Odds Bet

One bet that you’ll never hear the stickman advertise is the odds bet. There’s a simple reason for this—odds is the only bet that has no house edge whatsoever. Consequently, some players refer to it as free odds. Making an odds bet, also called taking odds, is the smartest bet you can make at a craps table. But it’s also a bet you can make only in certain circumstances. In fact, you can make an odds bet only if:

As with the pass line and come bets, the odds bet wins if the shooter makes the point and loses if the shooter sevens out. What makes the odds bet different, and better, is that it pays out at better than even money.

To make the odds bet, place the chips you want to bet directly behind your original bet in the pass line or come area of the table.

The payouts for the odds bet depend on the point, as illustrated in the following table:

When taking odds, keep in the mind that casinos don’t deal in small change, and they round fractional payouts down to the nearest dollar. To avoid getting shortchanged, always make odds bets that will result in whole-dollar payouts. If the point is 6 or 8, make sure that your odds bet is a multiple of $5.00. If the point is 5 or 9, make sure that your odds bet is a multiple of $2.00. If the point is 4 or 10, your odds bet can be whatever you’d like, since 2 to 1 odds will never result in a fraction of a dollar.

Every casino allows you to make an odds bet that’s equal to or less than your original bet—these odds bets are called single odds or 1× odds. Many casinos also allow you to make much larger odds bets, with some allowing you to make odds bets of up 100× your original bet.

Though the odds bet itself has no house edge, an odds bet can only be made if you already have a bet on the pass line or come, so the house will have an edge on the combination of the two bets. However, the larger the odds bet you make relative to your original pass line or come bet, the smaller the house edge will be. The following table shows the house edge after an odds bet that is some multiple of your original pass line or come bet.