Getting to the bottom of "Do you shoot craps?" comes down to two dice. Craps is a dice game played at a casino table, and the rules look harder than they are. What decides every bet is how two dice land, so the whole game works from one small table of combinations. Knowing that table explains what each wager pays, why some bets carry a far bigger house edge than others, and how to play without slowing the game for anyone else.
Craps is not a game of skill in the way a card game like poker is, because no strategy changes how the dice fall. The best strategy is simply choosing bets with a low house edge and skipping the rest. Over many rolls the game cannot be beaten and is not profitable for the player. It is fair in the sense that dice and payouts are fixed and public, and it is easy to learn one bet at a time.
Table etiquette keeps a busy game moving. Anyone who wants to shoot craps waits for the dice to come round, then throws them with one hand so both hit the far wall. Chips go down before the stickman calls for the roll, never while the dice are in the air, and winnings stay on the layout until the dealer pushes them across. Handing money straight to a dealer is avoided; it goes on the table in its place.
Two dice make seven in six of their thirty six combinations, more than any other total.
Machine and bubble craps roll the dice in a dome without a crew, and crapless craps removes the losing totals on the come out, at a higher edge elsewhere.
The pass and come bets carry an edge a little over one percent, while the proposition bets in the middle run far higher.
A one roll bet split across two, three, eleven and twelve. It pays large multiples and keeps a high edge, like the other propositions.
The pass line wins on seven or eleven on the come out, loses on two, three or twelve, and otherwise needs the point before a seven; come works the same way later.