Snake eyes

In gambling

Gambling

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period....

, snake eyes is the outcome of rolling the dice

Dice

A die or dice is a small polyhedral object, usually cubic, used for generating random numbers or other symbols...

 in a game of craps

Craps

Craps is a dice game in which players place wagers on the outcome of the roll or a series of rolls of two dice. Players may wager money against each other or a bank . Because it requires very little equipment, street craps can easily be played in informal settings.-History:Craps developed from a...

 and getting only one pip on each die. The pair of pips resembles a pair of eyes, which is appended to the term 'snake' because of the long-standing association of this word with treachery and betrayal. The dictionary of etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages, and texts about the languages, to gather knowledge about how words were used at earlier stages, and...

 traces that use of the term back to 1929, although it may be traced all the way back to the ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 dice games, where 'Dogs' represented two ones.

In gambling

Gambling

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period....

, snake eyes is the outcome of rolling the dice

Dice

A die or dice is a small polyhedral object, usually cubic, used for generating random numbers or other symbols...

 in a game of craps

Craps

Craps is a dice game in which players place wagers on the outcome of the roll or a series of rolls of two dice. Players may wager money against each other or a bank . Because it requires very little equipment, street craps can easily be played in informal settings.-History:Craps developed from a...

 and getting only one pip on each die. The pair of pips resembles a pair of eyes, which is appended to the term 'snake' because of the long-standing association of this word with treachery and betrayal. The dictionary of etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages, and texts about the languages, to gather knowledge about how words were used at earlier stages, and...

 traces that use of the term back to 1929, although it may be traced all the way back to the ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 dice games, where 'Dogs' represented two ones. They referred to this as "the dog throw". In modern parlance, it refers to such a roll in any game involving dice.

Games

Because this is the lowest possible roll, and will often be a loser in many dice games, such as Craps

Craps

Craps is a dice game in which players place wagers on the outcome of the roll or a series of rolls of two dice. Players may wager money against each other or a bank . Because it requires very little equipment, street craps can easily be played in informal settings.-History:Craps developed from a...

, the term has been employed in a more general usage as a reference to bad luck

Bad Luck

Bad Luck may refer to:* Harmful or negative luck* Bad Luck , an album by Trophy Scars* Bad Luck , a 1960 film directed by Andrzej Munk* "Bad Luck" , a song by Social Distortion...

.
In many board games such as Monopoly

Monopoly (game)

Monopoly is a board game published by Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity....

, house rules

House rules

House rules are rules applying only in a certain location or organization. Bars and pubs in which games take place frequently have house rules posted...

 may decide that rolling Snake Eyes (or any Doubles) leads to a bonus since they are rarely rolled.

Probability

Rolling two 6-sided dice 25 times gives a probability of .505532 that at least once, Snake eyes will appear.