Craps House Edge — What Each Bet Costs

Craps does not have one house edge. Every wager has its own price. A standard Pass Line bet costs about 1.41% in long-run expectation, Don’t Pass about 1.36%, Place 6 or 8 about 1.52%, and an Any Seven bet about 16.67%. Odds taken behind a line bet are different again: when they are paid at true odds, the odds portion has 0% house edge.

That spread is why asking “What is the house edge in craps?” is only the first question. The useful question is: which bet, at what payout, for how much total action?

House edge is the payout gap, not the chance of losing

House edge measures the casino’s average advantage relative to the amount initially wagered on a bet:

House Edge = -Expected Value ÷ Initial Wager

If a $10 wager has an expected value of -$0.14, its house edge is approximately 1.4%. That does not mean the bet loses 1.4% of the time. It means that across a very large number of identically priced wagers, the average mathematical loss approaches about 1.4 cents per dollar wagered.

Short sessions can finish far above or below that expectation because dice outcomes have substantial variance. House edge describes the price of the wager, not what must happen tonight.

A practical reference table

The figures below assume common U.S.-style payouts. A table can offer different Field payouts, buy-bet commission rules, bonus bets, or other variants, so the posted layout and house rules always control.

This table is a pricing comparison, not a recommendation to fill the layout with every low-edge wager. Adding bets increases the amount of money exposed.

Where the 1.41% Pass Line number comes from

The Pass Line percentage is not an estimate pulled from casino results. It can be derived from the 36 equally likely two-dice combinations. On the come-out roll, 7 or 11 wins in 8 combinations and 2, 3 or 12 loses in 4. The other 24 combinations establish a point.

Once a point exists, only that point or 7 matters to the eventual line decision. A point of 4 or 10 has three combinations against six combinations of 7, so the conditional chance of making the point first is 3/9. For 5 or 9 it is 4/10; for 6 or 8 it is 5/11. Weight those point outcomes by how often each point is established and combine them with the immediate come-out wins and losses:

Pass EV
= 8/36 - 4/36
  + 2 × (3/36) × (3/9 - 6/9)
  + 2 × (4/36) × (4/10 - 6/10)
  + 2 × (5/36) × (5/11 - 6/11)
≈ -0.014141

For a $1 flat wager, the expected value is about -$0.01414, giving a house edge of about 1.414%. This calculation also shows why a line bet cannot be judged from the come-out roll alone. Most come-out rolls establish a point, and the point-versus-seven race is part of the wager’s price.

Don’t Pass reverses much of that structure but commonly treats 12 as a push rather than a win. That small rule difference is why its standard house edge is about 1.36% instead of being an exact mirror of Pass Line. See Don’t Pass Bet for the full derivation and removal rules.

Why Place 6 has a 1.52% edge

Once a Place 6 is working, only a 6 or 7 resolves it. There are five combinations that total 6 and six combinations that total 7. Conditional on one of those two numbers appearing, the probability of winning is 5/11 and the probability of losing is 6/11.

At the standard 7:6 payout, a $6 wager wins $7. Its expected value is:

EV = (5/11 × $7) - (6/11 × $6)
EV = $35/11 - $36/11
EV = -$1/11 ≈ -$0.0909

Relative to the $6 initial bet:

House Edge = $0.0909 ÷ $6 ≈ 1.515%

The same calculation applies to Place 8. The casino advantage comes from paying 7:6 instead of the fair price implied by five winning combinations against six losing combinations.

Why Any Seven is so expensive

Seven has the most combinations of any two-dice total: six out of 36. That makes it common, but a common event is not automatically a good wager.

An Any Seven bet normally pays 4:1 profit. On a $1 wager:

EV = (6/36 × $4) - (30/36 × $1)
EV = 24/36 - 30/36
EV = -6/36 = -$0.1667

So the house edge is 16.67%. The problem is not that seven is unlikely. The problem is that the payout is too small for its probability.

That distinction—probability versus price—explains most of craps mathematics.

The 0% odds bet needs context

After a Pass Line or Come point is established, a player may usually take odds. The common true-odds payouts are 2:1 on 4 or 10, 3:2 on 5 or 9, and 6:5 on 6 or 8. Those prices exactly match the relevant ways to make the point before seven, so the odds wager itself has no mathematical advantage for either side.

