Question of the Day - 08 May 2024

[Editor's Note: For this answer, we consulted Dennis Conrad. Dennis is a long-time friend of LVA whose name might be familiar to those who caught his Jackpot of the Week on our YouTube channel a few weeks ago. He's also a former crap dealer and supervisor who worked his way up the corporate-casino ladder to C-suite positions in casino marketing. And he's lived in Reno for a couple of decades and plays craps there fairly frequently. Here's what he had to say.]

By way of explanation for non-crap players, on a don't pass or don't come bet, if the come-out roll is a 2 or 3, the bet wins even money. If it's a 7 or 11, the bet loses. If it's a 12, it's a push.

In Reno, as the question states, it's different. Instead of 12 being a push, a come-out roll of the 3 or box cars (12) wins, while a come-out roll of snakes eyes (2) is the push.  

I can tell you that it's been this way for at least 50 years and probably forever. As for why, however, I don't know and I doubt that anyone does. 

Maybe because whoever started it in ancient times wanted Reno to be different than Las Vegas? Or they wanted to change the negative connotation of snake eyes? Or because they worked with a lot of older crap dealers who had a hard time seeing and counting 12 spots on the dice? Or some superstitious Reno crap supervisor thought 12 rolls more often than 2? Or whoever installed the first crap table in Reno read the rules wrong and got it backwards? Or?

I reckon veteran crap players like myself can come up other reasons. How about it, vets?