Help! My Dad Thinks Bet Pressing Skews Odds

My dad loves craps and he's convinced that his bet pressing system is the key to success.

Here's how it works:

Place 6
Place 8

Start with your $6 bets (each win pays 7 to 1).

If he's rolling, he has to have $5 on the passline.

If he wins on the 6, he takes the bet. If he wins the 6 again, he presses it (6 becomes 12, and he takes the extra 1). If he wins the 6 again, he keeps the win. If he wins again, he presses it. 12 becomes 24 and he pockets the extra 2).

So: Keep, press, keep, press, keep, press and on and on until 7 out.

He says this, assuming "lady luck" is on your side, will allow you to make a ton of money starting with very small bets, while minimizing your risk since you only increase your bets if you win.

Can someone explain the math of why this doesn't work any better at walking away with more money/minimizing what you lose, vs not pressing at all?

Quote: jennifer2010

My dad loves craps and he's convinced that his bet pressing system is the key to success.

(snip)

He says this, assuming "lady luck" is on your side, will allow you to make a ton of money starting with very small bets, while minimizing your risk since you only increase your bets if you win.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to me. It doesn't say anything about changing the odds or reducing the house edge. Sally will be along soon to straighten us both out.

Quote: JimRockford

Sally will be along soon to straighten us both out.

Don't bring dad here. He'll soon have supposedly legitimate reasons to keep it up. Lose less all the way is better than get it over with quick in a bit.

Those ads are at the bottom of page for the real reason.

Oh, but it does work better if "better" means having a small chance at a big score as opposed to a higher chance at a lower win. Pressing does skew the distribution, just like playing a Martingale skews the distribution. When you press, the game becomes more like a slot machine - frequent small losses, big wins when you win. When you Martingale, the game becomes more like covering many numbers in roulette - frequent small wins, big losses when you lose.

I prefer pressing. Not because it changes the house edge but because winning a run of pressed bets is more exciting than winning the same number of flat bets. If your dad is willing to suffer more frequent, smaller losses in order to play for those pressed wins, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

And you're lucky your dad loves craps.

Would casinos pay for ads which reduced their take?

Quote: jennifer2010

My dad loves craps and he's convinced that his bet pressing system is the key to success.

Here's how it works:

Place 6
Place 8

Start with your $6 bets (each win pays 7 to 1).

If he's rolling, he has to have $5 on the passline.

If he wins on the 6, he takes the bet. If he wins the 6 again, he presses it (6 becomes 12, and he takes the extra 1). If he wins the 6 again, he keeps the win. If he wins again, he presses it. 12 becomes 24 and he pockets the extra 2).

So: Keep, press, keep, press, keep, press and on and on until 7 out.

He says this, assuming "lady luck" is on your side, will allow you to make a ton of money starting with very small bets, while minimizing your risk since you only increase your bets if you win.

Can someone explain the math of why this doesn't work any better at walking away with more money/minimizing what you lose, vs not pressing at all?

It's just another positive progression betting system. It will lose small amounts frequently and win larger amount less often. In the end it will average to action * house edge.

The easy way to explain this is to appeal to logic. Two cubes with spots painted on them have no memory and do not know when they are hot. Each roll is a new event and each place bet is negative, no matter what.

Here is the math specifically:

Place six or eight pays 7 to 6. The true odds of hitting a six (or separately an eight) before a seven are 6 to 5. If you expand the fractions you will see that the house pays 35 to 30 on the place bet, when it should be paying 36 to 30. So the house pockets that $1 out of 66 for a house edge of 1.52% -- no matter what the bet is.

Has he turned you into a Craps player, Jennifer?

I'm under the impression that pressing bets is technically worse than not pressing your bets.

The more money you put on the table, the more money the casino takes away.

If two players walk up to a table and stay there for a year, one doing $6 flat bets and one doing $6 press bets, the player doing the press bets should walk away with a higher negative balance than the person not doing the press bets.

Am I wrong?

The player not pressing will take in a winning bet while the other player pressing will press their bet and lose it (for a higher negative loss). This should happen frequently enough vs pressing and winning that not pressing = a lesser negative balance in the long run.

Right?

And to clarify: He does think pressing puts the "edge" in your favor. If I'm not mistaken his exact words were "and that's what takes the edge from their favor to yours".

Quote: jennifer2010

I'm under the impression that pressing bets is technically worse than not pressing your bets.

The more money you put on the table, the more money the casino takes away.

If two players walk up to a table and stay there for a year, one doing $6 flat bets and one doing $6 press bets, the player doing the press bets should walk away with a higher negative balance than the person not doing the press bets.

Am I wrong?

The player not pressing will take in a winning bet while the other player pressing will press their bet and lose it (for a higher negative loss). This should happen frequently enough vs pressing and winning that not pressing = a lesser negative balance in the long run.

Right?

And to clarify: He does think pressing puts the "edge" in your favor. If I'm not mistaken his exact words were "and that's what takes the edge from their favor to yours".

