Charitable Gaming;Craps

Okay, so maybe the donors are not really all that aware of and enthusiastic about the beneficiary, but they know its a charitable event and they know they can get booze and gamble and they know they want a good time.

So simplify and streamline the rules. Make sure everyone knows what pays what. LARGE signage for the players. Good cheat sheet for the dealers. Practice for the dealers. Sharing of questions so it isn't the same question all night long. Keep things moving and keep things jovial.

Controlling your own tables and chairs and having your own layouts is great. You can train and retain your own dealers. I would not allow the capping of pass line bets since realism over rides everything. Allow odds and train the dealers. If you want you could have 345 odds but require max odds so as to keep the speed up. They know what to bet and you know what to pay.

Squeezing the lemon sounds fun. Get the BJ and Craps rules well understood and practiced and lemon juice will be flowing all night long. Let the players enjoy their beers and enjoy the bets. Make it a casino that is really generous with beer and really generous with low limit bets at a fast moving table The players will enjoy the night if things move fast and flawlessly. That requires dealers who know the drill.

Again, great advice. Thanks.

In the past, our craps bets were $1 min. $5 max with no odds. It drove me crazy however, I had to defer to the "old-times" some of who had worked the craps game for 20+ years. Frankly, if I am going volunteer to work a table for 8 hours only to make a grand or so, I'll write the school a check and stay home. So, recently I finally got them to agree to a $2 minimum $5 max with no odds. Their fear is the more money on the table the more we could lose. I take just the opposite but understated the complexity of calculating payouts.

No sure I understand you suggestion "If you want you could have 345 odds but require max odds so as to keep the speed up."

Quote: Riva

Again, great advice. Thanks.

In the past, our craps bets were $1 min. $5 max with no odds. It drove me crazy however, I had to defer to the "old-times" some of who had worked the craps game for 20+ years. Frankly, if I am going volunteer to work a table for 8 hours only to make a grand or so, I'll write the school a check and stay home. So, recently I finally got them to agree to a $2 minimum $5 max with no odds. Their fear is the more money on the table the more we could lose. I take just the opposite but understated the complexity of calculating payouts.

No sure I understand you suggestion "If you want you could have 345 odds but require max odds so as to keep the speed up."

Well, what I would worry about is if many players just play passline bets. Then throwing out things like odds could lead to more dealer errors since they are volunteers and possibly lower the house's take. Do you know offhand how much the craps table is typically making? Is the house edge thin enough that it is losing on "bad nights"? How much is it taking in versus charity blackjack?

In the long term, you have the right idea. Make the game more real, get more action, and you will get a greater take longterm because you'll have more volume. But your older volunteers have a valid concern. The more money that is being wagered, the more you will be risking. What kind of losses can you afford here if the pass line gets hot wins 65% for a night (1 in 200 chance over 60 points)? If you have $10k in total action on the passline, that hot 65% passline may just have cost you $3000 for the night. Can the charity take a nightly hit like that? A consistent profit is more important for a charity casino, imo.

Quote: Riva

No sure I understand you suggestion "If you want you could have 345 odds but require max odds so as to keep the speed up."

You would be allowing an Odds Bet but instead of 3x4x5x being an upper limit, it would be a Min/Max. In other words if a player wanted to make ANY odds bet he would have to make the Maximum odds bet that was alllowable. This keeps all the players and all the dealers informed of what the rules are and what the math is. No slowdowns, no lectures.

he means if you were required to bet exactly 3x4x5x odds if you wanted to make an odds wager, all would pay the same amount on a winning wager so nothing to think about.

3x on the 4 and 10
4x on the 5 and 9
5x on the 6 and 8

for a $5 passline bet:

$15x2=$30
$20x(3/2)=$30
$25x(6/5)=$30

Quote: Riva

Even money on place bets. Game moves pretty fast.

Even the 4/10? If so, don't worry about adding free odds if players are making that bet... Egads, it's a gold mine.

Quote: tringlomane

Well, what I would worry about is if many players just play passline bets. Then throwing out things like odds could lead to more dealer errors since they are volunteers and possibly lower the house's take. Do you know offhand how much the craps table is typically making? Is the house edge thin enough that it is losing on "bad nights"? How much is it taking in versus charity blackjack?

In the long term, you have the right idea. Make the game more real, get more action, and you will get a greater take longterm because you'll have more volume. But your older volunteers have a valid concern. The more money that is being wagered, the more you will be risking. What kind of losses can you afford here if the pass line gets hot wins 65% for a night (1 in 200 chance over 60 points)? If you have $10k in total action on the passline, that hot 65% passline may just have cost you $3000 for the night. Can the charity take a nightly hit like that? A consistent profit is more important for a charity casino, imo.

Even with $2 / $5 no odds, we'll make anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 on craps on a busy night (we own one, 14' craps table with custom layout--thinking of buying another 14' table as the game is popular.) On some nights, we've made as little as $500 for the entire night's work (ouch). I've been working there for 12 years and we have NEVER lost money on craps. Came close one night, but we always get lucky at the last hour (1:00 AM) when the beer takes over and the players start making stupid max bets in the middle ($5 boxcars)

Obviously, we could have a bad night, lose $3000 on craps, but all the other games always make money to offset the loss. I simply hate working 8 hours without hitting it out of the park. We have 20 blackjacks that, on average, make about $150 per-night, 10 holdem that have $0 risk, and two, 20' roulette (my personal ATM's). Plus we have a big six wheel.

Bottom line..on an average night, we make 5k to 10K. On a good night, we make 20k. I want to make it each night in to a 50K night however, I don't think that can happen by tweaking betting rules. Rather, it has to come from tightening up the games while allowing bigger wagers. Thoughts?

So, if I understand this right, you're saying that if we allow free odds (on a pass-line bet) we simply set policy that if a player wants "odds" they can not take "up to" 1x -5x, they have to bet the maximum odds, So, for the sake of conversation, if one wants "free odds" the must bet 2x, "no more/no less"? (gulp)

Well, if you're getting enough prop bets in the middle, you would be okay to offer some odds, but 3-4-5X is pretty liberal (even though it makes the odds payouts consistent). If I was going to offer odds, I probably would just start out at 1X and go from there. People should be able to multiply by 2, 1.5, and 1.2, it's really not that damn hard. And if you want to make more money, you really need to up the max if it is currently $5 for craps. Personally though, I think you're doing pretty damn well for the school as is. 35 games total? 7 of 13 Missouri casinos have less tables than this. The 7 smallest casinos (135 total games) running roughly ~165 hours/week earned $3.64M for the month of january.

Data can be found here:
http://www.mgc.dps.mo.gov/2013_fin/FY13_FinReport/detail0113.XLW

Scale that down to a daily basis: $117k/day

Scale down from 135 tables to 35 tables: $30.4k/day

Scale down playing hours (assume MO casinos get 12 solid gaming hours/day vs. your 8): $20.3k/night

If you scale up the max bets up a bit ($10 would be enough if your craps table is currently $5), your charity night will rival that of a small state-run casino at the tables, which is all you could really ever hope to do. With 200 patrons, a $20k night means on average each person is dropping $100! It may be for a good cause and all, but $100 per person is nothing to sneeze at either. Hoping for $50k nights are just unrealistic, imo.

Quote: sodawater

traditionally, in craps, players are allowed to "press" their pass line bets any time they want, up to the table limit. No one does this, of course, because it's a ridiculously bad play.

Edit: no good players do this. I know first hand that new players do this all the time as they don't know any better.. This would be great to allow for a charity casino... The house should make a lot ore money.. But you can never forget about variance..