Planning a trip to Las Vegas for some gambling? You like the glamour, excitement, romance, and better comps you know you’ll get at the table games, but you are afraid to lose your shirt? You know the best gambling is at those tables, but you keep playing blackjack or the slots because you also know there are a bunch of stupid bets on the craps green. Do you think those high shooters throwing money on the craps-eleven, the Big Eight, the hard ways — or any of the other proposition bets — have a clue? If you do, you need to read this. Make your bankroll last longer, and, if you’re a little lucky, you can come home a Winner!

Learn how to play craps in a simple, statistically optimal way. It’s so simple that you can drink all the free liquor they offer, have plenty of fun, and still bet perfectly every time. The house will help you avoid mistakes when you follow the simple basics in these instructions. While we won’t lie by telling you that there is no house advantage, you can reduce that advantage to as little as two one-hundredths of a percentage point! That’s more than 100 times better than well-played blackjack. It’s 150 times better than 97% slots. It’s as much as 2,500 times better than the house advantage in state lotteries! Want more fun? Would you like a system in which you lose most of the time when you have $3 at stake, but you win most of the time when you have $303 at stake?

Should you bet the rent money? Is this a system for making money playing craps? No! That’s why they call it gambling! Anyone who tells you that you can gain an advantage over the house in craps is lying. They are also lying if they tell you that you can gain the advantage in blackjack without card counting or team playing. But card counting and team play will get you kicked out of Las Vegas, it is practically impossible when they constantly re-shuffle five to six decks anywhere else, and it requires hours of practice and developed skill.
With this system, if you bet about $100,000, your mathematically expected loss is about $20, or about $1.20 per hour if you bet the amounts suggested by the system. While you play, you get free drinks, complimentary meals, and exciting casino action for less than $1.25 per hour! And, you have very close to as much chance of winning as you do of losing, and a much better chance of winning than any tourist playing in the entire casino! Sure, you’re there to gamble, but you deserve an even break!
This “system” isn’t a “system” because it isn’t a cheat; it isn’t a silly superstition surviving on legend and lore; and it isn’t for everyone and should never be used as a substitute for working for a living. But, it does everything promised here, and you have a full 30 day complete satisfaction money back guarantee PLUS a 180 day double “prove me wrong” guarantee. That’s right: Twice the price back if you return the guide and prove me wrong! Learn how to do it, and how much money to bring with you to do it right. A written description along with tables and formulas for the mathematically inclined can be downloaded from the Internet for $59.95, or we’ll ship you a convenient betting card and a booklet describing the procedure for $25 plus S&H. Allow two weeks for normal delivery. Overnight service available wherever FedEx delivers overnight. Order now: Email OptimalCraps@MWLC.org

It is this simple:

1. Find the right table.
You are looking for a casino offering minimums of $2 or less and 100X odds. Try pointing your web browser to http://www.smartvegas.com/whichcas.htmand http://www.dicesetter.com/nextshooter/tablelimits.htm With Las Vegas hotels engaged in fierce competition and lesser competitors unable to keep up with theambitious building efforts and showmanship, there are often great deals. Read more to learn how to choose a casino when the casinos change their terms. Downtown used to be best, but, right now, the best craps is at Casino Royale.
http://www.casinoroyalehotel.com/gaming/gaming.html.
2. Place the flat bet.
At the next “come out” roll after you arrive at the table, place $2 inside the block marked “Don’t Pass.” If the shooter rolls a 2 or 3, you’ll win $2 and get back the $2 you bet. If the shooter rolls a 12, it’s a tie, and you can leave your money there for the next round. If the shooter rolls a 7 or 11, you lose $2. You will lose on this first roll much more often than you will win, but it doesn’t hurt much to lose $2.
3. Place the odds wager.
If the shooter rolls a “point” of 4,5,6,8,9, or 10, you will lay the maximum odds allowed at the table. The odds bet has that name because it is the only bet on the table for which the odds are perfectly even. To convince you to visit their casino, the proprietors allow you to bet that additional amount with no house advantage at all. **With 100X odds, that means you can win up to 100 times your flat wager, or $200. Since you will win about 58% of these odds bets, take $300 and place it leaningon or behind the $3 flat wager and call out to the croupier “Odds.” The croupier will not let you get this wrong. The house pays off much more on a flat bet than an odds bet, so you are not permitted to add to your flat wager. If you need help, just tell the croupier when you start: “I’m taking maximum odds on the Don’ts, but I’m new to this. Please help me.” If the shooter rolls the same number again before rolling a 7, you lose. If the 7 comes up first, you win. There is about a 60% chance that you will win, and it’s fun to win when you have $303 at stake on the table. If you win, your payoff will depend on the point. If the point was a 4 or 10 when you won, the payoff is the amount of your flat bet, $3, plus 1/2 the amount of your odds bet, or $150, plus return of the amount you wagered, $303. If the point was 5 or 9, you get your wager plus the flat bet plus $200 on the odds bet, for a total of $506. If the point was 6 or 8, you get $6 for the flat payoff and the return of your bet plus $250 payoff along with the return of the $300 you bet behind the line. A convenient payoff chart is included on the player’s card.
4. Enjoy the atmosphere, and good luck!
Remember, this system merely evens the odds much better than most anything else you can do. You have very close to an even chance of winning or losing. But, you can still lose. That’s why they call it gambling. That’s the fun. Don’t bet the rent!

