The Deceptive Field Bet In Online Craps

The Field Bet is a popular online craps bet among novice players. However, experienced craps players avoid it. This article explains the deceptiveness in the Field Bet and does not recommend it.

The Field Bet is popular with newbie players because of its simplicity. It can be placed before any roll and is decided in a single roll. The online casino craps layout shows a large area known as the field box. It has “Field” written in it and displays the numbers 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12 in a line. The numbers 2 and 12 are circled for a reason that will be explained later in this article. In order to place a wager on the Field Bet, you place the chips in the field box and roll the dice. If any of the displayed numbers appear as the total of the numbers on the dice you win the Field Bet, otherwise you lose the bet. The numbers 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11 pay out at even money. The numbers 2 and 12 pay more, which is the reason for their being circled. The number 2 pays 2 to 1. The number 12 may pay 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 depending on the online casino.

The fallacy that new players fall into is this. There are 11 possible numbers that can be rolled in online craps. They see that seven of these numbers result in a win in the Field Bet and only four of these numbers result in a loss. Hence they wrongly conclude that the chance of winning is almost twice that of losing.

This line of thinking assumes that is that there is only one way to roll each total, which is not correct. For example 7 can be rolled in six ways. The four losing numbers in the Field Bet can be rolled in 20 ways and the eleven winning numbers can be rolled only in 16 ways. After accounting for the triple payout on 12 the house edge for the Field Bet works out to 2.7%. There are other bets in online craps, such as the Pass Line Bet, that have a much lower house edge. Therefore you should choose those bets when you play online craps. You can argue that European Roulette also offers a similar house edge. But European Roulette offers bets with payouts up to 35 to 1, whereas the maximum payout in the Field Bet is only 3 to1. The higher payouts can justify the higher house edge in European Roulette.