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The flow of the pass line bet on the craps table follows the flow of the game of craps perfectly to a tee. Let's take it from the start on the "Come Out" roll, which means no point has been established yet. Player A (let's call him Jake) makes his pass line bet for $5 and puts one $5 chip within the boundaries of the pass line on the craps table. The shooter throws the come out roll and there are three outcomes based on the Pass Line bet:
- A 7 or 11 is thrown which is a "front-line winner". This means Jake immediately wins his pass line bet of $5. Note that even after a 7 or 11 was thrown that we are still in the come out roll stage because a point was not established on the craps table.
- A 2, 3, or 12 is thrown which is called "craps". This means Jake lost his pass line bet of $5. Note that even after a 2, 3, or 12 was thrown that we are still in the come out roll stage because a point was not established on the craps table.
- The last outcome is a point being established. This means a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10 was thrown. Jake's $5 bet will stay on the table at this point, as the outcome of this roll on the craps table is still to be determined. The dealer will place a hockey-puck looking marker on the number that was established as the point. Now, we are no longer on the come out roll and this is where the fun starts at the craps table!
By the way, let's pretend the point established for this roll was a 10. At this point, Jake would have the option of putting an "odds" bet behind his original pass line bet at the craps table. An odds bet is a supplement to the original pass line bet and depending on the house odds you can go anywhere from 1x to 100x your original bet. That's dependent on the casino you are at and they almost always have their odds published on the table. Let's assume for this demonstration that they only allow 1x (single) odds on this table. Jake goes ahead and puts a $5 chip behind his original pass line bet. It is very wise to make odds bets as they bring the house advantages to much lower levels than they are with just the original pass line bet.
For demonstrations sake let's say the next roll at the craps table is a 6. Fine, nothing happens in regards to Jake's bet, as he has no bets for the 6. Other players may be paid or lose their bets depending on the bets they made. Let's not worry about those other bets at this point as we are trying to keep this as simple as possible. The next roll is, what do you know, a 10!?Jake wins his original pass line bet which is $5 and Jake wins his "odds" bet which pays him 2 to 1 on his $5 because it was a number 10 as the point. So, Jake netted a $15 win from his original $10 bet. You are probably wondering why Jake got 2 for 1 for his odds bet at the craps table. That's the beauty of the odds bets, they pay greater amounts then wagered. Here are the payout tables for odds bets:
- Point is 6 or 8 - 6 to 5 odds
- Point is 5 or 9 - 3 to 2 odds
- Point is 4 or 10 - 2 to 1 odds
Obviously, the house will pay more for the odds bets because it is more likely that a 7 will come up before any one of those other numbers thus your greater payouts.
Please note that if a 7 was rolled before the 10 in our previous example that Jake would lose both his original pass line bet and his odds bet but I like to do optimistic examples to teach people how to play at the craps table!
Armed with this knowledge of the pass line bet and the odds bet is, honestly, all you need to know to enjoy and playing at the craps table since you are actually making the most common and smartest bet in the game. I've seen people that have played the game for years and still only make pass line and odds bets... That's it, nothing else!?The pass line and odds bet are the most integral and basic bet in craps. Of course, there are many more bets in the game of craps and that will be the focus of other pages on this site, which I welcome you to look at in our left-hand navigation bar.
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