How to Achieve an Advantage at Casino Craps, Part 1

Part 1:  Introduction

Casino craps is an easy game to learn and is the only game where you, the player, can create your own advantage over the casino and hold your winning destiny right in your own hands.

To develop an advantage at craps, you must alter the physical phenomena of the game.  To do this, you must learn how to control the dice, that is, throw the dice in such a way as to minimize the number of losing sevens being thrown after the point number is established.  You achieve an advantage by throwing less than one 7 for every six rolls of the dice after the point has been established.

If you're not familiar with the rules of play, think of craps this way for the point cycle of the pass line bet:  Holding the dice in your hand, you throw them down the table, hit the back wall and they come to rest.  

If the dice land on a 7 you lose; if they land on a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, you win if you are betting on those numbers; if they land on 2, 3, 11, 12, you neither win nor lose.   

Now, think of the power you would possess if you could throw the dice to avoid the losing 7.  That's what dice control is all about -- to set and throw the dice in such a way as to avoid the losing 7 during the point cycle when your objective is to repeat the number you threw on the first roll of this series - called the "come out" roll.    

Most of the time hot shooters and hot tables like this occur by chance.   But, experienced "rhythm rollers" can create them.  And that's what dice control is all about - developing a "rhythm roll" that turns the tables on the casino, swings the advantage to you the shooter, and gives you the means of creating a hot craps table.

The idea of dice control has been around for years.  I first heard about it in the early '80s when an elderly gentleman in one of my craps classes demonstrated how to set and throw the cubes.  But his throw
involved sliding the dice down the layout after setting them to achieve the desired result.  

He called his throw "the old Army Blanket Roll" and it was widely used by sharpers among the Servicemen in World War II and afterwards on the back streets and in the illegal casinos in New York City and elsewhere.  

You could get away with using it in the early days in Vegas, but the casino bosses soon caught on and outlawed "the slider."  This sliding throw is the reason that the casinos string that thin piece of wire across the center of the table - to prohibit it by stopping the cubes on their path down the table.

I began to fool around with dice control in the mid-90s after losing interest in blackjack.  A young engineer who called himself "Sharpshooter" came to my attention in one of my blackjack update seminars.  He had been doing research on dice control for a number of years.

Sharpshooter and I formed a successful partnership to continue our research, perfect our skills, and then to organize and manage craps teams.  Much of our work is taught in a comprehensive dice control course.  So what you are reading here is not just fuzzy theory; it has been time-tested in the
fire of casino play for over five years and taught to over 600 craps players.    

In Part 2 of this Dice Control Lesson, I will discuss how to set the dice and how to spot other shooters who may possess the skill of setting and controlling the dice -- shooters you may decide to bet on.

Go on to lesson 2