Copyright Martin Ouellet 2004
Craps is a game with a bit of a reputation for being complicated. It has a lot of terminology and side bets. There’s also a certain amount of ceremony and ettiquette to scare off the new player.
In fact the core game is quite simple (though that shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement to play). If you want to learn the game then all you really need to focus on are two bets - the Pass and Don’t Pass lines.
Players take turns rolling two dice, with the rolling player known as the shooter. The other players place bets on the shooter’s dice rolls. The game is played in two rounds. The first is known as the come-out roll and establishes a point for the shooter to try to roll. The second round ends with the shooter either hitting their point or rolling a seven.
A player who is made shooter must first place a bet on either the Pass or Don’t Pass line. Essentially these are betting on hitting the point or not. They are sometimes even called Win and Don’t Win bets. He picks two of the five dice presented to him by the stickman and rolls them. If his roll is 2,3 or 12 then it is craps; pass line bets lose while don’t pass bets win on a 2 or 3 with 12 being declared a draw or push. If his come-out roll is 7 or 11 it is called a natural resulting in a win for pass line bets and a loss for don’t pass bets. In either case the shooter continues with the come-out roll until a point is established. Rolling 4,5,6,8,9 or 10 establishes that number as the point and ends the come-out roll.
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For those of you who don’t know, dice control is the idea that the thrower can effect the outcome of the throw. How he does this is a combination of factors; dice setting, the grip used, technique of throw.
Dice setting is aligning the dice in your hand in a certain way. A particular set can be defined by which numbers face up and which face towards you. There are many different “sets” which are claimed to change the odds of different numbers occuring. By combining a set with a particular grip the thrower attempts to minimize the spin on any axis other than the horizontal. If successful this should reduce the frequency of the numbers on the ends of the dice coming up.
It’s fairly obvious that this would work in a poorly regulated game of craps without a wall. Many even refer to it as the “army blanket roll” after the games servicemen used to play in WW2. However modern casinos require that a roll bounce once on the table and then hit the back wall, otherwise the throw is judged invalid.
Dice control advocates claim that careful launching at a 45 degree angle minimizes the energy needed to throw the dice, and so with good technique a thrower can “gently” bounce the dice just in front of the back wall. They claim this greatly increases the probability of them staying on the same axis.
Obviously this requires some careful testing. One experiment worth noting occured when Stanford Wong (of blackjack fame) was challenged to roll fewer than 80 sevens in 500 throws. The probability of rolling 79 or fewer sevens in 500 random throws is 32.66%. Wong managed it with 5 sevens to spare. The probability of rolling 74 or fewer sevens in 500 random throws is 14.41%.
This is not proof and the number of throws is far too small to be statistically convincing. However as someone asked me - have you got a better way to get an edge in craps?
I don’t and craps isn’t my game, but I suppose on that basis if you are going to play you might as well give dice control a try.