This pamphlet is intended to teach you Maximum Winning Lucky Craps. It isn’t intended to be the best primer on the market on playing craps. There are manybetter primers. Many casinos provide free primers or free classes on the rules and thelayout of craps. Be careful with them, because many of those primers, especially theones commissioned by casinos, are intended to guide you to the gruesomely awfulproposition bets. But, the basic sections of those guides are fine for learning the basics of how craps works. Nevertheless, for novices reading this strategy pamphlet, thissection should help you learn a little about the game and the layout.
This primer isn’t going to talk about any of the proposition bets, becauseproposition bets are the worst sucker bets in craps. As a matter of fact, most of the bets on the craps layout are terrible bets with high house advantages. We’re not goingto talk about any of them, and, if I don’t talk about them, don’t do them. There are very few excellent bets in craps, and even fewer terrific bets on craps, and the“experts” huddled around the table are usually not using the terrific bets.
But, let’s start with basics. Craps is a dice game. Players take turns rolling the dice until they “lose,” at which time they pass the dice to the next player to roll. Thismay be a little confusing if you play Maximum Winning Lucky Craps, because you arebetting the opposite of almost everyone else. When you win, most of them lose. For the purpose of deciding who rolls, you pass the dice to the next person when peoplebetting their way would lose.
It doesn’t matter who is rolling the dice as long as they are giving honest rolls,and the casino will assure that. Many players decide they’d rather not roll when it is their turn. Especially if you are a novice, it adds a level of confusion and takes yourmind off the game. Leave the rolling to the sexy looking men losing money so they canimpress the sexy looking girls blowing on their hands. As long as they don’t spit on the  dice, it doesn’t make any difference, and some craps players get cranky when a playerbetting against them rolls the dice. If you want to roll when it’s your turn, ask the croupier if it’ll be okay with the crowd, or just take your turn. Who is rolling hasnothing to do with your betting as long as the casino keeps the rolls fair. They will.The casino wins much more when people playing Maximum Winning Lucky Craps are winning, because only a small minority is playing optimal craps.
The real game is determined by the numbers that come up on the dice. There are two bets in craps worth discussing. For ease of understanding, I’ll refer to them as betting with the house or against the house, because, like baccarat, you can bet eitherside in craps. The better name for these bets are betting to Pass and betting on Don’t Pass. If you bet to Pass, you are betting that the shooter will start with a 7 or 11.

Odds Payout	Don't Pass	100X	10X	Full
Wager	$300	$300	$30	$18
4/10	$150	$150	$15	$9
5/9	$200	$200	$20	$12
6/8	$250	$250	$25	$15

Reverse for Pass

Total Payouts	Don't Pass	100X	10X	Full
Wager	$303	$303	$33	$21
4/10	$456	$456	$51	$33
5/9	$506	$506	$56	$36
6/8	$556	$556	$61	$39

I came up with an approach. (I hate the implications of the word “system.”) Using my method, you expect to lose about 4.1¢ each time you bet $303 --a house advantage of .02%. If any of you play the lottery, I think the current “house advantage” runs between 25-50%, and the house advantage for well played, uncountedblackjack is around 2.5%. So, -.02% is pretty good as long as you don’t mind expectingto pay $1.20 an hour for all you can drink, an occasional complimentary meal, and achance at some fair, even gambling entertainment. And, it’s so simple to execute that you can enjoy the overly lit gaming rooms, the honky tonk, the noise, the excitement,and the drinks without any worry of the floor manager disliking you. Anyway, I haven’t been to Vegas in about 18 years, and this worked then, but it’s even better
now.
The system I’m going to explain below has a house advantage --at least at Casino Royale --of .0201523%! That is less than 1/100th of the house advantage ofwell played blackjack. At any casino offering “full odds,” also called 3-4-5 odds, the still pleasing house advantage is .27272727%, or just less than 1/10th the advantageyou give to the house in well played blackjack. And, once you learn it, it is so simple that you can play it while stewed with all the free drinks they pass out. I don’t drink much normally, but I know, because I drink like a fish during my very rare visits toLas Vegas. You can play this skunk drunk. So, if it sounds complicated, read it again.

