Why a craps bankroll is counted in units
A unit is your standard bet, usually the table minimum on the pass line. Counting in units rather than dollars lets the same plan work at a $5 table in a downtown Las Vegas casino and a $25 table on the Strip. If you bring 40 units, you bring forty flat bets, whatever the number on the placard says.
Units also make the maths honest. A flat pass line bet loses 1.41% of a unit per decision on average, and a decision takes about 3.4 rolls. At a table that runs, say, 100 rolls an hour, you see roughly 30 decisions and lose about 0.42 units an hour. On a $10 unit that is a little over four dollars.
That average is far from what one evening feels like. Over 30 decisions the standard deviation on a flat line bet is about 5.5 units, so an ordinary bad hour costs five or six units and a rough one costs eleven. Your craps bankroll exists to absorb those swings without forcing you off the table early.
How much money to bring to a craps table
Plan the session first, then the money. A three-hour session of flat pass line bets carries an expected loss of about 1.3 units and a standard deviation near 9.5 units. Bringing 30 to 40 units covers a bad run with room left. If you plan to take odds, the figure needs to be several times higher.
Setting a loss limit before the first roll
A loss limit is the amount you agree to lose before you walk away, fixed while you are calm and the dice are cold. Half the session bankroll is a common choice: with 40 units in the rail, you leave once 20 are gone. Write it down if that helps. Decisions made after a seven-out are rarely good ones.
The limit matters more than any betting pattern. Every craps strategy on the layout carries a house edge, and nothing you do with bet sizing after a loss flips that edge. The Martingale shows what happens when players try: the bet doubles, the table maximum arrives, and one run of losses costs the whole session.
Stop-loss per shooter
Some players add a smaller limit inside the session: if a shooter’s hand costs more than three or four units, they sit out the next shooter. This does nothing to the edge, but it breaks the habit of chasing. A seat at the rail with no chips on the layout costs exactly nothing per hour.
Win goals, and why most of them are too high
A win goal is the other end of the plan: the profit at which you color up and leave. Aim for something the swings can plausibly deliver. With flat bets, a gain of 10 to 15 units is a good session. Asking for 40 units on a 40-unit craps bankroll is asking for a hand that rarely comes.
A practical version is the lock-up. Once you are ten units ahead, put half the profit in your pocket and play on with the rest. If the table turns, you still leave with something. If the hot hand keeps going, you are still in it, and the pocketed chips never go back on the felt.
Why a win goal is not the same as winning at craps
Stopping when ahead feels like a way of beating the game. It is not. Every bet you make still loses its edge on average, and a win goal only chooses which random point of the evening you happen to stop at. It is a comfort rule, and a good one, but the long-run numbers stay exactly where they were.
Bet size against the table minimum
The single biggest bankroll decision is which table you sit at. Your unit should be the table minimum, and the minimum should be small enough that 30 to 40 of them fit your session money. With $200 that points to a $5 table. At a $15 table the same money is barely thirteen units.
Minimums move with the time of day and the day of the week, and they tend to rise on busy weekend nights. If the only open tables are too expensive for your plan, the right move is to wait or walk. A short bankroll at a high minimum is how a routine cold run ends a session in twenty minutes.
How much to bet on the 6 and 8
Place bets on the 6 and 8 go in multiples of $6 because they pay 7 to 6. At a $5 table that means $6 each, so the two numbers together take $12 of action, more than two units. Count both as part of your exposure per hand, and size the bankroll for the total, not only the line bet.
How odds bets change the swings
The odds bet behind the pass line has no house edge, so it adds nothing to your expected loss per hand. That is why it is the best money on the table. What it does add is volatility. With 3-4-5x odds, a single decision can win seven units or lose up to six, instead of one either way.
The numbers are stark. A flat pass line bet has a standard deviation of about one unit per decision. Add full 3-4-5x odds and it rises to about 4.9 units, nearly five times the swing, while the expected loss stays at 1.41% of the line bet. Over an hour of 30 decisions that is roughly 27 units of standard deviation.
A player taking full odds on 40 units is in a different game from a flat bettor with the same money. One ordinary cold streak can take half the rail. If you want the lower combined edge, either bring far more units or take 1x or 2x odds, which gives about 1.9 and 2.9 units of swing per decision.
Cost per hour against swing per hour
The calculator below shows the other half of the picture: what each bet costs you over time. Set your unit and a table pace and compare. The line bets and the 6 and 8 cost a few dollars an hour, while the center of the table eats a craps bankroll many times faster than any losing streak does.
Which bets suit a small craps bankroll
The best bets in craps for a limited budget are the ones with the lowest edge and the smallest swing: the Pass Line or Don’t Pass with modest odds, and a place bet on the 6 and 8. Each costs well under 2% of the money decided. That combination is the basis of almost every sensible craps betting strategy.
| Bet | Pays | House edge | Per roll |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass Line | 1 to 1 | 1.41% | 0.42% |
| Don't Pass | 1 to 1 | 1.36% | 0.40% |
| Place 6 | 7 to 6 | 1.52% | 0.46% |
| Field | 1 to 1; 2 pays 2 to 1; 12 pays 2 to 1 | 5.56% | 5.56% |
| Hard 8 | 9 to 1 | 9.09% | 2.78% |
| Any Seven | 4 to 1 | 16.67% | 16.67% |
Single-roll bets are the fastest way to lose a bankroll. A Field bet costs 5.56% per roll and Any Seven costs 16.67%, against 0.42% per roll on the pass line. A $5 Any Seven bet every roll costs about 40 times what a $5 line bet costs over the same stretch. That is a whole session’s money in an hour.
Bankroll rules for online craps
Real-money online craps is legal in New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia for players 21 and over who are physically in the state. The online craps games there use the same payouts, but the pace can be much faster than a live table. A computer-dealt game rolls as quickly as you click, so the cost per hour climbs.
Licensed sites in those states offer deposit limits, session reminders and time-outs in the account settings. Use them. Set the deposit limit to your session bankroll before you play, not after a losing run. Our responsible gambling page lists the helplines, including 1-800-GAMBLER, and explains how self-exclusion works in each regulated state.
One small habit makes a real difference: keep the session money separate from everything else. At a casino that means leaving the bank cards in the hotel room. Online, it means a deposit that matches the plan. When the rail is empty, the session is over, and the next come-out roll belongs to someone else at the table.