Tag: Hedged

Strategy description

A hedged combination of the Pass Line and Don’t Pass strategies.

• $10 pass line bet
• $10 don’t pass bet

In this page, we compare three options for odds:

• None: No odds
• 1x on PL: Add 1x odds on the pass line (PL) bet
• 1x on DP: Lay odds on the don’t pass (DP) bet to win 1x (lay $12 on 6/8 points, $15 on the 5/9 points, and $20 on the 4/10 points)

Note that not all casinos will allow you to play this strategy, but at least some of them will. Those that allow it may not rate your play on the pass line and don’t pass—your mileage may vary.

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

The Doey Don’t strategy takes advantage of the nearly opposite wins and losses between the pass line and don’t pass bets. Except on a 12, if one bet wins, the other loses and vice versa. On a 12, the don’t pass pushes (“bar 12”) and the pass line loses. The important question is whether that feature makes it a good strategy or not.

The Doey Don’t without odds is a terrible strategy. The sample sessions and quantiles show that it’s impossible to win money, because all of the wins cancel each other out. The losses are slow, and most end up in a complete wash, but in longer sessions you start to see the bottom 1% and 25% of sessions with a loss. If the best case scenario (top 1%) is $0 in winnings, it can’t be a good strategy. (Note that the win chance metric includes half of the ties, so it looks higher than anticipated).

What happens when we add odds? Just as with the Pass Line with Odds or Don’t Pass with Odds strategies, adding odds acts as free variance—it does not change the average winnings, but it does increase the variability. This means that both odds on the pass line and don’t pass bets end up with decent win chances (40% for 1x on PL, 49.3% for 1x on DP per-10-shooters). Comparing the Doey Don’t with 1x on PL to just a pass line bet with 1x odds, the Doey Don’t approach has higher average loss ($6.99 vs $3.53 per-10-shooters), lower best-case winnings (Best 1% quantile of $132 vs $260 per-10-shooters), lower worst-case losses (Worst 1% quantile of -$98 vs -$176), and lower win chance (40.0% vs 44.1% per-10-shooters). These trends also hold when comparing to the dark side odds approach. If your bankroll is small, the Doey Don’t can be a way to bring down the variance to keep you on the table longer. But if your bankroll is large or you plan on placing large odds bets (2x or more), you’re likely better off not hedging and sticking with either a Pass Line with Odds or a Don’t Pass with Odds strategy, perhaps with lower odds if needed.

This strategy is a great example that adding two strategies together always results in their average winnings adding together. If you compare the average winnings per-10-shooters with no odds, the loss of $7.02 exactly equals $3.56 (from Pass Line) + $3.46 (from Don’t Pass). This is true for all strategies as long as the session type is consistent. This principle is also true for house edge in percentage terms, as long as the bets have the same resolutions. The house edge for a pass line bet is 1.41% and for a don’t pass bet is 1.36%. Combined, this equals 2.77%, which you may note is exactly the same as 1/36. It’s no coincidence that across both bets, all possible dice rolls are a tie except the 12, which results in PL losing and DP pushing, or a loss of 1 unit across 36 possible dice outcomes.

With any hedging approach, it can feel like you’re eliminating chances to lose. But as the Doey Don’t strategy shows, you’re also eliminating chances to win, and combined with an overall higher house edge, it makes winnings over the short term even more difficult.

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