After a point is established, you may back your pass line bet with a second wager behind it. That second wager is the odds bet, also called free odds or taking the odds, and it pays exactly what the point is worth: 2:1 on 4 and 10, 3:2 on 5 and 9, 6:5 on 6 and 8.
Paying true odds means the expectation is zero. Not small, not favourable, zero. Nothing else on a casino floor does this, which is why the bet is not advertised and why the house limits how much of it you may take.
What it does to the cost of playing
The odds bet cannot reduce the house edge on the pass line, which is 7/495, or 1.4141%. What it changes is how much money is riding for the same expected loss: the identical loss is spread across a larger total wager, so the cost per unit of action falls.
| Odds allowed | Average total at risk | Exact combined edge | Per unit wagered |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | 1 | 7/495 | 1.4141% |
| 1× | 5/3 | 7/825 | 0.8485% |
| 2× | 7/3 | 1/165 | 0.6061% |
| 3-4-5× | 34/9 | 7/1870 | 0.3743% |
| 5× | 13/3 | 7/2145 | 0.3263% |
| 10× | 23/3 | 7/3795 | 0.1845% |
A table advertising 3-4-5× odds, which is the common American ladder of three times on 4 and 10, four times on 5 and 9 and five times on 6 and 8, brings the cost of a craps session below four tenths of a percent of everything you put out. That is cheaper than blackjack played correctly.
Two honest caveats. Spreading the same loss over more action does not reduce the loss, so a player who backs every point is risking more money per hour, and the swings are larger. And the odds bet only exists behind a line bet, so it cannot rescue a bad one: backing a proposition bet is not possible, which is exactly why those remain expensive.
Where the numbers come from
Related terms in odds & money
- True odds, The payout that would make a bet exactly fair, with no advantage to either side.
- House edge, The average share of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run.
- Vigorish, The fee built into a bet's price - the bookmaker's or casino's cut, also called the vig or the juice.
- Unit, One standard bet, used as the yardstick for measuring results and bankroll.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.