Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
Originally Posted by regnis View Post
I am not one to claim that I make the best bets when it comes to craps, as I love the 10 and the hard 8 and 10. But I bet those when I was throwing the dice and exercising some degree of control. I actually don't ever bet the fire, the ATS, or any of the other carnival bets. But that doesn't mean that I totally disagree with Alan. Craps is a negative expectation game. Every bet except the odds bet has a house edge, and you will get ground down betting the pass (or don't pass) with odds. So you are looking for a brief period of time when the results are favorable, and if Alan is doing this with small money looking for the big hit on the gimmicks, he is still minimizing his exposure. It ain't for me, but you have to beat the math to win at craps, one way or the other.
Exactly.

And as I have said before, craps is a NEGATIVE expectation game. There is no way to win at craps UNLESS you do something different and we players got lucky when someone came along and sold the casinos on Bonus Craps. Bonus Craps allows random shooters who can't even make a pass to roll just five different numbers and collect big. You don't even have to be a DI to do this. You don't even have to be a "good shooter" to do this. In fact, bad shooters who throw horn numbers (craps) are the ones who are more likely to hit the Bonus Craps payoffs.

Dan... for someone who has never played craps, now you're telling us what the casino management knows about Bonus Craps? Really, Dan. And how well are you doing at this year's WSOP?

This isn't meant as an Alan criticism. It's actually just a comment for those inexperienced players who didn't take a few probability courses and are wondering if the math is real. The math is real. If your goal is to lose X amount of dollars and you stick to that goal, then playing what regnis referred to as carnival bets has no real impact other than to get you off the table faster, so no harm done. But if your idea of gambling is to play X number of hours, then the carnival bets work against you.

The argument that casino managers reduced payouts on the carnival bets because players had been winning is the same argument one could use to explain why video poker payouts have been reduced over the last 25 years, or why comps have been reduced. The players, however, have not been winning.

Why have video poker payouts been reduced? Why have comps been reduced? It's not because the players had casinos at a disadvantage and were winning. It's because the players have become addicted, and the casinos are greedy.