But the required flat bet still has an edge. If you wager $10 on Pass and later add $20 in odds, the $20 odds portion does not erase the expected loss already built into the $10 Pass wager. It simply adds fairly priced action.

This is why statements such as “taking odds lowers the house edge” need a denominator. The expected dollar loss on the flat bet does not shrink merely because more zero-edge money was added. The average loss becomes a smaller percentage of the combined money put at risk.

For the mechanics, see craps odds and Odds Bet Explained.

House edge per decision is not house edge per roll

A Pass Line wager can remain unresolved through several rolls. A Field bet resolves on the very next roll. A hardway may sit for many rolls. Because the clocks are different, comparing only percentages can hide the cost of speed.

Suppose two players each start with $10 bets:

• Player A makes one $10 Pass Line bet and waits until it resolves.
• Player B makes a fresh $10 Field bet on every roll.

Even if the Field happened to have a 2.78% edge at that table, Player B can create far more resolved action during the same period. Expected loss grows with amount wagered × frequency × edge.

A useful session estimate is:

Expected Loss = Total Qualifying Action × House Edge

If $2,000 of wagers are resolved at an average 1.5% edge, the mathematical expectation is roughly:

$2,000 × 0.015 = $30

If another player pushes $2,000 through bets averaging 10%, the expectation is about $200. Both can win or lose much more than those amounts in a particular session; the formula is a long-run average, not a loss limit.

The table’s actual rules matter

Published percentages assume specific payouts. Change the payout and the edge changes. The Field is the easiest example: paying triple on one extreme number can reduce the edge compared with paying double on both 2 and 12. Buy bets also depend on whether commission is charged up front or only on a win, and on how the casino rounds commission and payouts.

The active Massachusetts Gaming Commission craps rules, for example, specify standard line, place and true-odds payouts and also describe when certain wagers are working. That is a useful reminder that the felt, posted rules and jurisdiction-approved procedures matter more than a generic chart copied from somewhere else.

Before using any house-edge number, verify three things:

1. What exactly wins and loses the bet?
2. What is the profit payout?
3. Is there a commission, special come-out rule, or paytable variation?

If any of those change, recalculate.

Do not confuse house edge with casino hold

You may also hear a casino operator discuss a craps table’s “hold.” That is an accounting performance measure, not another name for house edge. House edge comes from the rules and payouts of a wager. Table hold compares casino win with a measure such as drop or buy-in over a period and can move sharply with player results, credit activity, chips carried away, and the mix of bets made.

A table can therefore report a strong or weak hold percentage without any change to the mathematical edge on Pass Line or Place 6. For the operational distinction, see Table Win, Drop, and Hold Explained and the glossary entry on hold percentage.

Total action is the part players often miss

A player can choose a 1.41% Pass Line bet and still create an expensive session by stacking Come bets, place bets and proposition bets on top of it. Conversely, a player who makes one modest wager at a time may put far less money through the game even if an occasional bet has a somewhat higher edge.

Consider two simplified patterns over an hour:

The second pattern has both a higher average price and four times the turnover. The combination is what matters.

This is also why a low house edge is not a safety guarantee. Variance can create large short-term swings, and increasing stakes to “make the percentage worthwhile” simply increases dollars at risk. The expected-loss calculator is useful because it converts an abstract percentage into money.

What to remember at the table

You do not need to memorize every decimal. A practical hierarchy is enough:

• True odds are fairly paid, but require an underlying line/come bet.
• Pass, Don’t Pass, Come, Don’t Come, and Place 6/8 sit near the low-cost end of common craps wagers.
• Place 5/9 and especially Place 4/10 cost more at standard payouts.
• Hardways and one-roll proposition bets generally carry much larger pricing gaps.
• A bet’s percentage is only half the story; the other half is how much and how often you wager.

If your next question is “So which wagers should I actually choose?”, that is a different search intent. Use Best Craps Bets for the decision-focused comparison and Worst Craps Bets for the high-cost end of the layout.

The mathematical point is simpler: craps is a menu of differently priced bets. Once you compare probability with payout and then account for total action, the table stops looking mysterious.