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Don't-You-Lose in Playing Craps
A craps limitation, imposed in almost all casinos, is that the amount the bettor is allowed to wager on the odds can be no more than his or her bet on Pass, or Don't Pass. The odds bets are made by placing an amount of chips equal to your original Pass or Don't Pass bet just behind the first stack of chips on the layout.
You will have to think of this yourself, as no casino plays up the possibility of odds betting, and no croupier, or shill, will ever mention it, even in a whisper.
The odds are offered only to entice those in the know to the craps table - folks who would otherwise regard it as a sucker trap, a la baccarat.
The same proposition bets are available if you play the Come or Don't-Come bets, and also reduce the house odds on those wagers.
The Come bettor effectively takes the shooter's action on themselves, betting on any roll of the dice - not just the come-out - that the number rolled will come up again before the shooter rolls a 7.
If a 7 is rolled on the turn on which the Come bettor first places his bet, they win, just as if they were the shooter.
Otherwise, if the dice show, say, a 9, the Come bettor now needs a 9 before a 7 to win. This wager can be made on any throw, and is completely independent of what the shooter's point might happen to be.
If you wish, you can place a Come bet on every roll of the dice. But be careful. Unless you can follow the lightning-fast action with a practiced eye, you may soon be out of your depth.
On the Don't-Come bet, as with Don't-Pass, most casino bar payoffs on the 2 or the 12. Some may even bar the 3, which makes Don't-Pass and Don't-Come into bad bets for the smart player, since 3 will come up twice as often as 2 or 12.
The Don't-Come bettor wagers that on any given roll after the come-out, the shooter will not make their point, or will crap out.
Both the Come and Don't-Come bets, like the Pass-Line bet and Don't-Pass-Line bet, pay even money to the winner.
To a novice looking at the layout of a craps table, it would seem that the other bets are much more promising. Others are certainly more prominently displayed, and more loudly touted by the croupier, and for good reason.
These are bets on which the house can really make money - and the sucker can really lose money.
The sucker bets, as always, have high payoffs when you win. But you usually don't win. All the same, some of the people all of the time, and a lot of the people once in a while, think it's fun to bet on a long shot - to take a really interesting and exciting risk.
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