You are not wrong; higher total action = higher total expected loss. Your father is incorrect if he believes changing bet sizes can change the house edge on a bet.

Quote: jennifer2010

I'm under the impression

imo, better than being under someone's thumb

Quote: jennifer2010

that pressing bets is technically worse than not pressing your bets.

from an expected value point of view I agree

Quote: jennifer2010

The more money you put on the table, the more money the casino takes away.

oh oh
this sounds like an opinion about THEORY

I say the more money you put on the table in fewer bets the greater your chance is to hit a win target
i could be wrong so this is only me opinion here

Quote: jennifer2010

If two players walk up to a table and stay there for a year,

wow
what a thought experiment

Quote: jennifer2010

one doing $6 flat bets and one doing $6 press bets, the player doing the press bets should walk away with a higher negative balance than the person not doing the press bets.

Am I wrong?

how can one person's opinion be wrong, i say

Quote: jennifer2010

The player <sinp>

Angel game starts at 7:05pm
got to run
no opinion there

how about some math or simulation results to tilt any opinion
just a thought
Mully

thank you for sharing!

Quote: jennifer2010

Here's how it works:

Place 6
Place 8

Start with your $6 bets (each win pays 7 to 1).

this is not true in my casino
if it is true, it will be false very soon

Quote: jennifer2010

I'm under the impression that pressing bets is technically worse than not pressing your bets.

The more money you put on the table, the more money the casino takes away.

If two players walk up to a table and stay there for a year, one doing $6 flat bets and one doing $6 press bets, the player doing the press bets should walk away with a higher negative balance than the person not doing the press bets.

Am I wrong?

The player not pressing will take in a winning bet while the other player pressing will press their bet and lose it (for a higher negative loss). This should happen frequently enough vs pressing and winning that not pressing = a lesser negative balance in the long run.

Right?

And to clarify: He does think pressing puts the "edge" in your favor. If I'm not mistaken his exact words were "and that's what takes the edge from their favor to yours".

The more you bet, the more you lose. The total amount lost increases but the percentage of amount lost over the amount wagered stays the same.

There is only one way to "reduce" the house edge in craps and that is to adjust your bets so that you get as much money as you can on the odds.

For example, if you normally bet $30 on the pass line, you would reduce both the house edge and the amount lost if you bet $10 on the pass line and $20 on the odds. But even still, you can never get to a positive expectation because that pass line bet, like all bets on the craps table aside from the odds, is negative.

Jennifer,

First off I would say that this method of playing craps is perfectly reasonable especially since Dad is starting his bets a the lowest possible wager. Playing this way his risk is small since his bets are small and he is making the best bets by only placing the 6/8 and making a line bet when he shoots. He could lower the edge by making 2 come bets but would have to wager more since he would have to take odds on those bets to lower the overall edge and this would increase his variance.

Most avid craps players play in a similar fashion pressing winning bets in some fashion. Since craps isn't like other games there are occasionally hands that will produce many repeats of the same number, usually the 6 or 8. He will lose a little most of the time but he will occasionally have a great score which is why craps players play this way. We play for the big score which is nirvana for the craps veteran. I have had hundreds of dollars on numbers starting from very small bets woo hoo!! It's almost as fun as girls!

Look at it this way, if he says same bet 3 times when the 6 hits he will have $21 in his rack and if he presses the second win then after the third win he will have $22 in his rack from the place 6 bet. How often do you see more than a couple of wins on the same number? It's the 2 hit hands where he loses out. After the 4th and 5th hit he will have $35 by not pressing but will have $52 from the pressed bet. As the hand progresses it becomes a less likely event of course and yes the edge works on all of that money bet but in real life it's whole dollars won not fractions of dollars lost so for craps players most are willing to accept those small losses to be able to brag about that great hand where he made a couple of grand.

He sounds like a pretty tough player since it doesn't look like he makes any of the horrendous bets that craps offers.

Quote: jennifer2010

The player not pressing will take in a winning bet while the other player pressing will press their bet and lose it (for a higher negative loss). This should happen frequently enough vs pressing and winning that not pressing = a lesser negative balance in the long run.

Right?

to lose after 0 and 1 win both systems of play net the same
the difference i see is after a loss after the 2nd win
same nets 8
press nets 2 (but was fun while it lasted)


being that the place 6 bet is a dog
and only wins at a 45% rate (slightly higher than the Field bet)
one is in a hole to start with and must dig out, and out

looks like over the 1st 4 wins, the keep/press only out-performs
same
one time, by $1
Yahoo!

keep/press has a greater net win after 5 or more wins B4 loss
that does not happen every hour i am guessing

of course no math was done on the expected loss over a years play
my sims shows about a 30% greater loss from keep/press player
but anything can happen in one short session...
(except 18 11s in a row or 33 7s in a row)

but one can get lucky as ME pointed out

as 1 sim i see
for keep/press
showed a net win of $1297 after 525,600 rolls (365 days 16 hours at 90 rolls per hour)

same bet never came close to a net win

that has to be worth something
and if it is
the IRS gets their cut too