I was playing craps last week when I saw someone playing an odd system. I eventually figured out what he was doing.

After the come-out roll he would play all the point numbers - $5 on the 4/5/9/10 and $6 on the 6/8.

I think that when he lost he would increase his bet. I forget the exact amounts, It might have been 25/30/36 on the 4&10, 5&9, 6&8.

If a number hit, he would take down his bets and immediately go back to $32. If he lost on the first roll, his next play was (I think) $125/$150/$202.

If he hit a number he'd go back to $32, or if this lost on the first roll, he'd go to $650/$850/$1002.

It was pretty unusual to see him buy into a $5 table for $6200. He said the system would lose on average once every 8 hours.

I make his odds of a losing sequence 1/625. He has 24 winning numbers (4/5/6/8/9/10) and 6 losers (all 7's) so the first roll after the come-out that's not 2/3/11/12 has to be a 7, 4 times in a row.

Eventually I figured out that it was just a variation on the doubling-up system. When he hits, if he hits before going broke, he makes back all his prior losses plus a small profit.

What I don't think he knew is that there is some variation in the payout odds. I don't usually play the numbers (just the pass line and odds) but I know at this casino if you get $25 or more on the 4/10, they pay $49 rather than $45. I haven't really noticed what they pay for large bets on 5/9. 6/8 are already only about 1.52% house advantage.

I had just never seen that before. The table limits were $5-$2000 so he was fine that way. I was only there for about 15 minutes while he was doing that, and he did get up to the highest level but he hit a number. A quick 7 and he'd have lost almost his entire stake.