Craps Vig Crash Course

The "Vig," derived from the word “vigorish,” is defined as the percentage edge the house extracts for every dollar gambled. The vig is often misleading when it comes to how much a casino actually makes and how much a player actually loses in a random game and it is seriously misleading when it comes to an advantage player at craps who changes the odds by his controlled throwing.

(1 divided by 66 is 0.01515). There's the vig for the normal, random placing of the 6 and 8.

So you bring $100 to the casino and you figure you're going to bet $6 on the 6 and 8, which is $12 total, thinking that you only stand to lose about 1.52 percent of your money, a dollar fifty to make it rounded. So you think you're going to go home with about $98.50 in the long run using that same $100. But you won't. In the long run the 1.52 percent house edge will wipe your $100 away and safely tuck it into the casino coffers. Why? Because in the long run, or even over one or a few sessions, you will bet far, far more than that $100.

You money will be going back and forth, back and forth, and with each back and forth, the house edge is subtly chop, chop, chopping away at your cash.

The placement of the 6 and 8 will see it acted upon approximately 44 times per hour, if we assume 100 rolls of the dice in that hour. So assuming in 100 rolls the numbers we’re concerned with, the 6, 8 or 7, will appear (on average) about 44 times. The 6 and 8 will appear approximately 28 times (winning you $196, while the 7 will pop up 17 times (losing you $204). I'm rounding up the fractions here so that's why we have 44 percent but 45 appearances. Darn math!

In 100 rolls, you can expect to be down $8. One hundred rolls of the dice is about one hour’s worth of play, sometimes less in a fast game. Now that $100 has been whittled away to $92. In the second hour, you'll lose another $8 and be down to $84 and on down it goes over time.

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