Craps can be an intimidating game for the beginner. The table seems to have about a hundred different kinds of bets. Critical to the understanding of craps is that it is a game of rounds. The first roll in a round is called the come out roll. Sometimes the outcome of a round will be determined on the come out roll. In particular a 2, 3, 7, 11, or 12 on the come out roll immediately ends a round. If any other total is rolled (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10) that number is called the point. The dealer will place a white puck on an area of the table to designate what the point is, in case you forget. If a point is rolled the dice will be rolled continuously until the same point is rolled again or a 7.

In this system, you raise your bet one unit if you lose and lower it one unit if you win, which means your winning bets will be higher than your losing bets. It would look like this in practice: 1, lose and go to 2, lose and go to 3, win and drop to 2, lose and go to 3, lose again, bet 4, win, bet 3 ad infinitum. It looks attractive, but the end result is the same: you will eventually lose your money. A ten loss series would have you down 55 units and you would have a helluva time getting out of that hole.

Many players who make pass line bets can't afford to take any odds or full odds behind the bet once the number is established. You can place the odds if the person allows you. The casino has no edge on the odds and in the long run your expectation is to break even. That could be a lot of casino fun with no expected cost! One caveat: Make sure the person behind whose bet you're taking odds fully understands what it is you are doing. You don't want to win a bet only to have the man or woman scoop it up and keep it.

This system is a little more sophisticated, but the results can be as devastating as our old friend Martingale. It is a series of numbers, each of which is the sum of the last two numbers in the system, like this: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55-89-144. Advice about betting it varies, but one of the more common is to bet the series as you lose. If you win a bet, fall back one in the series If you win that one, start over, if you lose, continue on in the series.

Soldiers in the Roman Legions used to shave down pig knuckles into the shapes of cubes, and toss them onto their inverted shields as a form of entertainment while in camp. Hence we get the term "to roll the bones". We do know that the game we know today as "craps" came to the United States from Europe.