How to Play Hazard The Queen Mother of Dice Games | Game Rules

Are you a real hazardeur? Do you like to push your luck? Do you have the courage for a round of the most notorious dice game of the entire British Empire? This is how to play Hazard.

Even today, ”hazard” in English means ”danger”, ”risk” and ”dare”. For centuries, the game of hazard was the most popular and notorious dice game in Great Britain and the British Empire, where many a poor wretch became rich and many a lord gambled away his shirt.

So hazard soon became not only a synonym for all games of chance, but also a term for a particularly risky venture or great danger. Even today, a particularly foolhardy person is called a hazardeur. The Arabic word “yasara” simply has the harmless meaning “to throw dice”…..

Watch out, be careful, pay attention! Before you read the following rules how to play Hazard and dare to play the dangerous game with friends, be warned: gambling can be addictive. We therefore strongly advise you to play for chocolates, peanuts or who will do the dishes instead of houses, cars or savings accounts ;-).

• Game type: Game of chance, connoisseur game
• Age: With money of course from 18
• Players: min. 2
• Duration: variable / as long as it’s fun and the wallet keeps up
• Accessories: 2 standard dice
• Skills required: Willingness to take risks (!!!), luck, calculation skills
• Goal: Go out with more than you had before

How to Play Hazard

Craps table von von Lisa Brewster unter CC BY-SA 2.0

In the hazard game, bets are made and then dice are rolled according to certain rules to determine who will collect the bets made. In each round, the first player to place a bet is called the Shooter or Caster. He puts forward the Banco, the basic bet, and the other players, the Faders, have to bet against it.

Now the hazard game begins with the establishment of the so-called Main Point or also Fader’s Point. The shooter is the first to roll the 2 dice until the sum of the eyes shows one of the following values: 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. If necessary, this value is noted in writing on a piece of paper or a scoreboard.

Then the shooter rolls the dice a second time. Now there are three possibilities:

• Either the shooter wins immediately…
• …or he loses immediately…
• …or a chance point or shooter’s point is established.

Profit and loss are based on the previously determined Main Point:

• Main Point rolled → win (”shooter throws in / nicks”)
• 2 or 3 → loss (shooter ”throws out”)
• 11 → win if main point is 7, otherwise loss!
• 12 → win if the Main Point is 6 or 8, otherwise loss!
• All other results lead to a Chance Point

If the shooter rolled a Chance Point on the first roll in the Hazard game, the meaning of the Main Point also changes for him. He now rolls until he scores either the Chance Point or the Main Point. However, unlike the first roll, the latter now leads to a loss, whereas the Chance Point leads to a win. All other results have no meaning from the second roll of a round, but immediately lead to a new roll of the dice.

Who Is the Shooter in the Hazard Game?

Hazard game: the shooter determined the fader’s point 6

Whoever is the first Shooter is agreed or diced. If the shooter wins, he keeps his role and may continue playing. However, he may only take winnings from the bank (the betting pile in the middle) if he has won with the first roll. However, he can increase his bet in the second round and the other players must bet against it. If they cannot or do not want to bet against it, the shooter takes all the bets from the table.

If the shooter loses on the first roll, he may play one more round or pass the dice to his neighbour on the right, who now becomes the new shooter. However, if he has lost 3 rounds in a row on the first roll, he must pass the role of shooter to the person sitting to his right. Likewise, he must do so if he loses after establishing a Chance Point, i.e. has rolled the Main Point..

Winning Chances in the Hazard Game

The shooter wins with a probability of 49.1%; he is thus at a disadvantage compared to the faders. The advantage of the faders (”bank advantage”) is approx. 1.8 %. The shooter’s probability of winning is minimally greater in craps. Craps is a variant of the hazard game that is still enormously popular in us casinos today. Bernard de Mandeville developed craps from the game of hazard: the then president of the Louisiana Senate simplified the game of hazard in 1813 in New Orleans by omitting the determination of the main point and instead setting it to 7 by default..

Sideline Betting

We recommend that you first play the Hazard game for a few rounds using the basic rules to familiarise yourself with it. If you then want to make it a little more exciting and varied, you can also incorporate so-called side bets.
Side bets can always be placed by the shooter if a chance point has been established in his first roll and at the so-called fair odds. This means that he bets additional money on his win, i.e. on rolling the chance point before the main point. His potential winnings, which must be paid out to him by the bank (or the other players), are also based on the chances of winning. If he loses, on the other hand, his money (or matches, chocolate lentils, peanuts ;-)) ends up in the jackpot in the middle.

Winning Odds of the Side Bets in the Hazard Game

For example, the Main Point is 6 and the Chance Point is 10. The Shooter rolls a 6 on exactly 5 combinations: 1+5, 2+4, 3+3, 4+2, 5+1. On the other hand, he rolls 10 on only 3 combinations of the dice: 4+6, 5+5, 6+4.

The odds of losing : of winning are therefore 5:3. Before all the mathematicians cry out when they read this: of course, in reality it is a bit more complicated, because the shooter can also roll a different number and then has to roll again. So this is not correct probability calculation!

Nevertheless, the odds of the side bets in the hazard game are given in this simplified form according to the table below.

Table for side bets on the hazard game

How to Play Hazard – Example of a Win Distribution

If the shooter now wins by rolling the chance point, he gets the odds (see table) times this stake in addition to his stake. In our example, the shooter has bet € 10 in the main bet, i.e. at the beginning. Then he rolled 6 as the main point and rolled a chance point (namely 10) in the first decision roll.

Now he bets an additional € 12 in the side bet with the odds 5:3. If he now actually rolls the Chance Point before the Main Point, his winnings are distributed as follows. For the main bet he receives a profit in the amount of his stake, i.e. € 10. From the side bet his profit is 5/3 times the stake, i.e. 5/3 x 12 = € 20. In addition, he naturally gets his stakes back, from which it follows that he receives € 52 from the bank, i.e. from the middle. If the sum lying there is not enough, the other players must pay him the rest.

• Stake main bet: € 10
• Winning main bet: € 10
• Stake side bet: € 12
• Winning side bet: € 20
• Total stake: € 22
• Total winnings: € 30
• Total payout: € 52

Desconocido Würfelspiel

Würfelspiel

22,98 EUR

Discover many more game tips on our website, as well as ideas for activities with friends, with children and with your partner. If you want to keep up to date with ideas from Abenteuer Freundschaft, follow us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter! 😉

*Affiliate links: If you order products through them, we receive a small commission without changing the price.