They Shoot Craps Don't They? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Toad

The game of craps is said to have origins back in the days of the crusades. All that is really needed to enjoy a game of craps is a pair of dice, and your winnings depend on whether you're able to keep up a streak while shooting them before rolling a seven to clear the table (unless it's on the initial roll where a seven wins for you).

In Las Vegas, craps is played by the regular tourists and the high-rollers alike. Tables with five-dollar minimum bets were not hard to find, but I was able to observe the $100 tables and saw people win and lose thousands of dollars on a single roll.

Answer: Pass

A "pass" bet will win you money if you roll a seven or an eleven, and will lose you your bet if you happen to "crap out", meaning, you throw a two, three, or twelve. Any other number and your bet goes to that number, and the number is considered "on". This means that you will win your money only when you throw that number again, but will lose it (and any other new bets you may have placed in that time) if you roll a seven.

A "come" bet and a "don't come" bet can only be played when the point is on, and an "on the hop" bet is a one-time bet that tries to predict what the next roll will be. It's rarely played, but it can get you 15:1 odds, or even 30:1 if you correctly predict a doubles roll.

Answer: Slots

Needless to say, within five minutes I had lost the complimentary ten dollars and was none the wiser about the fascination with the slot machines. Originally, to play slots you had to pull a lever arm in order to get the wheels turning, but modern slot machines have everything automated. In many cases, the wheels have been replaced by video screens.

The odds against winning the jackpot at a slot machine are astronomical. Fascinatingly enough, Nevada law dictates that a slot machine must return at least 75% of the money put into it, and some slot machines return, on average, even more than that. Nevertheless, I could never understand the rapture involved in watching the wheels go round and round in the hopes that the shapes align. But that's just me.

Answer: The worst hand one can draw in the game.

The object of baccarat was to get a hand with a total of 9 points. The value of the cards are counted modulo-10 which means that you ignore the tens digits of the sum. Face cards are worth ten. An initial hand totalling ten is called a "baccarat", and is a very unlucky start.

I did not play any baccarat myself. It is a game reserved for high-rollers, and the minimum buy-in per hand was at least $300, if not more, at the swankier casinos in Las Vegas.

Answer: Spread

To bet on a team to win by a certain margin (or larger) is called "covering the spread", and this sort of betting is popular in the United States more than in Europe. If my team was the favourite, they'd not only have to win for me to get a profit, but they'd have to win by more than the point spread set out prior to the match.

Betting on whether a team would win or lose (or draw) is known as a "straight-up" bet, and these are extremely popular in the football pools of Europe. There were many other types of bets at the casino, and some bookies would even accept bets on whether the coin toss at a certain game would end up heads or tails. Far too complicated for me, just let me sit back and relax and enjoy the game with a cold one in my hand.

Answer: Slightly over 5%

Let me bore you with a bit of math briefly. On an American roulette table there exists a house edge because of the 0 and 00 slots on the wheel. So, with 36 regular numbers, there is a 1 in 38 chance that any number will show up on a spin. However, the payout for correctly guessing a specific number is only 35-1 (if you bet a dollar and win, you get your dollar back and 35 more, besides). Thus, over time, you stand to lose one dollar out of every twenty you risk. Doesn't seem like a good return for me.

In Europe, the house edge is less because they do not have the 00 slot. These wheels were made popular because that was the style of roulette played in Monte Carlo, at one point the only place in Western Europe where gambling was legal. Another interesting fact about the roulette wheel is that if you add up all the numbers, the sum comes out to 666.

Answer: Sic bo

Sic bo is a dice game I had no idea about, so I skipped those tables when I rarely encountered them.

In three card poker and four card poker the player tries to make the best hand possible using the three or four cards they are dealt. There is a payout based on the hand a player holds, and the house's hand does not factor in. However, a player can also place an 'ante' bet based on the house's hand, and tries to earn money if the house has a better hand than the player or not.

Pai gow poker is based on the tile game of the same name. In it a player tries to make two hands out of seven cards, a five-card hand and a two-card hand. Each player is playing to beat the house and the strategy of play is more complicated than it seems.

Answer: Yes

Even if you didn't know the answer, I gave you 50-50 odds of getting it right, just like the odds of winning at the card game. This game is similar to the card game, and basically, you bet on whether your card will be higher than the house or not. If the cards are even, then you can "surrender" and take back half of your original bet, or double your bet and go to "war" by betting whether the next card dealt to you will be higher than the dealer's next card.

My friend lost $30 trying this game out, and actually got a war on his very first card. The things one can gamble on...

Answer: 17

According to "Scarne's New Complete Guide to Gambling", blackjack is the most widely played casino game in the world. I believe that - the majority of the tables on the floor in all the casinos I visited in Las Vegas were devoted to blackjack.

I was surprised to find out, when later I returned home, that I had actually beaten the house advantage. Apparently, the house has a higher advantage the more decks are used in play; I was favouring the 8-deck tables rather than the single deck. Nevertheless, I still came out ahead (more ahead than I thought I would be) as Lady Luck was smiling down upon me when I was playing. What a gal!

Answer: black

Oddly enough, Nevada does not have a law which standardizes the colours of the casino tokens in use. Nevertheless, all casinos use a red $5 chip, a green $25 chip, a black $100 chip and a violet $500 chip. Needless to say, there was no purple in my rainbow of colours.

Something I found surprising was the way some casinos handles the $1 and 50-cent denominations. Some tables had stacks of 50-cent pieces and silver dollars, and if you won some money in those denominations, they handed you the actual money back. Another interesting fact that I didn't know was that the Wynn casino introduced tokens that could be tracked by a radio frequency. So, they could actually know how much money was in your pot. Eerie.