Free Odds: How To Place The Free Odds Craps Bet
I am going to tell you something that sounds like a lie, and then I am going to spend this whole article proving it is true. There is a bet at every craps table that has a zero percent house edge. None. The casino has no statistical advantage over you on this bet. They pay it out at exactly the right amount based on the actual probabilities. Over a long enough sample, you and the casino break even on it.
This bet is not advertised on the table. There is no labeled box for it on the felt. The dealers do not push you to make it. The stickman does not call out for it the way he calls out for prop bets. Most casinos would rather you not make it at all. Some would rather you not even know about it.
It is called free odds, sometimes just called odds or taking odds, and it is the single best bet you can make in any casino. Better than blackjack with perfect basic strategy. Better than any video poker variant. Better than anything else on the floor. And the only requirement is that you have to make a pass line or come bet first to qualify.
If you have read our pass line article, you have already seen me hint at this. We are going to break it down all the way here. By the end you should know exactly how to use this bet, why most players miss it, and how it changes the math of the entire game when you do use it.
Why this bet exists at all
Before we get into how it works, the natural question is why does a casino offer a bet they cannot win money on? Casinos are in the business of taking your money. They do not give bets away.
The answer is that they offer free odds because they have to. They tie it to the pass line bet, which they do have an edge on. To bet free odds, you must first have a pass line bet down. The casino is willing to let you ride your money at zero edge on free odds, because they know they are getting their cut on the pass line itself, and they figure most players either will not know about free odds or will not bet enough to make a real difference.
Casinos are right about that, by the way. Most players do not max out their odds. Most do not bet odds at all. The bet is so quietly done, so invisible on the table, that you can play craps for years and never realize it exists if nobody tells you. The casino is fine with that. They want the pass line action without the corresponding odds action.
That is why we keep coming back to this point. The free odds bet is the secret most casual craps players never figure out. The smart move is to take it every single time.
How free odds works
Once you have a pass line bet down and the shooter has set a point, you are eligible to take free odds. Here is the mechanic.
The pass line bet is sitting on the line in front of you. The point has been established, say it is a 6. You take chips and place them just behind your pass line bet, in the area of the felt right next to but not on the line. There is no labeled box for this. You are putting your chips in the empty space behind the line. The dealer will see you place them and they will know it is a free odds bet on your pass line.
The free odds bet wins if your pass line bet wins. It loses if your pass line bet loses. Same outcome, same trigger. If the shooter rolls the point of 6 before a 7, both your pass line and your odds bet win. If the shooter rolls a 7 first, both lose. They are linked.
The difference between the two bets is what they pay. The pass line pays even money no matter what the point is. The free odds bet pays based on the actual probability of making the point, which means different payouts depending on what the point is. We will get into the specific payouts in a minute.
The bet is self-service. You place the chips yourself and you collect winnings yourself. Just like the pass line, no dealer interaction is needed unless you want to add to or remove the bet. And unlike the pass line, you can pull free odds down at any time. They are not a contract bet. If you change your mind in the middle of a round, you can take your odds back. You almost certainly should not, but the option is there.
What it pays
This is where it gets interesting and where the math becomes obvious. The free odds bet pays at the true probability of making the point. No house cut. No fudge factor.
If the point is 4 or 10, free odds pays 2 to 1. So if you put $10 in odds and the point is 4, and the shooter makes the 4 before a 7, you win $20 on the odds bet plus your original $10 back, for $30 total.
If the point is 5 or 9, free odds pays 3 to 2. So if you put $10 in odds on a 5 point, and the shooter makes the 5, you win $15 on the odds bet plus your $10 back, for $25 total.
If the point is 6 or 8, free odds pays 6 to 5. So if you put $10 in odds on an 8 point, and the shooter makes the 8, you win $12 on the odds bet plus your $10 back, for $22 total.
Notice the pattern. The harder the point is to make, the more the bet pays. The 4 and 10 are the hardest points, with only three ways each to come up before a 7. So they pay 2 to 1, the highest. The 6 and 8 are the easiest points, with five ways each. They pay 6 to 5, the lowest. The 5 and 9 are in the middle, paying 3 to 2.
These payouts are exactly the true odds of making each point against rolling a 7. That is what makes this bet a fair bet. The casino is not skimming anything off the top. Compare these to place bets, which we cover in the place bets article, and you will see that place bet payouts are slightly worse than the true odds. That gap is where the casino's edge on place bets comes from. Free odds has no gap. It pays the true odds exactly.
The math, in plain English
I want you to actually feel why this bet is so good, not just hear me say it.
Take a point of 6. There are 5 ways to roll a 6 with two dice and 6 ways to roll a 7. So out of every 11 rolls that resolve the bet, you win 5 times and lose 6 times.
