Craps has long been one of the most popular and certainly most glamorous gambling games of them all. It’s a key attraction in any casino worth its salt and it has been featured in more movies and TV shows than you can count and it almost always represents the height of casino chic; a game of pure glamor that is always surrounded by the best looking people in the best fitting clothes.

So, can you play craps online for money, though?

Yes!

Of course you can. Every gambling game imaginable is widely available on both web browsers and as standalone apps, usually offered by reputable companies who understand that customer satisfaction is in their best interests. So, if you want to play a quick round of craps from home or on the move, it’s easy, convenient and secure to do so.

Should you want to, though? That’s the bigger question.

While most casino games are easily replicable online, especially when it involves live games or poker or roulette, for example, you lose most of the experience of playing craps when you play it online. Online craps also works completely differently from the real thing, unless you are able to find a live craps game to bet on, in which case everything is pretty much the same aside from the atmosphere and experience.

How online craps differs from the real thing.

Though playing live online craps games is pretty much the same as playing at an actual table and you really only lose the atmosphere in this form, the differences between playing craps as a virtual game online and in real life are substantial :

• Their mechanics are completely and utterly different. While real craps is all about throwing an actual dice and seeing how they land, online craps is really no different from playing an online slot game: it’s based entirely on random number generators. Reputable online casinos will be sure to use a proper random number generator to make sure things are entirely fair and will keep the odds entirely in line with throwing an actual pair of dice, but it still doesn’t change the fact that what you’re actually doing is completely different.
• Ninety percent of the fun in playing craps comes from actually throwing those dice and seeing how they land. Online games are developed by top-notch software houses to emulate the experience as much as humanly possible, but it never comes close to matching the real thing.
• The other ten percent of the fun of craps is the atmosphere around the table, which unless you happen to be there on a particularly dead night, is always the most social and electric anywhere in the casino. Playing at home by yourself just cannot replicate that.
• If, however, the only thing that interests you about craps is that it is a game of chance and you like the familiar interface of a craps table then feel free to enjoy an online craps game. They’re convenient, easy to use, usually reliable, can boast cool graphics and sound, and can be fun from a gambling perspective alone. Just remember that you’re basically playing a modified slot machine rather than actual craps if you’re playing an automated machine.      

There’s really no two ways about it, virtual games of craps online are fine if that’s what you’re looking for, but live online games and, of course, the real thing are, simply, so much better.