Advantage lay - Dice Control Article Two

How would you like to walk up to a craps table knowing that you had an excellent chance of creating a hot table, that when your turn came to pick up the dice, you could throw number after number without the losing seven showing, collecting profits on almost every roll of the dice?

How would it feel to make pass line bets and place bets with the confidence of collecting winnings, sometimes substantial winnings, before sevening out? 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.

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. 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 how to 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.

A few other players showed me their parabolic controlled throws over the years none of which proved effective. Either their throws were too high (thus drawing the ire of the Stick Man and/or Box Man) and/or bounced too much after landing and banging against the back wall, thus ending up as a random throw.

I began to fool around with dice control in the mid-90s after losing interest in blackjack. I had about a two-year run of success at the craps tables which prompted me to analyze my play and ask the question "what am I doing different from before when I was losing?" I concluded that my throw had become more rhythmic and that I was subconsciously analyzing the form of other shooters with a very discerning eye before committing to wager anything other than a minimum bet on their hand. A young engineer who called himself "Sharpshooter" came to my attention in one of my blackjack update seminars.

Next article: We meet "Sharpshooter' and learn how to alter the physics of casino craps to achieve an advantage over the house.

This article was written by Jerry Patterson. For more on dice control, or to learn the rudiments of casino craps, pick up a copy of Jerry Patterson's #1 selling gambling book - Casino Gambling: A Winner's Guide to Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat and Casino Poker. Click here to purchase Jerry's book. Jerry's book and dice control course called PARR are also featured on About.com.