Craps Online

Craps is one of the real signature games; countless movies see the protagonist or other characters ‘shooting some craps’ at the Vegas casino, in the army barracks, even in the street.

A highly attractive, evocative green baize table, the rattle of the dice, a plethora of different ways to bet – perhaps only Roulette runs it close in the addictive stakes!

But to the neophyte, the game can appear quite daunting, especially the prospect of having to walk into an intimidating casino and rub shoulders with hard-bitten, seasoned players who aren’t going to take to kindly to you committing any faux pas or being too slow with rolling the dice.

However, you don’t need to be afraid – not only will we explain a little of the basic craps rules, as well as briefly touching on the best craps strategy, but the online revolution has meant that you can play from the comfort of your own home without having to worry about any of the distractions mentioned above.

How to play craps?

Though the game seems a bit opaque and confusing, there are some basics which, once you’ve got a handle on, will give you a way into playing for small stakes or for free, before progressing to the finer points.

First things first, craps turns on the roll of 2 dice, and in the online version you are always the shooter (ie. the person who rolls).

In the first instance, you can bet on the outcome of the roll, whether it will ‘pass’ (the number 7 or 11 comes up) or ‘don’t pass’ (where bets pay out if a 2 or 3 comes up).

What about any other numbers? Well, if a 12 comes up on the first roll, no one wins and the stake ‘pushes back’ to the player.

All other numbers (ie. 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10) establish the ‘point’, and you can bet on whether the point comes up before a 7 is rolled, or not.

There are also single roll bets which as their name suggests, allow you to bet on just the very next roll of the dice. There are several of these marked on the casino craps table; consult the paytable with your casino for the online craps odds and how the bets payout.

Similarly, there are multi-roll bets which you can place to bet on certain outcomes over subsequent rolls of the dice.

It’s beyond the scope of this piece to go into these in detail, but 2 guiding principles should help you with your first game of craps online; bets marked in red are generally single roll, and yellow, multi-roll.

And secondly, remember if a point is established, rolls continue until either a 7 or the point itself comes up.

What about craps playing tactics for beginners?

Perhaps the best craps strategy is to try out a free online craps game, and play for a long time, until you’re comfortable with the game.

We should say that, whilst all bets are enticing, some are better than others.

For instance, most of the single and multi-roll bets payout odds which are not as good as the real chances of an outcome happening (because the craps casino game has to make money for the house, remember).

One good option on the come out (first) roll is to bet on the Pass Line, as it has one of the lowest house edges (the advantage the casino has over the player) at 1.4%.

Then to add 2 Come bets after the initial Pass bet also heightens your odds of winning something, and making a Free Odds bet, which involves placing your stake literally behind the pass line (after you have made a Pass bet on the first roll) and pays out at TRUE odds and has no house advantage at all.

For this reason many online casinos limit the amount you can bet on Free Odds bets and tend to keep the very fact of them rather low key, which is why we’re tipping you the wink!

As stated, when deciding where to play Craps online, you should consult the house rules and paytable to get a clearer picture of whether their version of Craps is ideal; in any case you only want to be gaming with the best sites and so you should only choose those casinos listed here – many of them have Craps as part of their ‘table games’ categories.

We say this not to boast, but because the sad reality is that even today there are some sharp operators out there; our casinos only make the list if they tick all the boxes when it comes to security, speed of payout, quality and selection of games, bonus offers, languages, which currencies they accept, which payment providers can be used, customer services, certification and registration location and more.

And believe us, if a casino should cease to meet the grade they will be removed forthwith (which is precisely what happened with Unibet, by the way).

One more thing that we should mention – whilst many of the casinos offer live dealer versions of some table games like Roulette, live dealer Craps is generally not available at the time of writing.

This is perhaps because of the larger variety of possible bets compared with games that lend themselves more to Live Dealer versions, such as BlackJack.

So Craps when played via the internet generally makes use of automated software where it’s just you against the house; live Craps online is likely to be some way off on the horizon, though rest assured that we’ll be first to cover it should it come into vogue!