Take the Odds to Maximize Your Payout Rate

If you’re familiar with the pass line bet, you know what the come out roll is and you are comfortable with knowing when a point has been established, then you will probably want to start to take the odds to maximize your payout rate. The pass line bet itself has a payout rate in the 99.58 percent range. However, you can lower the effective house advantage and increase your effective payout rate by taking the odds whenever a point is thrown and the shooter has to keep rolling to try to win.

What is Taking the Odds?

After you place a pass line bet, when a point is established, an extra side bet opens up depending on what the value of the point is. Taking the odds means you’re placing an additional bet on the outcome of the rolls to determine if the point or the seven comes first. If the point comes first, then you win. The exact payout will be determined by your bet size and the point used.

For example, if the point is 4 or 10, then your payout will be 2:1. On a point of 5 or 9, the payout is 3:2. For the 6 and 8 points, the payout is 6:5. Since all of these bets pay out at a 100 percent rate, the payouts show you exactly how likely you are to win as well. For the 2:1 payout, for example, you’ll win exactly 1 time for every 2 times that you lose.

No matter what the payouts are, the point is that you’re getting in an extra bet that lowers the effective payout rate of your total set of wagers. This is the part of it that maximizes your payout rate, and it allows you to achieve an effective payout rate that is in the same range as the top online skill game players in blackjack, video poker and similar games.

Maximum Bet Sizes

Imagine a scenario where you bet $1 on the pass line bet and $1,000 on the odds. This would really minimize the house advantage to a degree that would be ridiculous. The casino realizes that you can boost your payout rate in this way, so they have limits on the bet sizes that you can make when taking the odds. Normally, this is in what’s known as a “3-4-5” arrangement. This means that you can bet up to 3x your pass line bet on a point of 4 or 10, 4x your pass line bet on a point of 5 or 9, and 5x your pass line bet on a point that’s 6 or 8.

You should structure your strategy in craps to take into account these bet sizes. For example, if you aren’t comfortable placing a $5 bet on the odds, then you should make a pass line bet that’s smaller than $1. This is how you maximize your payout rate in craps when you’re dealing with the basic bets, and this type of strategy makes craps one of the best games you can play in terms of your chances of winning.