It isn’t. Understanding why it is so good is a bit complicated mathematically, butexecuting it doesn’t require card counting or remembering strategies or, for thatmatter, remembering how to count or your room number.
Here is system:
By the method we will be using, the house has an advantage of about 1.36364% on the “flat” bet. In return for placing that bet, the house lets me place 100 times thatbet in an “odds” wager that has no house advantage. To minimize my disadvantage, Imust wager the maximum odds bet at every opportunity. So, my specific betting behavior will be to bet $3 on the Don’t Pass (or Don’t Come) line. Then, after the“come out roll” of anything other than 2, 3, 7, 11, or 12, I lay odds of $300 on any pointthe shooter gets. (On the come out roll, I win $3 if the shooter gets snake eyes (2) orcraps (3), and I lose if the shooter gets a 7 or 11. If the shooter gets boxcars (12), mybet is a tie and I can let it ride for the next come out roll.)
Once we are past the come out roll, and have a “point” of 4,5,6,8,9, or 10, I take $300 and place it leaning on or behind my $3 flat wager and call out to the croupier“Odds.” The croupier will not let you get this wrong; the house pays off much more ona flat bet than this type of odds bet, so you are not permitted to add to your flat wager.If you need help, just tell the croupier when you start: “I’m taking maximum 100X odds on the don’ts, but I’m new to this, so please help me.” If you are on a table with a$5 minimum, you must double these bets, which admittedly gets pretty frightening.
Now, if the shooter rolls a 7 before rolling the point, I win as follows: $150 if the“point” is a 10 or 4; $200 if the point is a 9 or 5; and $250 if the point is an 8 or 6. Ifthe wager wins, the payoff (including getting your wager back) is $6 for the line betplus $450, $500, or $550 for the odds bets respectively.
The math is difficult, so I’ll skip it unless you are inclined towards that sort ofstuff. I can send you the Excel spreadsheet if you want to play with it. But, the bottomline is that the flat wager has a house advantage of 1.36364%. The corresponding PassLine wager has a 1.41414% house advantage, and I’ve read those numbers in the writings of others, so my math has been checked. When you factor in the 100X odds,the wagers get quite large, but the house advantage shrinks to .02% on the planabove. The Pass line equivalent is quite good, too, but harder to play mechanically; it has a house advantage of just over .04%.
I also find the wager fun to do, even if it is a little too easy. I sorta’ like how it works: I lose 2/3rds of the time on the come out roll when I only have $3 at stake, andI win most of the time when I have $300 on the table. Mathematically, this point isirrelevant, but I’ll win more often when there is big money on the table, and the losseswill be when there is less money on the table. Psychologically, that makes the losseshurt less and the wins come more often.

But, I close with what should be obvious advice. This is not a “system” in the sense that it means you win. If the house advantage was zero, that would mean thatthere is an exactly equal risk of winning as there is for losing. That’s why it is called gambling. In this case, all we are doing is reducing the house’s advantage to the lowest it can be without the house making a mistake. The house still “expects” to win: they mathematically expect to win about 4¢ for each of your average bets of $203. Ifwe assume that you can place $6,090 worth of bets each hour, then the house expectsto win $1.20 each hour you play. I try to drink at least that much!
How much money do you need to bring? You must also understand that youneed to enter with enough money to play. Most (2/3rds) of the time, you will have $303on the table at risk. A losing streak is as much expected as a winning streak. If thehouse can afford to lose $100,000,000 before it breaks and you enter the casino with$303 in your pocket, you *are* going to lose. Exactly how much you should bring isdetermined by a mathematical term called standard deviation, and it is a fascinating math problem. I’ll spare you the math, but, assuming $303 as the combined flat andodds bet, you need $4,055 available to have a 65% chance of not busting before you gohome. You need twice that, around $8,105 to reduce your chances of busting to 5%,and you need three times the standard deviation, or $12, 156.37, to have a 99% chanceof never busting. This may be hard to understand for novices in statistics, but havinga 65% chance of not busting doesn’t mean you expect to lose 35% of the time; it meansthat you need to bring enough money so that you can weather the normal variance inthe game. Many players may also have trouble understanding that the math is thesame at any given time. Dice have no memory. So, if you are down $5,000 after thefirst few hours, that does not mean you will gain $5,000 soon if you keep playing. You have the same chance of winning or losing no matter when you ask the question. But,if you only quit when you lose, and you never quit when you win, you must alwayslose!
The bottom line is that gambling is gambling. It is not earning money for work,even though you have to pay income tax on the winnings and cannot deduct the losses(except to offset the amount of the wins). It can be a pastime if you enjoy the risk, thenoise, the excitement, and the ambiance, but it is expensive, and you need to avoid itif you become addicted to the powerful psychological draw of the game. You ought to avoid it, also, if you plan to do it poorly.