If you bet $10 on free odds with a 6 point, the casino pays 6 to 5 when you win. So your 5 winning bets out of 11 pay $12 each, for $60 total. Your 6 losing bets out of 11 cost you $10 each, for $60 total. You win $60, you lose $60, you break even.
That is what zero house edge looks like. Over many bets, the wins and losses cancel each other out exactly. The casino is not making money on this bet. They are not losing money either. They are just letting your money ride at fair odds.
The same math works on every point. Take a 4 point. There are 3 ways to roll a 4 and 6 ways to roll a 7, so out of every 9 resolved bets, you win 3 times and lose 6 times. The casino pays 2 to 1 when you win. So your 3 wins out of 9 pay $20 each on a $10 bet, for $60 total. Your 6 losses out of 9 cost $10 each, for $60 total. Break even, again.
This is the only bet in the casino that works this way. Every other bet, the casino pays you slightly less than the true odds. That difference is the house edge. Free odds has no difference. The math is exactly even.
How much you can bet
The casino is happy to let you ride zero-edge action up to a point, but they do limit how much odds you can take relative to your pass line bet. This limit is set by the casino itself and varies from place to place.
The most common structure today is called 3x-4x-5x odds. It works like this. If the point is 4 or 10, you can bet up to three times your pass line bet on odds. If the point is 5 or 9, you can bet up to four times. If the point is 6 or 8, you can bet up to five times.
So if you have a $10 pass line bet, here is what 3x-4x-5x odds lets you do. On a 4 or 10 point, up to $30 in odds. On a 5 or 9 point, up to $40 in odds. On a 6 or 8 point, up to $50 in odds.
This structure looks weird at first glance but there is a reason for it. The casino designed it so that maximum odds always pay the same total amount when the point hits, which is six times your pass line bet. Three times $10 paid at 2 to 1 is $60. Four times $10 paid at 3 to 2 is $60. Five times $10 paid at 6 to 5 is $60. The dealers can pay every player the same way no matter what the point is, which makes their life easier.
Other casinos run different structures. You will sometimes see 5x odds across the board, or 10x odds, or even 100x odds at certain Vegas locations like the El Cortez and Casino Royale. The higher the multiplier, the more odds you can take, and the lower your overall house edge becomes when you take the maximum. We will get into that math in a minute.
The combined house edge with odds
Here is the magic. When you combine a pass line bet with free odds, the overall house edge on your total bet drops dramatically. The casino still has the 1.41 percent edge on the flat pass line portion. But the odds portion has zero edge. So the overall edge averages out across the combined bet.
Some rough numbers. If you bet $10 on the pass line with no odds, the house edge is 1.41 percent. If you add 1x odds, putting another $10 in odds, the overall edge drops to about 0.85 percent. If you add 2x odds, $20 behind your line, the edge drops to about 0.61 percent. With 3x-4x-5x odds, which puts an average of 4x your pass line bet in odds across the various points, the overall edge drops to about 0.37 percent. With 10x odds, the edge is around 0.18 percent. At 100x odds, the edge is barely above zero.
Compare those numbers to the rest of the casino. Slots, 5 to 15 percent. Roulette, 5.26 percent on American wheels. Blackjack, somewhere between 0.5 and 1 percent for a player using basic strategy. With free odds maxed at 5x, you are playing a game with an effective house edge below all of those, including blackjack, without having to memorize basic strategy or count cards or do anything but bet smart.
This is the whole reason craps is a smart game. Without odds, the pass line is decent. With odds, the combined bet is one of the best plays in the building. Period.
Why most players do not max their odds
If this bet is so amazing, why does almost nobody at the table take full odds? A few reasons.
The first is bankroll size. Maxing odds means risking more money per round. If your bankroll is $200 and you are at a $10 table, putting $50 behind every pass line bet means you are committing $60 per round between the line and the odds. That gives you fewer rounds to survive a cold streak. People who do not have the cushion to max their odds will often only take 1x or 2x.
The second is awareness. A lot of players, especially new ones, just do not know about the bet. The casino does not advertise it. The dealers do not always tell new players about it unless asked. Plenty of people show up, bet the pass line for years, and never figure out that they could have been adding free odds the whole time.
The third is the lack of a labeled spot on the table. People are conditioned to make bets that have boxes for them. The pass line has a box. Place bets have boxes. Even prop bets have boxes. Free odds is just an empty patch of felt behind the line. New players do not know to put chips there because nothing on the table tells them they can.
The fourth is variance. Free odds increases your average bet size, which means bigger swings in both directions. You can win more, but you can also lose more in a single session. Some players do not like that volatility, even though the long-term math is in their favor.
