Play Crown and Anchor Online

What Is Crown and Anchor?

Crown and Anchor is a betting game played with three special dice and a cloth. Instead of pips, each die shows six symbols: a crown, an anchor, and the four playing-card suits, heart, diamond, club and spade. The cloth is divided into six squares bearing the same symbols. Players place stakes on any squares they like, the banker throws the three dice, and every player is paid once for each die that shows a symbol they bet on: even money for one die, 2 to 1 for two, 3 to 1 for all three. A symbol that does not appear loses its stake to the banker.

That is the entire game, and its simplicity is why it spread through the Royal Navy, the merchant fleet and every port they touched for two hundred years. It is also why it endures: anyone can learn it in a minute, a table can take a dozen players at once, and a banker with a cloth in a kit bag can set up anywhere. The arithmetic behind it is the same as the single-number bet in Chuck-a-Luck and Sic Bo, and the house edge, at 7.87 percent, is the same too.

A Short History of Crown and Anchor

The game originated in the eighteenth century and was, from the beginning, a sailor’s game. It was played for money on the lower decks of the Royal Navy and aboard the ships of the British merchant and fishing fleets, where a canvas cloth with six symbols painted on it could be rolled up and hidden in seconds when an officer appeared. The symbols themselves are a sailor’s choice: the crown for the King, the anchor for the ship, and the four suits from the packs of cards that were the other great pastime below decks. Naval regulations banned gambling and the game was regularly suppressed, which did nothing to stop it. By the nineteenth century it was as much a part of shipboard life as grog, and it traveled with the fleet to every station of the Empire.

Ashore, Crown and Anchor became a fairground and pub game in Britain and a fixture of the dockside communities of Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham. In the First World War it moved into the army too. David Jones’s trench poem In Parenthesis has soldiers who “diced Crown and Mud-hook under the Tree,” the mud-hook being the soldiers’ name for the anchor, and Spike Milligan’s memoirs describe his battery playing it in the lulls between actions in North Africa in the Second World War. Between the wars London firms such as H. P. Gibson and Sons sold boxed Crown and Anchor sets for the parlor, and the game acquired a reputation as the one that separated a sailor from his pay faster than any other.

Two places kept it alive as a public tradition. In Bermuda, a British colony with a strong naval presence, Crown and Anchor became inseparable from Cup Match, the annual two-day cricket holiday held at the end of July or the beginning of August. Gambling is otherwise illegal in Bermuda, but the tents at the Cup Match ground are licensed to run Crown and Anchor tables for the duration, and the “Crown and Anchor tents” are as much a part of the holiday as the cricket. In the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey license the game only for specific events, chiefly the summer agricultural shows and the Liberation Day celebrations on 9 May that mark the end of the German occupation in 1945. In both places it is strictly controlled and, outside those occasions, illegal.

Elsewhere the game changed clothes. In China the same three-dice symbol game is Hoo Hey How (fish, prawn, crab, coin, gourd, rooster), in Vietnam it is Bầu cua cá cọp (gourd, crab, fish, tiger), played at Tết, and in Nepal it is Langur Burja. Chinese immigrants to the United States brought the numbered version that became Chuck-a-Luck. All of them, and the fuller casino game Sic Bo, are the same idea: three dice, a cloth of six choices, and a banker paid by the shortfall between 1-2-3 and the true odds.

Crown and Anchor Rules

Equipment

• Three dice marked crown, anchor, heart, diamond, club and spade, one symbol per face.
• A cloth (or board) divided into six squares carrying the same six symbols.
• Stakes: coins, chips or, on our table, free virtual chips.
• A banker who throws the dice and pays or collects. In a sailor’s game the banker was one of the players, usually the owner of the cloth, and the position could change hands; at Cup Match or a fair the banker is the operator.

Object of the Game

To back symbols that appear on the dice and collect more from the banker than the banker collects from you. Every throw is a complete round; nothing carries over.

How a Round Works

1. Stake. Each player puts chips on one or more of the six squares. You may bet on several symbols at once, in any amounts.
2. Throw. The banker rolls the three dice, traditionally from a cup, onto the table.
3. Settle. For each square, the banker counts how many dice show that symbol. Zero: the banker takes the stake. One: the stake is returned plus an equal amount. Two: the stake is returned plus twice the amount. Three: the stake is returned plus three times the amount.
4. Clear. The cloth is emptied and a new round begins.

