House edge is always an important consideration in evaluating casinos games, but in craps it’s not the only factor. Speed of play looms large in calculating average losses and your shot to win.

Many bets are settled in one roll. Others take multiple rolls to decide, including pass and come, don’t pass and don’t come, place bets on 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10, and hard-way wagers.

Imagine you’re at a table for 100 rolls. If you bet on any 7, its 16.67% house edge is constantly working against you. In those 100 rolls, there are 100 decisions.

Place bets on 6 or 8 take an average of 3.27 rolls to decide. In an average 100 rolls, there are about 30.6 decisions.

At $6 per bet to take advantage of a 7-6 payoff on winning 6 or 8 bets, you put an average of $183.60 per 100 rolls at risk on 6 or 8, while risk 100 times your one-roll bet on any 7.

Rolls Per Decision

Each multi-roll bet has its own average of rolls per decision. Don’t pass, at 3.47 rolls per decision, takes slightly longer than pass to decide because a 12 on the comeout roll is a push on the don’t side. No money changes hands.

Place bets have no comeout roll, but 6 and 8 come up more often than the other point numbers. So place bets on 6 or 8 are decided faster than those on 5 or 9, which require fewer rolls than 4 or 10.

Let’s do a comparison of average rolls per decision and average decisions per 100 rolls on common multi-roll bets.

For single-roll bets, there’s one roll per decision and 100 decisions per 100 rolls. Among those are the field, any 7, any craps, 2, 12 or hard hop bet and 3, 11 and easy hop bets.

Dueling House Edges

House edges on most multi-roll bets are lower than those on one-roll bets. Per decision, multi-roll edges range from 1.4% on don’t pass to 11.11% on hard 4 or 10.

Edges on single-roll bets range from 2.78% on the field if either 2 or 12 pays 3-1 or 5.56% if both 2 and 12 pay 2-1, on up to 16.67% on any 7.

But there’s another way to look at the house edge in craps. That’s to put it on a per roll basis.

Because one-roll bets are settled on every roll, the house edge per roll and per decision are the same. But with multi-roll bets, the house edge per roll is lower than the edge per decision.

On pass, you can divide that 1.41% edge per decision by the 3.38 rolls per decision to find a 0.42% edge per roll. The 1.41% edge per decision on pass and the 16.67% on any 7 is huge in itself, but it looks even larger at 0.42% vs. 16.67% per roll.

Let’s compare house edges per roll and per decision on some common craps wagers.

Dollars and Cents

The difference in speed has a major effect on average losses and your shot to win.

Let’s look at wagers that have similar house edges per roll.

If you bet on hard 4 or hard 10, you face an 11.11% house edge per decision. That’s the same as the 11.11% house edge on any craps, where you win if the roll is 2, 3 or 12 and lose on any other roll.

The hard-way bets are more complicated. If you bet on hard 4, you win if the shooter rolls two 2s. That’s 4 the hard way. You lose if the shooter rolls 7 or 4 the easy way — a 1 on the first die and 3 on the second, or 3 on the first die and 1 on the second.

No other rolls count toward deciding your hard-way bet. If the shooter rolls 5, 11, 6 or any number other than 4 or 7, your bet stays in action.

On average, it takes 4 rolls to decide a bet on hard 4 or hard 10. To always have $1 in action on one of those bets for 100 rolls, it takes an average of $25. To always have $1 in action on any craps, it takes $100.

Apply the house edge of 11.11%, and the average loss per 100 rolls for your $1 bets come to $11.11 on any craps, but only $2.78 on hard 4 or hard 10.

Even though the house edge per decision is the same, you lose four times as much money on the one-roll bet because you have to replenish your bets faster to stay in action.

How Speed Impacts Payout In Craps: An Example Play

Let’s try one more example. The field bet is the best of the one-roll bets. You win on 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 or 12. Payoffs are even money on 3, 4, 9, 10 or 11.

All craps tables pay at least 2-1 if the roll is 2 or 12, and the best tables pay 3-1 on one or the other. Usually, it’s 12 that pays 3-1, but some casinos make the bigger pay on 12.

With that 3-1 pay in the mix the house edge is 2.78%. That’s less than half the 6.67% house edge when placing 4 or 10.

Imagine you place 10. You win if the roll is 10 and lose if it’s 7. On any other number, there’s no decision and your bet stays in action.

It takes an average of four rolls to settle a place bet on 10. In 100 rolls, the average would be 25 decisions. Just to keep things easy, let’s use $1 bets as an example, leaving your average risk per 100 rolls at $25.

The field bet is a one-roll bet so in 100 rolls there are 100 decisions. With $1 bets, your risk per 100 rolls is $100.

Craps place bets on 10 carry a house edge of 4%, and with $1 bets your average loss per 100 rolls is $1. With the 2.78% edge on the field, the average loss is $2.78.

Even though the field has a lower house edge per decision, your average losses are higher than they are when placing 10.

The speed of play works against you on the one-roll bets. Wagers come too fast to keep average losses below the level of even so-so multi-roll bets, and much too fast to approach the average losses and the shot to win on the best bets such as pass, come, don’t pass, don’t come and place bets on 6 or 8.