Common Craps Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Most of what makes a craps player good is not the bets they make. It is the bets they avoid. The math at a craps table is friendlier than at almost any other casino game, but only if you stick to the right bets and avoid the traps. The players who lose the most money at craps are not the unlucky ones. They are the ones who make consistent strategic mistakes round after round.
I have been around craps tables long enough to see most of these mistakes happen in real time. Some of them I made myself when I was new. Some of them I see new players making every single time I play. The patterns are remarkably consistent. The same handful of errors come up over and over, and most of them have nothing to do with luck. They are choices, and they are choices you can stop making once you know to look for them.
This article walks through the biggest mistakes new players make at craps, why they cost you money, and how to avoid them. Reading this could save you more money over your craps career than any bet I am going to recommend. Strategy is partly about doing the right things and partly about not doing the wrong things. The not-doing list is the easier one to fix.
Mistake 1: Skipping free odds
The biggest mistake new craps players make is the one they do not even know they are making. Most beginners who learn the pass line bet never learn about the free odds bet that goes behind it. They bet the line, win or lose on the line, and never realize there is a zero-house-edge bet sitting right there for the taking.
Free odds is the only bet in the entire casino with no edge for the house. The casino pays it out at the true mathematical odds of making the point, which means over the long run, you and the casino break even on it. Adding free odds to your pass line bet drops the combined house edge from 1.41 percent to as low as 0.18 percent depending on how much odds the casino allows.
The reason new players miss it is simple. The casino does not advertise free odds. There is no labeled box for it on the layout. The dealer does not push it. The bet is invisible unless somebody tells you about it.
The fix is to make free odds part of your standard play. Every time a point gets set after you have a pass line bet down, take odds. As much as you can comfortably afford within the table's limit. We have a full article on the free odds bet that goes deep on this. If you read only one bet article, read that one.
Mistake 2: Betting the proposition bets in the middle of the table
The center section of the layout is where the proposition bets live. Hardways. Any seven. Any craps. The yo. Boxcars. Hop bets. The horn. All of these bets have flashy payouts, often 7 to 1, 15 to 1, or even 30 to 1 on a single roll. They look exciting. They are exciting when they hit.
The math on every single one of them is bad. House edges range from about 9 percent on hardways to over 16 percent on some of the one-roll bets. Compare those numbers to the 1.41 percent on the pass line, or the under-1-percent edge on pass line plus odds, and you can see the gap. Prop bets are roughly 10 times more expensive than the smart bets.
The trap is that they hit just often enough to feel rewarding. You bet a hardway 8, the shooter rolls a 4-4 a few minutes later, you collect 9 to 1 on your bet, and it feels great. What you do not see is all the times the prop bet did not hit. The losses get blurred in your memory while the wins stay sharp. Over a session you remember the hits and forget the misses, and you feel like you broke even on prop bets when in fact you got crushed.
The fix is to just stop betting them. Make the pass line. Take odds. Make come bets. Place the 6 and 8 if you want extra action. Leave the center of the table alone. The stickman will keep calling out for prop bets in his patter, but smile at him and ignore the pitch. He is selling. You are not buying.
Mistake 3: Placing the 4 or 10
This one is a smaller version of the prop bet mistake. Place bets on the 4 and 10 carry a 6.67 percent house edge, which is the worst place bet on the table by a wide margin. Place bets on the 6 and 8 are 1.52 percent. Place bets on the 5 and 9 are 4 percent. The 4 and 10 are an outlier, and not in a good way.
The trap is that the 4 and 10 pay better than the other place bets, at 9 to 5 instead of 7 to 6 or 7 to 5. The bigger payout looks attractive. But the bigger payout is to compensate for the lower probability of hitting, and the casino does not pay quite enough to make the bet worthwhile.
If you want action on the 4 or 10, use a come bet. House edge of 1.41 percent. Lower than every other option. Plus you can take free odds on a come bet, which drops the edge even further. The come bet on the 4 or 10 is mathematically about five times cheaper than a place bet on the same number.
The fix is to never place the 4 or 10. If you want to bet those numbers, do it through a come bet. We cover the full math in the place bets article.
Mistake 4: Chasing losses
You sit down at a craps table with $200 in your pocket. The shooter sevens out fast, then the next shooter craps out twice on the come out, then sevens out fast too. You are down $80 in 10 minutes. You start thinking, I am going to win some of this back. You bet bigger. The next shooter is also cold. You are now down $150. You think, I just need one good roll to get it all back. You bet bigger again, hoping a hot streak rescues you.
This is chasing losses. It is the single most expensive psychological mistake in gambling. The math does not change because you lost the last few rounds. The dice do not owe you a comeback. They have no memory. The next roll is just as likely to be a 7 as the previous roll was, regardless of what happened before.
The reason chasing is so dangerous is that it leads to bigger and bigger bets when you are losing, which means you lose more when you keep losing. A flat bettor who would have lost $200 in a session ends up losing $500 because they doubled down trying to get back to even.
