action and is replaced by a more tenureddealer in order to keep the game moving.

If the Stickman sends out the diceto a shooter with a 7 showing it is bad luck.

Professional stickpersons just don’t send the dice out on a 7 anyway. However, sometimesthe dice hit chips or tumble unintentionally when being sent to the shooter, sometimesending up on a 7. Most hot-shot players usually pre-set the dice to their preferenceor shake them up anyway. This myth is just based on players not understanding thatthe odds of a 7 being rolled are one out of six no matter how you look at it.

When the dice or a die bounces off the table it is bad luck.

There is no such thing as something causing bad luck, there is just the fact thatthe odds of rolling a 7 are one in six. The biggest complainer about a 7 rollingafter a die has bounced off the table is usually the shooter who couldn’t controlthe dice in the first place, or the shooter who calls SAME DICE and then moans andwhines when his SAME DICE seven-out.

A “Virgin” Shooter is good luck.

There is no such thing as something causing good luck. First-time shooters are onlyremembered when they have a good roll and quickly forgotten when they seven-out.

So and so is a good shooter.

Shooting dice is not a skill, it’s a matter of luck and mathematics.

7 and11 are lucky numbers

There is no such thing as a lucky number. Seven and eleven probably got their reputationfor being lucky because either one will win a Come-Out roll. But betting on sevenor eleven individually are the absolute worst bets on the table. The dealersconsider it an insult when someone bets on 7 or 11 for them.