Some people want faster action. Of course, you can add more money to yourbets by doubling them, but some casinos have limits on individual flat and odds wagersizes. There is a more complicated, quicker moving, and more risky (in a limited, statistical sense) way to play Maximum Winning Lucky Crap. The MWLC Method
Betting the Maximum Winning Lucky Craps has a little side benefit for high shooters, because you can have as many as six wagers of whatever multiple of this system you want to play at any one time. Also, some superstitious shooters won’t touch the dice when betting on Don’t Pass. If the bettors hoping for a pass believe in blowing on the dice and wishing for their dreams, they may resent having the dice rolled by someone who wants them to lose. If you are playing the Don’t Come, you are likely to be out of synch with their game, and they won’t care about you. Roll away!
The Don’t Come box, found in a corner of the layout next to the numbers, is mathematically the exact same as the Don’t Pass line. If you want to enter the game the moment you arrive at the table, place your flat wager in the Don’t Come box. The next roll will, for you, be the come out roll. If the shooter gets a 7 or 11, you lose; on 2 or 3, you win; and for any point, your money is moved by the croupier to the box containing the number of the point as it applies to you. Same as the regular system, just drop the maximum odds bet allowed on the table and announce “Odds on that Don’t Come, please.” There are negatives about this. First, every time you bet $303 in Maximum Winning Lucky Craps, you expect to lose 4¢. If you play six times more often per hour, you expect to lose about $7.50 per hour instead of $1.25. They aren’t going to give you any more liquor for playing faster, and most casinos use gross formulas to rate your play for comps, so you probably won’t get any more of those, either. Further, it is much harder for either you or the croupier to watch your wagers when you add this level of complexity to it, so your chances of an expensive mistake are much higher. Finally, and the most important to me, increased play increases the standard deviation. The more times you bet, the greater the chances that you’ll be further away from the expected result. So, as explained in the section above entitled "How much money you need to bring," betting six times more often increases the amount you need to bring with you by the square root of six times the amount you needed before. On the plus side, this variation can put you out of synch with the vast majority of bettors. That can be good if you are betting Maximum Winning Lucky Craps, because they lose when you win.

Most gambling books prefer the Pass Line bet over the Don’t Pass Line bet. If they explain their reasoning and they are intelligent, they agree that the odds of winning on the Don’t Pass is slightly better. Since the advantage is slight, the books decide for you that you prefer to bet with the crowd. It seems to me that an advantage is an advantage, and you need every advantage on your side when you’re gambling. Besides, I like winning when I have the excitement of having more money on the table, and losing more often when I have small money on the table, even if that is mathematically irrelevant. But, if you like going with the crowd, and you don’t mind a slightly more complex betting pattern, consider reversing the Don’t Pass strategy. There are some minor changes in procedure if you use this strategy, but we don’t cover that here.

Some player guides recognize player needs to put their money on the line quickly — even if that means they will lose their money faster. I call that the "Put it all on Red" Syndrome. If you feel a need to part with your money quickly, donate it to my favorite charity. At least I’ll feel better! All of the proposition bets are awful. That said, one of the proposition bets is less awful than the others, but only at some casinos.
The center strip across the layout is called the Field. It is a single roll bet. You lay your wager on the part of the Field closest to you before the roll. It the shooter gets a 5, 6, 7, or 8, you lose. If the shooter rolls a 3, 4, 9, 10, or 11, you win $1 for every dollar you bet. If the shooter rolls a 2, you get paid double. In most casinos, you also win double if the shooter gets a 12; in some casinos, you get paid triple if the roll is a 12.
If the casino is offering triple payment on 12, the house advantage is 2.78%. That’s slightly worse than well paid, uncounted, blackjack. It is slightly better than 97% slots. It is much worse than craps flat bets on the Pass Line or the Don’t Pass Line, and it is much, much worse than Maximum Winning Lucky Craps. But, it gives you a fast way to lose your money and leave.
If the casino pays only double on boxcars (12), it’s an unacceptably fast way to lose, with over 5.56¢ of each dollar wagered going to the house. That’s a little higher than the sales tax in my state. If you wager $1 on one roll every minute for 12 hours over a weekend, you expect to lose $40. Of course, you could win or lose more, and doesn’t even sound that bad … until you realize that the same amount of money bet through Maximum Winning Lucky Craps is mathematically expected to lose 15¢!

• Flat Wager
• Odds Wager
• Layout
• Payout
• Point
• Come Out Roll