The fix is to set a session loss limit before you sit down and stick to it. If your bankroll for the night is $200, when that $200 is gone, you walk away. You do not pull out another $100. You do not move to a different table. You do not chase. You go get a drink, take a walk, do anything but bet. The dice will be there tomorrow. We cover this in detail in the bankroll management article.
Mistake 5: Increasing bets when you are winning
The opposite of chasing losses is pressing wins, which sounds smart but is actually almost as dangerous. The shooter is hot, you are up $100, and you start thinking, this run is going to keep going, let me bet bigger to maximize it.
The math does not change when you are winning either. The dice still have no memory. A hot streak does not predict another hot streak. The next roll is independent of the last roll. Increasing your bet during a hot streak just means losing more when the streak ends, which it always does.
The trap is that you remember the times you pressed correctly and the streak kept going. You do not remember the times you pressed and the streak ended on the next roll, costing you a bigger loss than you would have had if you had stayed flat. The selective memory makes pressing feel smarter than it is.
The fix is to bet flat. Pick a unit size that fits your bankroll, bet that unit consistently, and let the math work over time. Some progression is fine, like adding small amounts as you win, but big jumps in bet size during streaks usually backfire.
Mistake 6: Getting drunk at the table
Live casinos give you free drinks while you play. The drinks are free in the sense that you do not pay for them at the bar, but they are not really free. The casino is comping drinks because they know what happens when you drink while gambling.
You make worse decisions. You bet bigger than you would sober. You stay longer than you would sober. You chase losses more than you would sober. You make the prop bets you would never make sober. You forget about free odds. You make all the mistakes in this article more frequently and more severely.
I am not telling you not to drink at the table. A few drinks over a long session is fine for most people. What I am saying is that you should be aware of what alcohol does to your judgment, and you should set bigger guardrails around your bankroll if you are going to be drinking. The math works against you a little when you are sober. It works against you a lot when you are drunk.
The fix is to either drink in moderation or stop playing when you start feeling it. Alternate water with your drinks. Set a hard cutoff. If you find yourself making bets you would not have made at the start of the night, that is your sign to walk away.
Mistake 7: Not understanding which bets are off on the come out
This one is more about confusion than strategic error, but it costs new players money when they misunderstand what is happening with their bets.
By default, place bets, hardways and most other bets you make during a point cycle are off during the come out roll of the next round. Off means they do not win or lose. They sit there inactive. So if you have a place bet on the 6 and the shooter rolls a 6 on the come out, you do not win that bet. The 6 just goes by.
New players who do not know about this rule sometimes get angry when their place bet number rolls on the come out and the dealer does not pay them. They think the dealer made a mistake. They get into arguments. They feel cheated.
The dealer did not make a mistake. The default off setting is the rule. You can override it by telling the dealer "place bets working" before the come out roll, and the dealer will put a small "on" button on top of your bet. From that point on, your place bets are active during the come out.
The fix is to know the rule and decide whether you want your bets working or not. Most pass line bettors leave their place bets off on the come out, since the 7 wins their pass line and would lose their place bets at the same time. Some players who do not bet the pass line turn their place bets on. Either is fine, just know which you are doing.
Mistake 8: Not knowing the table minimums
Live tables have minimum bets posted on a placard. Some bets have higher minimums than the table minimum. For example, a $5 table might require you to bet at least $6 to place the 6 or 8, since 7-to-6 payouts only work cleanly on multiples of $6. Hardways have their own minimum, often $1.
New players sometimes try to make bets below the minimum, the dealer sends them back, and they get embarrassed. Or they make bets at amounts that result in rounded-down payouts, costing them small but persistent amounts of money over a session.
The fix is to look at the placard before you sit down, ask the dealer if anything is unclear, and bet in clean multiples that produce full payouts. On the 6 and 8 bet in multiples of $6. On the 5 and 9 bet in multiples of $5. On the 4 and 10 bet in any whole dollar amount, since 9 to 5 still works on small numbers if you bet in multiples of 5.
Mistake 9: Trying to time the dice
Some players believe that there are patterns in the dice. That a certain shooter is hot or cold. That a 7 is "due" because it has not come up in a while. That you can predict the next roll based on the last few rolls.
None of this is true. Each roll of the dice is independent of every other roll. The probability of a 7 on the next throw is exactly 6 in 36, regardless of what the last 10 throws were. There are no patterns. There are no streaks that mean anything. There is no due number. The gambler's fallacy, the belief that random events even out over short stretches, is exactly what it sounds like, a fallacy. We covered this in our article on dice probability.
Players who try to time the dice end up betting more when they think they are about to win and less when they think they are about to lose. The math says they are wrong about both. The dice do not coordinate with their predictions. So the players who time the dice tend to bet more when the dice happen to lose and less when the dice happen to win, which is the worst possible outcome.
The fix is to bet flat or with very small adjustments. Trust the math. Do not try to outsmart the dice. They are random. They will keep being random. Your job is to make smart bets with the right edge, not to predict the unpredictable.
Mistake 10: Playing at minimums you cannot afford
You walk up to a $25 table because that is the only table with an open spot, even though your bankroll is only $200. You start playing because the action is right there in front of you. After a few rounds you have lost half your money to one cold roll.
