The Don't Don't Win?
September 27th, 2025 at 5:17:43 AM
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Playing Craps, I’ve heard dealers tell more than one person who had asked for advice about the Don’t, not to play it. “You can’t win playing that” is the usual advice. This irritated me to hear that, but finally I decided that what they were observing and passing along was the challenge of winning enough times when, adding free odds, the player gets paid less than even. Due to this and the disadvantage of the resolved-on-Come-out betting, it is very easy to see that someone winning the free odds bets about half the time and initially feeling good about it, is actually losing money. If the player still wants to play, the dealers will then encourage betting nothing on the free odds and even ‘taking no action’* when a harder to win 6 or 8 is to be resolved. You ‘can’t win’ sure enough, doing that.
What I have been telling people instead is that the player needs to realize he needs to win 2 out of 3 of the free odds bets they make.
Is that simply too much winning to expect? 2 of 3 is the expected result for resolving 4 or 10, upon which the EV is zero, while for 5|9 and 6|8 the expected results are 60% and 54.5% wins, resp. And the latter numbers are the more commonly seen ones to be resolved. To win 2/3 overall is to be killing it … is that really necessary? The math of figuring that out is too much for me, so I ran some trials using the Wizard craps game. Breaking it up into sessions containing 27 free odds resolutions, if that session was somewhat short of the two-thirds goal, like 2-4 wins short, you might come out an overall winner or loser by a few hundred dollars [$25 DP with 6x max odds of $150]. If it was more short than that, losing sessions up to -$1500 quickly accumulated. If only one W short, or 2 of 3 achieved or better, the winning amount quickly advanced to the same figure to the positive side. Bottom line, though, I often ran bad and minus $4325 was the final GT for it all which contained 810 free odds bets . So I guess the dealers would say “told you” but even though it took me a lot of time to run this, for any conclusions like that, there weren’t enough trials. The real fact of the matter is that a $25 table min and max odds is something harrowing to experience, even if eventually you come out ahead.
But I will also conclude it’s pretty accurate to say that you need to win 2 of 3 of your free odds bets to really win a chunk, and if you only come close you will still break about even. Less than that is going to be bad for your bankroll.
* usually this means taking down the bet and moving it to the DC. It is not a contract bet.
What I have been telling people instead is that the player needs to realize he needs to win 2 out of 3 of the free odds bets they make.
Is that simply too much winning to expect? 2 of 3 is the expected result for resolving 4 or 10, upon which the EV is zero, while for 5|9 and 6|8 the expected results are 60% and 54.5% wins, resp. And the latter numbers are the more commonly seen ones to be resolved. To win 2/3 overall is to be killing it … is that really necessary? The math of figuring that out is too much for me, so I ran some trials using the Wizard craps game. Breaking it up into sessions containing 27 free odds resolutions, if that session was somewhat short of the two-thirds goal, like 2-4 wins short, you might come out an overall winner or loser by a few hundred dollars [$25 DP with 6x max odds of $150]. If it was more short than that, losing sessions up to -$1500 quickly accumulated. If only one W short, or 2 of 3 achieved or better, the winning amount quickly advanced to the same figure to the positive side. Bottom line, though, I often ran bad and minus $4325 was the final GT for it all which contained 810 free odds bets . So I guess the dealers would say “told you” but even though it took me a lot of time to run this, for any conclusions like that, there weren’t enough trials. The real fact of the matter is that a $25 table min and max odds is something harrowing to experience, even if eventually you come out ahead.
But I will also conclude it’s pretty accurate to say that you need to win 2 of 3 of your free odds bets to really win a chunk, and if you only come close you will still break about even. Less than that is going to be bad for your bankroll.
* usually this means taking down the bet and moving it to the DC. It is not a contract bet.
I am planning to visit a casino in November where it is quite likely I will be faced with frequent minimums of $25 at the Craps table. Since I haven’t played in a long time, I don’t want to just walk away from that, and any Craps player loves to stick it out for a big session. So I’m able to conclude here that winning 2 of 3 is not a crazy goal for a session, but it is difficult. The thing is, you will need to have a stop loss rule to keep from losing an upsetting amount. From the results I was able to determine that 4 free odds losses in a row was a big warning sign, or that such bets not winning 3 times in a row just as bad of a sign. Did it mean the table was going to continue to be bad? No, the dice don’t have a memory, but the thing is, your bankroll does! I concluded these signs mean it’s time to bow out.
the next time Dame Fortune toys with your heart, your soul and your wallet, raise your glass and praise her thus: “Thanks for nothing, you cold-hearted, evil, damnable, nefarious, low-life, malicious monster from Hell!” She is, after all, stone deaf. ... Arnold Snyder
