The pass line, explained completely

The pass line is the first bet every craps player learns and the one the whole table is built around. Here is exactly how it works, why it costs you 1.41 cents per dollar, and how free odds push that number toward zero.

The comeout roll

A craps hand starts with a comeout roll. You put a chip on the wide strip marked PASS LINE, the shooter throws, and one of three things happens:

• A 7 or 11 rolls. You win even money. A $10 bet pays $10.
• A 2, 3, or 12 rolls. That's craps. Your bet loses.
• Any other number rolls: 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10. That number becomes the point.

On the comeout you are a real favorite. Two dice land in 36 equally likely combinations. Six of them add to 7 and two add to 11, so 8 of the 36 win for you on the spot. Only 4 combinations lose (one way to make 2, two ways to make 3, one way to make 12). The other 24 combinations set a point.

The point

Once a point is set, the dealer flips the puck to its white ON side and drops it in the box for that number. From here the rules are simple. The shooter keeps rolling until either the point repeats or a 7 shows. If the point comes first, your pass line bet wins even money. If the 7 comes first, you lose. That's a seven-out, and it ends the hand. Every other number is just noise for the pass line.

Now the math turns against you. Whatever the point is, there are always 6 ways to roll a 7 and fewer ways to roll the point:

Only those two numbers matter once the point is set, so the probability of winning is simply the ways to make the point divided by the ways to make the point plus the six ways to make 7. On a point of 4, that's 3 out of 9. On a 6, it's 5 out of 11.

One more rule: once the point is set, a pass line bet is a contract bet. You can't take it down. You were paid to be a favorite on the comeout, so the house holds you to the underdog part of the deal.

Why the edge is exactly 1.41%

Put the comeout and the point together and you get the full picture. About 22% of the time (8 of 36) you win immediately. About 11% of the time (4 of 36) you lose immediately. The remaining 67% of the time you go to a point where you're an underdog. Work through every branch and the pass line wins 244 times out of 495 and loses 251. The gap is 7 out of 495, which is 1.41%.

In plain money: for every $100 you put on the pass line, over a long run, you expect to get back $98.59. That's the house edge. It's small compared with almost everything else on the layout. A field bet costs about twice as much, and the one-roll props in the middle cost ten times as much. See the house edge on every bet for the full ranking.

Free odds: the bet behind the bet

Once a point is set, the casino lets you make a second bet directly behind your pass line chip. This is called taking odds, or simply free odds. There is no printed box for it. You just place chips on the felt behind your pass line bet, in the space toward you.

The odds bet wins if the point hits, loses on a seven-out, and pays at true odds, meaning exactly the ratio of the ways to lose to the ways to win:

• Point 4 or 10: pays 2 to 1 (6 ways to lose, 3 to win).
• Point 5 or 9: pays 3 to 2 (6 ways to lose, 4 to win).
• Point 6 or 8: pays 6 to 5 (6 ways to lose, 5 to win).

Because the payout matches the real probability, the house edge on the odds bet is zero. Not small. Zero. It's the only bet in the building like that, and it's why every serious craps guide tells you to take odds. The full reasoning is in free odds explained.

The odds bet is not a contract bet. You can add it, reduce it, or pull it back any time before the point resolves. Only the flat pass line bet is locked.

How odds shrink the combined edge

Your pass line bet still carries its 1.41%. Odds don't change that. What they do is let you put more money on the table at zero edge, so the house edge on your total money at risk drops. How far depends on how much odds the casino allows, always expressed as a multiple of your flat bet:

3-4-5x is the Las Vegas standard and what PointPuck uses. It means you may take 3 times your flat bet behind a 4 or 10, 4 times behind a 5 or 9, and 5 times behind a 6 or 8. Those multiples were chosen so that a full odds bet always wins exactly 6 times your flat bet, no matter the point. That makes the dealer's arithmetic easy and makes your winning hands look the same size every time.

One honest note about that table. The percentage falls, but your expected loss in dollars does not. A $10 pass line bet costs you about 14 cents per hand whether you take odds or not. The odds dollars just ride along for free. What changes is that you're getting far more action per cent of expected loss, which is exactly the trade you want in a casino.

A $10 pass line bet, worked on every point

Say you bet $10 on the pass line and take full 3-4-5x odds. Here is what you put behind the line and what you collect when the point hits:

Read the last two columns together. You risk the most on 6 and 8 because they're the points you're most likely to hit, and you risk the least on 4 and 10 because the house is letting you bet big on a coin you're likely to lose. The total win is always $70: $10 from the flat bet, $60 from odds. On a seven-out you lose the whole stack.

If $50 behind the line feels like too much, take less. Any amount up to the max is fine. Two practical rules keep the payout clean: odds on a 5 or 9 should be an even number of dollars (3:2 on an odd bet leaves half a dollar, and payouts floor to the whole dollar), and odds on a 6 or 8 should be a multiple of $5 (6:5 on $12 pays $14, not $14.40). A $10 flat bet with $20, $30, or $50 behind it never has that problem.

A hand from start to finish

Comeout. You bet $10 on the pass line. The shooter rolls a 3. Craps. You lose $10. New comeout, you bet $10 again. The shooter rolls an 11. You win $10, and it's still a comeout because no point was set. You leave $10 up. The shooter rolls an 8. Point is 8, puck goes ON. You put $50 behind your bet. The next rolls are 5, 4, 12, 6, and 8. Nothing happens on the first four; the 8 wins. You collect $10 on the flat bet and $60 on the odds, and the puck flips back to OFF for a fresh comeout. If that fifth roll had been a 7 instead, you'd have lost $60 and the dice would pass to the next shooter.

That's the entire pass line. Everything else on the layout is either a variation of it, like come bets and the don't pass, or a worse-priced side bet. Learn this one cold, always take odds, and you're already playing better than most of the people at the table.