This is a sizing mistake. You should not be playing a $25 table on a $200 bankroll. You will not last long enough to ride out the variance. You need a bankroll that is at least 20 to 30 times the minimum bet, ideally more, to give yourself a real chance of surviving a cold streak.
The fix is to either find a smaller table or go play online. Online craps minimums can be as low as $1 a round, which lets a $200 bankroll last for hundreds of rolls. A $5 live table also works. Do not overstretch your bankroll because you do not want to find another table.
The article on bankroll management goes into the math of how big a bankroll you need for different bet sizes.
Mistake 11: Not paying attention
The pace of a live craps table can lull you into autopilot. You bet the pass line, the shooter rolls, you collect or lose, you bet again. After 30 or 40 rounds you start zoning out. You miss things.
You miss the dealer paying you the wrong amount. You miss the puck flipping at the wrong time. You miss the stickman calling out a number you bet on. You make bets you did not mean to make because you were not paying attention. You forget which bets are working and which are off.
The fix is to stay engaged. Watch the dice. Watch the puck. Watch the dealer pay you and verify the amount looks right. Pay attention to your own bets and where they are on the layout. If something seems wrong, speak up before the next roll happens. Once the dice are out, fixing a mistake gets harder.
Mistake 12: Trusting "systems"
The internet is full of craps betting systems. The Martingale, where you double your bet after every loss. The Iron Cross, where you bet field plus place 5, 6 and 8 to win on every roll except 7. The 5-count, where you wait for a shooter to roll five times before betting on them. There are dozens more, with names and elaborate rules and websites devoted to promoting them.
None of them work. The math on a craps table is fixed. The house edge on each bet is what it is. No combination of bets and no progression scheme can change the underlying edge. Systems can change your variance, the shape of your wins and losses over time, but they cannot change the expected value. Over a long enough sample, every system loses money at the same rate that flat betting does, because the underlying bets have the same edge no matter how you size or sequence them.
Some systems are actively dangerous. The Martingale, for example, has you doubling your bet after every loss. After 7 losses in a row, you would need to bet 128 times your starting unit to "win back" your losses. Your bankroll runs out. The casino's table maximum stops you. You crash. The math has not been your friend the whole time, you just did not see it until the seventh loss.
The fix is to ignore the systems. Bet flat. Bet smart. The pass line plus full odds is better than any system you will find online. Anything more elaborate is somebody trying to sell you a course or a book. Save your money.
Mistake 13: Not setting a quit point
You came in with $200. You are now up $400. You think, I am running great, let me keep going. An hour later you have given it all back. Plus another $100 of your original bankroll. You leave with $100 instead of $400.
This is the failure to set a quit point on the upside. New players often have a loss limit but not a win limit, and the result is that good sessions evaporate before they have a chance to count.
The fix is to decide before you sit down what your win goal is and what you will do when you hit it. A common rule is to lock up your original bankroll and a portion of your winnings as soon as you double up. So if you came in with $200 and you are now up to $400, put $300 in your pocket and only play with the remaining $100. If you lose the $100, you walk away with $300. If you keep winning, you keep winning. Either way, you are not giving back your whole stack.
Some players set a hard quit number. If they hit $500, they are done for the day. Some players use a trailing stop, where they leave when they lose 25 percent of their peak. There are different ways to do it. The point is to do it, not which method you pick. Without a plan to lock up wins, you will give them all back.
Mistake 14: Beating yourself up
This one is psychological more than strategic, but it leads to strategic mistakes.
You make a bad bet. You lose. You think, I am an idiot. You start playing differently because you are upset. You bet bigger to make up for the bad call. You make more bad calls because you are angry instead of focused. The losing accelerates because the emotion is driving the bets instead of the math.
The fix is to forgive yourself for mistakes and reset. Everybody makes bad bets sometimes. Even experienced players. The dice do not care about your moral failings, and neither does the math. Take a breath, take a moment away from the table if you need to, and come back when you can play with a clear head. If you cannot reset emotionally, walk away for the night.
The summary list
Here are all the mistakes in one place. Skipping free odds. Betting prop bets. Placing the 4 or 10. Chasing losses. Pressing too hard during wins. Drinking too much. Not knowing the come-out off rule. Not knowing table minimums. Trying to time the dice. Playing at minimums you cannot afford. Not paying attention. Trusting systems. Not setting a quit point. Beating yourself up.
Most new players make at least half of these. Some make all of them. The good news is that every single one is fixable just by knowing about it. There is no skill required. You just have to know what the trap looks like, recognize it when you see it, and step around it.
The single biggest improvement you can make as a new player is learning the bets that have low edges and avoiding the bets that have high edges. The pass line and free odds are the foundation. Come bets and place bets on the 6 and 8 are reasonable additions. Everything else is some flavor of trap. Stick to the smart bets, manage your bankroll, set your stops, and you have done 90 percent of the work of becoming a good craps player.
The next article is the one I keep referencing. Bankroll management. Read it before you put real money on a table. It is the difference between a hobby and a problem.
Read next: Bankroll Management