Page 8 - Jackpot Magazine South ~ February, 2022

PLAY TO WIN
Looking at dice control and winning at craps
“When I first came to do shows in Vegas, I followed the usual entertainer’s syndrome — I played craps and lost.”
— Comedian Gabe Kaplan
We recently came across the Golden Touch Craps website — a site devoted to craps playing, dice control, seminars and, basically, all things craps. The website reminded me of a column that ran in Jackpot! several years ago written by gaming expert, Henry Tamburin. Tamburin is the author of many best-selling books on gambling, including Blackjack: Take the Money and Run, and he was a longtime contributor to Jackpot!
In this particular column, he focused on dice control and being able
to throw specific numbers
when playing craps. Is it
possible, he was asked.
And, at first he wasn’t
so sure, until something
happened to change his
mind.
Let’s see what
Tamburin had to say in
this past column about controlling the dice and winning at craps.
Can someone actually control the dice to be able to throw specific numbers at craps? I get asked that question a lot from casino players and here is my answer. First, let me say I was always skeptical about dice control. I mean come on now, the dice have to hit the back wall, don’t they? And when that happens, they bounce all over the place. It appeared to me that dice control was “wishful thinking” and this was my position on this subject.
Then something happened. My good friend and fellow gambling writer Frank Scoblete invited to me a seminar on dice control. The class was held at a hotel in Las Vegas, the room was filled with craps players, and the speakers began to discuss
the art and the science
of dice control. They
talked about degrees of
freedom, how to set the
dice, how to grip them
and how to toss them down the table. It was all very interesting, but I still wondered, does it work?
In order to answer that question, I started observing and playing craps with Scoblete, Dominator, and other Golden Touch Craps (GTC) dice instructors in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Mississippi, Chicago, Canada, and elsewhere over the course of two years. What I discovered was quite remarkable.
The objective of dice control is to avoid throwing the 7. That’s because once a point number is established in craps, a subsequent throw of 7 will result
in most players losing (i.e., those players betting with the shooter will lose). Plus dice players generally bet straight up on the numbers (4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10) hoping they will be thrown again before a 7 appears. So in craps, when the shooter throws a lot of numbers other than the 7, players can rake in the dough.
Probability states that for every six throws of the dice, one of them should be a 7. Therefore, the 7 to non-7 ratio is 6. Casinos make tons of money in craps as long as the 7 appears once every six throws on average. And as long as a player isn’t using a loaded pair of dice (virtually impossible to do nowadays) and simply picks them up and flings them down the table, the result of the throw is random, meaning the dice will behave the way the probability dictates they should behave (i.e., one 7 for every
six throws on average). So when dice throws are random, casinos will make money and players will lose money in the
long run. Simple.
So what did I see Frank and his team do
during the two years I watched them play? They threw the dice 20 consecutive times without a 7, not once or twice, but many, many times. In fact, I observed the GTC instructors have monster rolls of 30, and in one case, as many as 40 rolls, without the 7 showing. In my 30-plus years of playing craps I never saw anything like that.
So these guys were winning a ton of money right in front of my eyes and I was winning too (I’m no fool, I made bets when these guys rolled). But being a math guy, I still wanted more proof that they were in fact influencing the dice compared to a random shooter.
So I asked Dan Pronovost, a math whiz and creator of Speed Count in blackjack, to have a look see at what these guys were doing at the craps table.
Dan went to work back in his office and decided to statistically analyze their throws. In order to do this, he developed a unique software program, Smart Craps, which allows you to prove with statistical certainty that you are indeed influencing the dice (www.smartcraps.com). The bottom line: on the GTC shooters that Dan analyzed, the data showed that they indeed were influencing the dice enough to give them the edge over the casino.
You can read more about dice control on GoldenTouchCraps.com (there are plenty of good articles posted on this site including the unbelievable 147 rolls that the legendary Captain threw without a 7).
Do you have a question on the best way to play to win? Email this magazine at jackpotmagazine@ gmail.com.
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