Bets and Payouts

There is only one kind of bet, made on any of six symbols. Our table pays exactly as below.

All six symbols have identical odds. A bet on the crown and a bet on the spade are the same bet with different pictures.

Worked Examples

• 25 on the crown, throw ♛ ♥ ♠. One crown. You receive 25 in winnings and your 25 stake back: 50 to the bankroll.
• 25 on the crown, throw ♛ ♛ ♦. Two crowns, paid 2 to 1. You receive 50 plus your stake, 75 in total.
• 25 on the crown, throw ♛ ♛ ♛. Three crowns at 3 to 1: 75 in winnings, 100 back.
• 25 on the crown, throw ⚓ ♣ ♣. No crown. The 25 is the banker’s.
• 25 on the anchor and 25 on the heart, throw ⚓ ♥ ♥. The anchor pays even money (25) and the heart pays 2 to 1 (50). You put down 50 and get back 125, a profit of 75.
• 5 on every symbol, throw ♦ ♣ ♠. Three symbols pay 1 to 1 (15 in winnings) and three lose (15 gone). Exactly break even, as any throw with three different symbols must be when the cloth is covered evenly.
• 5 on every symbol, throw ♠ ♠ ♠. The spade pays 3 to 1, 15 in winnings; the other five lose 25. Net minus 10. Covering the cloth is not a hedge.

The Odds: 216 Throws

Each die has six faces and there are three dice, so a throw has 6 × 6 × 6 = 216 equally likely outcomes. Fix one symbol, say the anchor. On any single die the anchor shows with probability 1/6 and fails to show with probability 5/6, so:

• No anchor on any die: 5 × 5 × 5 = 125 throws.
• Exactly one anchor: 3 positions × 5 × 5 = 75 throws.
• Exactly two anchors: 3 positions × 5 = 15 throws.
• Three anchors: 1 throw.

The 91 winning throws are 42.1 percent of the total, so a bet on one symbol comes in a little less than half the time. Now weigh the payouts. Over 216 throws of one chip each you lose 125 chips on the blanks and win 75 + 2 × 15 + 3 × 1 = 108 chips on the hits. The banker is ahead by 17 chips in 216, or 7.87 percent of everything wagered. That is what “the banker returns 92 pence in the pound” means.

The same calculation shows why 1-2-3 is not fair. True odds for exactly one match are 141 to 75, for exactly two 201 to 15 (13.4 to 1) and for three 215 to 1. Paying 1, 2 and 3 to 1 is generous on the single and stingy on the double and triple, and the doubles and triples are where the banker’s profit lives. Payouts of 1, 3 and 5 to 1 would make the game exactly even.

Two other numbers are worth knowing. In any throw the expected number of dice showing a given symbol is 3 × 1/6 = 0.5, so across the whole cloth the banker pays out an average of half a stake per square while collecting the stake on 125/216 of the squares. And if you bet on all six symbols equally, you will always get something back, but the return over 216 throws is still 92 percent of your outlay; the banker’s edge on each symbol simply adds up.

Crown and Anchor Strategy

1. Accept that there is no good bet, only smaller bets

Every square on the cloth costs 7.87 percent, and there is nothing else to bet on. The only variables you control are how much you stake and how many throws you play. A player who bets 5 a throw loses, on average, about 4 chips per ten throws; a player who bets 100 loses about 79. Sizing is the whole strategy.

2. Bet one symbol at a time

Spreading 5 chips across three symbols exposes 15 chips to the edge instead of 5. It raises your chance of getting something back on a throw to 87.5 percent (189 of 216), but the expected loss triples. If you want to be paid often, that is the price; if you want to keep your chips, bet less, not wider.

3. Never cover the whole cloth

Five chips on each of the six symbols guarantees a return every throw and feels safe. It is actually the fastest way to lose: 30 chips are exposed to a 7.87 percent edge, so the average throw costs about 2.4 chips, and any throw with a pair or a triple leaves you behind. The example above shows a triple costing 10 chips on a covered cloth.

4. Doubles and triples are the banker’s friend, not yours

They pay 2 to 1 and 3 to 1, which sounds like a bonus, but the true odds are 13.4 to 1 and 215 to 1. Every double or triple that lands is a throw on which the banker underpays the winner and collects from four or five losing squares. Do not chase them.

5. Ignore the last throw

The dice are re-thrown fresh every round. A crown that has shown three throws running is exactly as likely to show again (91 in 216) as one that has been absent all evening. The patter of a good banker is designed to make you think otherwise.

