ACPA mentioned this wager in another post. I did some searching around on the net because it piqued my curiosity.

I believe this wager was invented by Stacy Friedman of Beaverton, OR. When he first conceived of the wager it was structured differently from what ACPA described. I describe both below and highlight the difference in red.

In the original version there was a no-action-on-come out component to the wager.

In the no-action-on-comeout version of the Hard Pass side bet, the bet works as follows:

1) Shooter comes out. If it’s a natural winner or craps, bet gets no action.
2) If an easy point rolls, bet loses. That’s easy 4, 6, 8, 10 or 5, 9.
3) If a hard point number rolls (hard 4, 6, 8, 10), the shooter keeps rolling.
4) If the shooter makes his point hard, the bet wins 50-to-1.
5) If the shooter 7s out or makes his point easy, the bet loses.

This wager has a 9.43% house edge when you count the pushes in the calculation and a 14.14% house edge when you ignore the pushes. There was a big discussion about this on one of the websites between Stacy Friedman and one of the other members of the website. They argued over which was the correct way to calculate the house edge.

I believe it is correct to count the pushes as part of the wager. Hence it is my opinion the house edge in this form is 9.43%.

In the higher paying 80-1 version that ACPA described, the only difference is that there is action on the come out roll.

In the action-on-comeout version of the Hard Pass side bet, the bet works as follows:

1) Shooter comes out. If it’s a natural winner or craps, bet loses.
2) If an easy point rolls, bet loses. That’s easy 4, 6, 8, 10 or 5, 9.
3) If a hard point number rolls (hard 4, 6, 8, 10), the shooter keeps rolling.
4) If the shooter makes his point hard, the bet wins 80-to-1.
5) If the shooter 7s out or makes his point easy, the bet loses.

In this version the house edge would be 9.09%.

Even though the house edge is lower on the 80-1 version I suspect the house is hoping with an 80-1 payout it is a more attractive wager than the 50-1 version. Thus they are willing to take a slightly lower house edge to make the bet more popular.

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