Craps Hedging Philosophy

Hedge bettors want to have it both ways. They want tp protect themselves at one point of the game, but they don’t want to be hurt at the other end of the game. But this is impossible. In real life hedge betters are like this guy named Sammy who has two girls on the hook, Susie and Sally. Since he worries that he won’t ever get married, he juggles both girls hoping one finally says: “Yes, Sam, you are the man!”

Unfortunately, given time, what invariably happens to guys such as Sammy is that Sally or Susie discovers his scamming (and tells the other, as women do talk) and both then scram, leaving him with nothing but memories and lingering doubts that maybe he should have played the game of love in a straightforward fashion. He is also out a lot of money as neither of his honeys will give back any of his presents!

Hedge betting serves a similar purpose. It is the gambling equivalent of juggling girlfriends. It is meant to insure that a player can win small amounts frequently at the expense of a greater house edge on one’s money. In the long run, hedging your bets is a foolish thing to do in most cases, as the bets that are often used for hedging purposes are high house-edge bets. High house-edge bets can’t protect low house-edge bets -- just as dating Susie can’t increase the likelihood that Sally will marry you (or vice versa).

If you find yourself falling for hedge-betting’s allure, perhaps you should ask yourself if you are betting too much money in the first place. The need to hedge often comes from a sense of insecurity in the bets you want to make. If a Pass Line bet of $50 makes you tremble at the thought of a loss, perhaps a more modest $10 should be your bet, and forget about trying to “insure” your $50 bet with an Any Craps hedge.

Craps has scores of individual bets that can be made during the course of play -- from Hardways to Crazy Crapper proposition bets, to the Field, to all varieties of Place bets on the “Do” and the “Don’t,” to the Pass Line, Come, Don’t Pass, Don’t Come, Odds bets to Hop bets, and then every possible combination of each. The totality of the betting possibilities would be staggering.

So what? The overwhelming majority of bets at craps -- to put it delicately -- stink! So, the bottom line on hedging is this: With the exception of the Odds bet at craps, trim the hedges from your game!

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