Buy and Lay Bets for an Easy Start at Craps

Craps is a complicated game, but buy and lay bets can make it easier. These bets have a simple formula: there’s a five percent commission taken on fair odds on certain wagers, and this creates some basic bets that you can place whenever you want without having to wait on certain rolls or follow special rules. This makes this set of bets a particularly straight-forward way of playing craps, and that means that you can get in on the action without having to learn a ton about the game.

If you buy a number, then you win if that number comes up, you lose if a seven comes up, and you push on all other bets. A buy on a six or eight has a 1.46 percent house advantage. It’s 1.32 percent on a five or nine, and it’s just 1.19 percent on a four or ten. If you like these wagers, then you should also try the place bet which is the same thing more or less, but it has slightly different payouts that give it a better payout rate with a slightly lower house advantage if you’re betting on a five, six, eight or nine.

The lay bets are like the opposite of a buy bet. You win on a seven, and you lose when the number you’ve bet on is hit. You’ll push on your bet with any of the other numbers. For a six or an eight, a lay bet has a 1.22 percent house advantage. It’s even lower on a five or nine with a 0.90 percent edge for the house, and it’s a low 0.61 percent when laying a four or ten. These bets have good advantages, but just remember that they will all push a high percentage of the time.

There are many different ways to play craps, and some of those allow you to get in similar types of bets with a much lower house advantage than what’s listed for the buy and lay bets above. The idea of using these simple wagers to get started is that they allow you to get in on the action so that you have time to learn how the mechanics of the game work so that you can get in on the better bets. Overall, this is a great way to approach craps since it can be so complicated if you aren’t in the middle of the game learning as you go.