How to Play Craps Tournaments Online

What a Craps Tournament Is

A craps tournament is a scoring format applied to ordinary craps play. Entrants pay to take part, play with chips that cannot be cashed out, and are ranked by chip count at the end of a round, a set number of rolls, or a set time, with prizes paid to the top finishers. Pennsylvania's rules for online tournaments state that while a game is enabled for tournament play it may not accept real money from any source, nor pay out real money in any way, and must use tournament-specific credits, points or chips which do not have cash value. For tournaments on physical tables the same regulator requires tournament chips carrying the word Tournament, the denomination and the phrase No Cash Value, visually distinct from value chips, roulette chips and poker room rake chips, and inventoried before the start and after the completion of each tournament.

The Game Is Unchanged

Each roll is resolved under the table's own rules. Evolution describes its live Craps as progressing through two stages, a Come Out roll followed by a Point roll, and states that some craps bets are resolved after one roll while others can last several rolls before they are resolved. That second point is the one a tournament entrant has to plan around, because a bet that spans several rolls may still be unresolved when a timed round ends, and the published tournament rules are the only place that says how such a bet is treated.

The Gambling Commission's consumer guidance defines the house edge as a measure of the percentage a casino would expect to keep, on average, from each hand or spin, given normal patterns of play, and describes the bankers' games it applies to as games of unequal chance. A tournament does not suspend that: the chips are not real money, but the odds the chips are played at are the table's.

What the Published Rules Must Cover

Pennsylvania requires an operator to file the terms of each online tournament type for approval and to publish them, and names the contents: the game type, the rules concerning tournament play and participation, every condition for entry and advancement, the handling of late arrivals and no-shows, the funding source amounts comprising the prize pool, the prize structure on payout, and the methodology for determining win. The terms must be posted on the site in plain language and remain available until the tournament is complete. A separate filing sits behind the published terms and is not something a player sees: at least five business days before the tournament starts, the operator must send the Bureau of Gaming Operations a notice of intent giving the dates and times, who is eligible, the minimum and maximum number of participants, the entry fees charged, and the prizes to be awarded.

Where the Prize Money Comes From

Entry money is the operator's revenue. Pennsylvania's revenue rules define the net revenue for an individual contest or tournament as the sum of all entry fees, buy-ins, re-buy-ins and administrative fees imposed on participants, minus the cash paid to winners as prizes and the actual cost of non-cash prizes. The amount an entrant commits is therefore the entry fee plus whatever re-buys or add-ons the terms allow, and the prize structure is a separate published figure rather than a function of the number of entries.

What a Player Should Read Before Entering

The Commission's standards require that an explanation of the applicable rules is easily available before a customer commits to gamble, that the content is accurate and sufficient to explain all of the applicable rules and how to participate, and that content describing the potential prizes and payouts, or the means by which they are calculated, is available too. For a craps tournament the specific items worth finding are the paytable in force at the table, how unresolved multi-roll bets are handled when a round ends, the method of determining the winner, and whether re-buys are permitted. Those standards are the Gambling Commission's, and they bind operators licensed in Great Britain. They also require that a product does not actively encourage a customer to chase losses, increase their stake, or increase the amount they have decided to gamble.