The Free Odds Bet

The House Edge

To understand why the Free Odds bet is so important you first have to understand the house edge. The house edge is the casino's average profit on any bet. In craps, the house edge on the Pass Line bet is 1.41%. That means that for every $5 wager on the Pass Line, the casino will keep seven cents as profit on average. ($5 x 1.41% = $0.07) This doesn't mean on a single wager the casino will keep $0.07 and pay you back $4.93. The house edge is the mathematical average for the long run. If you made $1,000,000 in Pass Line wagers, $5 at a time, by the end you'd probably have lost around $14,100, or 1.41% of what you wagered.

Different bets carry a different house edge. The 1.41% for the Pass Line bet is pretty low for a casino game, and is one of the best bets in the casino. The house edge on roulette is around 5% and slots are often 7-8% or more. Even in craps there are sucker bets with a high house edge, such as Hardways (9-11%) and the Proposition bets (up to 17%). When you gamble it's important to seek out the bets with the lowest house edge, because you'll lose less money that way and have a greater chance of winning.

The Free Odds Bet

The Free Odds bet carries no house edge. The casino makes no profit on this bet. This is the only bet you can make on a table game where the odds aren't against you. How can the casino make this bet available when they don't make any money on it? Simple: Most players aren't smart enough to make this bet. If all craps players made Free Odds bets and avoided the other bets, the casino wouldn't be able to offer craps!

How it works

Of course the Free Odds bet isn't totally free. You have to make a flat bet (Pass, Don't Pass, Come, or Don't Come) before you can make the Free Odds bet. Let's see how it works with a Pass Line bet. You make a Pass Line bet, and the shooter rolls a number to establish a point (4,5,6,8,9, or 10). Now you can make a Free Odds bet, by putting your chip(s) below (due South) of your Pass Line bet. It's kind of like doubling down in blackjack. Now if the shooter rolls the point again, you not only win your Pass Line bet, you also win the Odds bet.

The reason there's no house edge on the Free Odds bet is that winning bets are paid at true odds. If there's a 2-to-1 chance of your winning the bet, then a winning bet is also paid 2-to-1. The way the casino makes its profit on all other bets in the casino is by paying less than true odds.

The true odds varies according to the point, and so the payoff varies as well. Here's how much a winning Free Odds bet is paid depending on the point.

The Point	Payout	Example
4 and 10	2 to 1	a $5 wager is paid $10
5 and 9	3 to 2	a $5 wager is paid $7*
6 and 8	6 to 5	a $5 wager is paid $6
* Rounded DOWN from $7.50 on a Strip table layout. "Downtown" layout might pay actual ratio of a full $7.50. Strip table layouts do not handle 50-cent pieces.

Multiple Odds

The amount you can bet on the Free Odds varies from casino to casino, and is posted on a sign on the table. It's always some multiple of the Pass Line bet. On a table with Double Odds you can bet twice as much on the Odds as on your Pass Line bet. (If you made a $5 bet on the Pass, you could bet $10 on the Odds.) Since the Odds bet carries no house edge, it pays to seek out casinos that offer the maximum odds possible. In Vegas you can get better odds downtown vs the strip; many downtown casinos offer 10x Odds, or even better. The exception on the strip is the Casino Royale, which offers an amazing 100x Odds on craps. The Free Odds bet has the effect of diluting the edge of the flat bet you have to make before you can make the Odds bet. Here's the overall house edge for the flat bet plus the maximum Odds bet.

House Advantage when you take the Odds
Table Odds Taken	Pass Line	Don't Pass
0x	1.41%	1.36%
1x	0.848%	0.682%
2x	0.606%	0.455%
Full Double Odds	0.572%	0.431%
3x	0.471%	0.341%
3-4-5X	0.374%	0.273%
5x	0.326%	0.227%
10x	0.184%	0.124%
20x	0.099%	0.065%
100x	0.021%	0.014%

With Full Double Odds means the player can take 2.5x odds on a point of 6 or 8, and 2x on the other points. 3-4-5X Odds means the player can take 3X on the 4 and 10, 4X on the 5 and 9, and 5X on the 6 and 8. If the player takes the maximum odds then the payoff will conveniently be seven times the pass or come bet. (See our separate article about 3-4-5 odds

Laying Odds

The Free Odds bet works differently if you're betting the Don't Pass or Don't Come instead of the Pass or Come. With the Pass or Come you bet a smaller amount to win a bigger amount. On the Don't side it's the opposite: you lay a larger bet in order to win a smaller bet. For example, on a point of 4, instead of betting $5 to win $10, you lay $10 to win $5. The bet is still paid at true odds and carries no house edge, it's just made and paid in reverse. That's because once a point has been made you're the favorite to win, since a 7 is more likely to be rolled than the point, so when you do win you're paid less.

When the Free Odds bet doesn't help

There's a subtlety of the Odds bet that's important to understand. Let's say you made a $10 Pass Line bet, and a point has been made. Now you have the opportunity to make a Free Odds bet. However, if you make the Odds bet it won't increase your chances of winning, and your expected loss will be the same whether you make the Odds bet or not: 1.41% of your $10 Pass Line bet. So if making the Free Odds bet doesn't increase your chances of winning, and doesn't decrease your expected loss, why would you make it?

To answer this question we have to back up a bit. The Free Odds bet is a good deal when you put money on it that you were going to bet anyway. If you wanted to bet about $10 per round, then you'll get a better deal by betting $2 on the Pass Line and $10 on the Odds (on a 5x table), vs. betting the $10 on the Pass Line and taking no odds. With no odds your expected loss is $10 x 1.41% = $0.14 per roll. But by putting $2 on the Pass Line and $10 on the Odds, your expected loss is only $12 x 0.326% = $0.04. Your expected loss is smaller, and you have a greater chance of walking away a winner. So, for whatever amount you want to bet per round, get as much of it on the Free Odds as possible! This is the single most important thing to know about playing craps.