Any opinions on adding the whirl or world bet to your pass line bet?  I have a friend who likes to put $10 on the pass line and $5 on the whirl at the same time.  2,3,7,11 or 12 ($1 each). He thinks it provides some kind of insurance against a craps on the come out.  I haven’t been able to tell if it’s worked for him or not overall. Good bet or bad?

Pretty bad bet in my opinion if he’s doing it for every comeout roll. House edge on that bet is a whopping 13.33%
Expect to lose more than you save in the long run with this bet.
A $2 any craps bet is a much more economical bet if a hedge is what your looking for.

Flash - 25 April 2010 01:55 PM

Pretty bad bet in my opinion if he’s doing it for every comeout roll. House edge on that bet is a whopping 13.33%
Expect to lose more than you save in the long run with this bet.
A $2 any craps bet is a much more economical bet if a hedge is what your looking for.

+1

I have done this with limited luck only do it on my roll sometimes. If you happen onto a come out roll with a few craps a 7s or 11s it is nice but for the most part the craps check is best I think

Some facts about these hedges, for 60 bets:

So, with the World (Whirl), you increase your expected loss by a factor of almost six, but you add some variance.  Since you start out with $40 more in expected loss, and roughly $20 more variance, you have to have about two standard deviations’ worth of good luck to come out better with the World bet than without it. OTOH, if you come out two SD worse than average, you lose about $75 more with the World bet.

So, if you’re thinking about betting $15 per comeout, why not bet $5 pass and take $10 odds, if you can find a $5 table. You reduce you expected loss by half and get an SD of $110.67. It would take 2.83 SD worth of BAD luck to come out worse than the $10 pass with $5 World.

It seems to me an easy choice.
Cheers,
Alan Shank

Excellent advice, thanks.  I suspected it wasn’t a good bet but couldn’t explain why.  I’ll share this with my friend.  BTW we can’t ever find a $5 table in AC any more—the Trop used to keep one open at times but you couldn’t even get to it, it was so crowded.

The World Bet is a strange bet and can be a confusing one.  The reason the house edge is so high remains in the fact that the 7 yields no profit.  It pushes the other bets which include a simple horn.  Because you have negated any profit from this bet on the most common number that wins the bet when rolled, the house edge sky-rockets.

I do play the world bet at times.  This can be suitable play if you trend a table that has most shooters throwing a horn number or a 7 on the come out roll.  Also, I like to bet world’s when I am trending for a horn number, and decide to bet the horn on a particular roll.  The minimum horn bet is $4, but to add the Big Red for a buck more to push the bet is all the worth it for me.  Since the bet drops after one roll, why wouldn’t you add the most common number to the bet in order to keep the bet up, active and alive?

On a come out roll, I would have to disagree using the world bet as a hedge unless you are playing for the table minimum of $5.  That is $5 pass line bet on the comeout, with a $5 world bet.  Reason being, a natural 7 or 11 wins you enough profit to play the world at no risk.  When you add the horn numbers, you add another 6 numbers to your comeout roll that will yield profit, and again put your world at no risk on the next roll.  That’s 12 numbers out of 36 (or 33%) that will give you a no risk bet after just one hit.

Higher table minimums mean higher world bet denominations, which mean losing more in the long run.  But on a $5 table, and playing the minimum pass line bet, the world is justified.

- Dice Class

diceclass - 27 April 2010 01:49 AM

The World Bet is a strange bet and can be a confusing one.  The reason the house edge is so high remains in the fact that the 7 yields no profit.  It pushes the other bets which include a simple horn.  Because you have negated any profit from this bet on the most common number that wins the bet when rolled, the house edge sky-rockets.

That is not the reason the house edge is so high. The Any-7 piece does have the highest HA (16.67%), but the other bets also have edges of 11.11% or 13.89% each. I expect you would say that the Any-7 is a nice hedge against losing the horn bet.

diceclass - 27 April 2010 01:49 AM

I do play the world bet at times.  This can be suitable play if you trend a table that has most shooters throwing a horn number or a 7 on the come out roll.  Also, I like to bet world’s when I am trending for a horn number, and decide to bet the horn on a particular roll.  The minimum horn bet is $4, but to add the Big Red for a buck more to push the bet is all the worth it for me.  Since the bet drops after one roll, why wouldn’t you add the most common number to the bet in order to keep the bet up, active and alive?

So, trends come in that specific a variety? Wow!

diceclass - 27 April 2010 01:49 AM

On a come out roll, I would have to disagree using the world bet as a hedge unless you are playing for the table minimum of $5.  That is $5 pass line bet on the comeout, with a $5 world bet.  Reason being, a natural 7 or 11 wins you enough profit to play the world at no risk.  When you add the horn numbers, you add another 6 numbers to your comeout roll that will yield profit, and again put your world at no risk on the next roll.  That’s 12 numbers out of 36 (or 33%) that will give you a no risk bet after just one hit.

Higher table minimums mean higher world bet denominations, which mean losing more in the long run.  But on a $5 table, and playing the minimum pass line bet, the world is justified.

- Dice Class

On the comeout a natural 7 nets you exactly the same $5 as it would without the World bet. On the 2 or 12, you net $21 instead of $30 if you just bet those numbers. If your pass bet goes to a point, you cannot win, because you’ve already lost your $5 World, so you either break even if you make the point or lose the whole $10 if you don’t. These hedges squeeze everything down, reducing wins and losses.

Let’s looks at what actually happens to a $5 pass and $5 World (only on the comeout):

If you weight all these, you come out with an HA of 7.37% and a standard deviation of $9.16 per bet. If you played this strategy for a couple of hours, you resolve roughly 60 bets, with an expected loss of $44 and a standard deviation of $71. Just playing the pass line by itself would have an expected loss of about $4 and a standard deviation of $39.

So, your hedge not only increases expected loss very substantially, but has more variance as well. Players who want to be able to play for a long time on a relatively small bankroll should reduce variance - that’s what reduces risk of ruin to its minimum. So, why in the name of sense would you increase expected loss AND reduce variance by making a World bet with every comeout? The only answer is that you actually believe that you can determine when one of those numbers is more probable than at other times. Do you really believe that?
Cheers,
Alan Shank