Hammerlock

Strategy description

This strategy combines a doey-don’t system, odds on the don’t pass, and place bets that stay up for only a few wins, in what ends up being a heavily hedged approach:

• $10 pass line bet
• $10 don’t pass bet,
  • Add (lay) $60 in odds once point is established
• A phased place bet approach (no matter what the point is):
  • Start with $24 place bet each on 6 and 8
  • If one of these bets wins, shift to $44 inside (place the 5, 6, 8, and 9)
  • If one of the inside bets wins, take all place bets down

The origins of this strategy is somewhat unknown. From some digging, it may have first appeared on gamblersbookcase.com, but it no longer appears there. Since then, some other sites have picked it up. The strategy description here comes from bestcrapsstrategy.net, which originally inspired this blog post: 5 Systems to Try at the Craps Table. The simulations have been re-worked for this page.

Simulated outcomes

To understand how the strategy could perform on any given day, we simulate 1,000,000 sessions for each of three session types: one shooter, 10 shooters, and one hour (144 rolls, letting active bets finish). The results are given in each tab below. For more information on how to read each chart, table, or statistic, see How to interpret statistics from The Craps Analyst.

Analysis

There’s a lot going on in this strategy, and before looking at the numbers, it helps to break down some of the strategy aspects:

• Before a point is set, most rolls will be net $0 for the player because both the pass line and don’t pass are bet. The only exception is on a roll of 12, where the player loses $10 on pass line and pushes on the don’t pass.
• When the place bets are active (either 6/8 or 5/6/8/9), the total outlay for them is either $48 or $44. The don’t pass odds can win either $30 (on 4/10), $45 (on 5/9), or $50 (on 6/8). So a seven-out in this case is heavily hedged, and will typically be a very small win or loss.
• The best situation is that two place bets win ($28 win on the 6/8, then a $14 win on the 5/6/8/9, for a total of $42 win), and then the shooter sevens-out for a win on the don’t pass odds.
• The worst situation is that the shooter hits a lot of point numbers, which will lose $60 per point. Some losses are offset by early place bet wins (especially if the point is one of those place numbers), but once two bets win on the shooter, we no longer make the place bets and will net lose $60 per point.

These situations show up when looking at the results per-shooter. The best win is $92, but wins in the $80-$92 range happen about 15% of the time. The most common outcome is a small win or loss (-$20 to $40). While less common overall, the bigger losses can be huge, with the worst 1% being a $208 loss. As with most dark-side strategies, the win chance for one shooter is above 50%, at 56.8%.

In longer sessions (per-10-shooter or per-hour), the outcomes become more “normal” or bell-shaped. The negative skew still appears on a per-10-shooter basis, but the win chance decreases to 49.6%.

Hedging will result in (1) increased house edge and (2) lower variability than making the bets separately. To point (1), the average loss per-10-shooter here is $15.15 or 4.4x that of the Don’t Pass strategy. Yet the variability of $181.42 is less than the total variability we would get when using the pass line, don’t pass, and some place bets combined.

Overall, the strategy is interesting but carries a high house edge and the potential for big losses. The best case scenario are medium-length rolls that end in a seven-out. But the player may have to weather a hot table where most of the other players are winning big while they continue to lose their $60 odds bets.

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