Dice and Craps

Interesting thing I thought of with regards to rolling dice in craps.

For those who don't know, if you roll 7 anytime except in the beginning (more or less) you will lose. 7 is the most common combination for 2 -6 sided dice so the house has a tremendous advantage. Hit almost anything else and you can win!

Some basics on probabilities.

Different combinations of 2 dice: 36
Ways to hit 7: 1:6 2:5 3:4 ... so 6/36
Ways to hit 6: 1:5 2:4 3:3 ... so 5/36
Ways to hit 5: 1:4 2:3 ... so 4/36
Ways to hit 4: 1:3 2:2 3:1 so 3/36
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Anyways you can put a $25 bet on the 4, which pays you $50 (buying the pt), but they charge you a $1 vig (vigorish). You get paid 2:1 on the 4, because the odds of hitting a 4 before a 7 are 6/36 vs 3/36 or 2:1. Same principal applies for all the other #'s (4,5,6,8,9,10).

There's another way to bet the 4, you can put $25 on the line (no vig) where $5 pays $9. So $25 pays you $45. Buying the pt earns you an extra $4. Buying a 5 ($25 pays 3:2 = $37.50 - $1 = $36.50) vs placing a 5 ($25 pays 7:5 = $35) earns you $1 bonus. Buying a 6 or 8 is a losing proposition.

Well thats not my point, but it was interesting wasn't it? Now you are a craps master. Throw down $100 and yell "buy the 4 and 10 $50 each". Note you may have to pay the vig up front in some casinos (so keep $4 change ready).

Next interesting thing I pondered was how to throw the dice optimally. Physics aside.. if you could roll dice and keep the dice rolling on a single axis, what would that mean? There is something to this. Oddly enough most people pair up their dice 3-3 up, facing the same way. I've come to find that this is the worst possible lineup of dice you can do!

More later.. getting tired. And bored of this stupid topic.