6. Play in throws, not in feelings

Decide before you start how many throws you will play or how many chips you are willing to lose, and stop there. Because every throw is a complete decision, Crown and Anchor settles faster than most casino games: fifty throws at 25 a throw is 1,250 chips of action, which is more than your whole starting bankroll on our table.

7. If you are the banker, the maths is on your side

At a fair or a Cup Match tent the banker’s job is to keep the cloth busy. Each square is worth 7.87 percent of its stakes over time, and a full cloth with heavy stakes on a few symbols is exactly what the banker wants. The historical advice to sailors was blunt: be the man with the cloth, not the man with the coins.

Common Mistakes

• Counting your chances as three in six. The symbol shows on at least one die 91 times in 216, about 42 percent, not 50 percent; overlapping matches are paid at 2 to 1 and 3 to 1, not as separate wins.
• Believing the game is even because payouts look proportional. 1-2-3 is not proportional to the true odds of 1.9, 13.4 and 215 to 1.
• Betting the crown “for luck.” Every symbol is one face on each die. There is no lucky square.
• Treating a covered cloth as insurance. It is six bets with six edges.
• Confusing symbols in the heat of a throw. Check the cloth before staking, especially where the club and spade are printed in the same black ink and the heart and diamond in the same red.

Variants and House Rules

• Payout scales. The classic scale is 1, 2 and 3 to 1. A few fairground operators have paid 1, 2 and 4 to 1 or 1, 3 and 3 to 1, which lower the edge slightly; a scale of 1, 3 and 5 to 1 would be a fair game and is never offered by anyone hoping to profit.
• Rotating banker. In a sailors’ game the bank sometimes passed around the table each throw or each time the banker lost a large payout. This does not change the edge, only who enjoys it.
• Hoo Hey How (China) uses fish, prawn, crab, coin, gourd and rooster; some versions add side bets on color. Bầu cua cá cọp (Vietnam) uses gourd, crab, fish, tiger, rooster and shrimp and is a Lunar New Year tradition. Langur Burja (Nepal) uses six symbols including a crown and a flag and is played during the Tihar festival.
• Chuck-a-Luck is the numbered-dice version with a wire cage, and Sic Bo wraps the same single-symbol bet in a full casino layout of totals, doubles and triples.
• Cup Match and Liberation Day rules. Public tables in Bermuda and the Channel Islands are licensed for set dates and stake limits and are run by named operators; the game is otherwise illegal in both jurisdictions.

For another game with a naval pedigree, Ship Captain Crew has sailors racing to roll a 6, 5 and 4 in order. For bluffing over hidden dice in the mess, try Liar’s Dice or Mexico. And for the full two-dice casino experience, Craps is where most of the mathematics on this page ends up.

Glossary

• Banker: The person who throws the dice and pays or collects the stakes.
• Cloth: The canvas, felt or board marked with the six symbols; also called the mat or the board.
• Crown / Anchor: The two naval symbols; soldiers and sailors called the anchor the “mud-hook.”
• Suits: The heart, diamond, club and spade, borrowed from the playing-card pack.
• Stake: The chips placed on a symbol for one throw.
• Even money: A payout of 1 to 1, the return for a single matching die.
• Double / triple: Two or three dice showing the same symbol, paid 2 to 1 or 3 to 1.
• House edge (banker’s edge): The average share of stakes the banker keeps, 7.87 percent in the standard game.
• True odds: The payout at which a bet would break even in the long run.
• Cup Match: Bermuda’s annual two-day cricket holiday, during which Crown and Anchor tents are licensed.

Play Crown and Anchor Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is free play with virtual chips only. You start with a bankroll of 1,000 chips; there is no real money, no account and nothing to download, and your best bankroll is stored only in your browser. Choose a chip size (5, 25 or 100), then click any of the six symbols on the cloth, crown, anchor, heart, diamond, club or spade, to stack chips on it; you can bet several symbols at once, and Clear bets takes everything back. Throw rolls the three symbol dice, and each symbol you backed is paid 1 to 1 for every die that shows it, so one die returns even money, two dice 2 to 1 and three dice 3 to 1, exactly as in the table above; a symbol that does not appear loses its stake. The payout log explains every throw, the throw history shows recent results colored by win or loss, and the status bar tracks your bankroll, throws and best bankroll. When the bankroll falls below the smallest chip, Play Again resets it to 1,000. Ready to back the mud hook? Throw the dice.