None of these are good reasons not to take odds, but they explain why so few players do. Now you know better.
How to actually take odds at the table
The mechanics are simple but worth walking through.
You have a pass line bet down. The shooter rolls the come out. Say it is a 6. The dealer flips the puck on and places it on the 6 box. Now you are eligible to take odds.
Take chips totaling the amount you want to bet on odds. Place them on the felt directly behind your pass line bet, in the empty space outside the pass line itself. The dealer will see them and acknowledge the bet. You do not need to say anything. They know what it is.
If you are at a 3x-4x-5x table with a $10 pass line bet on a 6 point, the maximum odds is $50. So you put a $50 chip, or five $10 chips, behind your pass line. Now you have $10 on the line at 1.41 percent edge and $50 in odds at 0 percent edge. Your total exposure is $60, but your effective house edge is much lower than if you had just put $10 on the line alone.
If the shooter makes the 6, you collect $10 from your pass line bet and $60 from your odds bet (5 times $10 paid at 6 to 5 = $60). Total winnings, $70. Your bets stay where they are unless you take them down, and the puck flips to off for the next come out roll.
If the shooter sevens out, you lose both bets. The dealer sweeps everything off the layout.
You can also take odds in other amounts, not just the maximum. The casino does not require you to max out. You can put 1x, 2x, 3x, whatever you want, up to the table maximum. Just remember that taking less than max means you are leaving free money on the table in a probability sense.
One thing to know about odds bets and small chips. Some odds payouts result in fractional amounts. A $5 odds bet on a 6 point pays 6 to 5, which is $6 in winnings. That is a clean number. But if you bet $7 in odds, the payout would be $8.40, which the dealer cannot pay because casinos do not deal in cents. Most casinos round down to the nearest dollar, which puts a tiny bit of edge back in their favor. To avoid this, bet odds in amounts that produce clean payouts. On 6 and 8, bet in multiples of 5. On 5 and 9, bet in multiples of 2. On 4 and 10, bet in any whole dollar amount, since 2 to 1 always works out evenly.
Don't pass odds: a quick note
If you are betting the don't pass line instead of the pass line, you can also take odds. The math works in reverse. Don't pass bettors are betting that a 7 comes before the point, which is a favorable position, so they have to lay odds rather than take them. Lay odds means you put up more than you stand to win.
The payouts flip. On a 4 or 10 point, you lay 2 to 1, meaning you put $20 to win $10. On a 5 or 9, you lay 3 to 2. On a 6 or 8, you lay 6 to 5. The bet pays even money minus the laid amount when you win.
The math is still zero house edge, just like regular pass line odds. Don't pass with full odds is just as good a bet as pass line with full odds. We get into don't pass strategy in our don't pass article.
Odds on come bets
The same odds bet exists for come bets. Once a come bet has established a number, you can take odds on it just like you do on the pass line. The mechanics are slightly different, you have to hand the chips to the dealer rather than placing them yourself, but the math and the payouts are exactly the same.
This is one of the bigger reasons to use come bets in the first place. They let you have multiple numbers running with free odds attached to each one, multiplying the amount of zero-edge action you have on the table. We cover this in the come bet article.
Should you always take odds
Yes. Always. As much as your bankroll comfortably allows.
There is no scenario in which not taking odds is the better play. The bet has zero house edge. Adding it to your pass line bet only improves your overall odds. The only reason not to take it is if you cannot afford to.
If you cannot afford to take full odds at the table you are at, you are at the wrong table. Drop down to a smaller minimum so you can comfortably max your odds. You will get more action at zero edge that way and you will stretch your bankroll further. A $5 pass line with $25 in odds is better strategy than a $10 pass line with no odds. Same total exposure when both bets are in action, but the smaller table lets you ride more of your money on the bet that has no edge.
This is the single best piece of strategic advice in all of craps. Bet smaller on the line, max the odds, take full advantage of the only zero-edge bet in the casino. Most players do the opposite. They bet big on the line and skip the odds entirely. They are leaving money on the table, in a real and quantifiable way.
The bottom line on free odds
Free odds is the best bet in the casino. It pays at true odds, has zero house edge, and is available to any player with a pass line or come bet down. Taking it lowers your effective house edge across the entire wager, sometimes dramatically. Not taking it leaves money on the table.
If you only learn one strategic concept in craps, learn this one. Pass line plus full free odds is the foundational play of smart craps. Make this combination a habit, every round, every shooter. You will outlast players who skip it. You will come out further ahead in winning sessions and lose less in losing sessions. The math works.
The next article gets into the don't pass bet, which is the opposite of the pass line. It has slightly better math but a different feel at the table, and it is worth knowing about even if you never end up betting it.
Read next: The Don't Pass Bet