John Nelsen is a former CrapsPit contributor whose practical table-position account remains in the site archive. This page documents what CrapsPit can responsibly attribute to him; it does not turn an old contributor relationship into a broader claim of professional gambling authority.
Background recorded by CrapsPit
CrapsPit’s original contributor note described John as a retired engineer with experience working with probability and statistics. It also recorded his long-standing interest in dice, casino craps and the mathematics behind the game. That information came from the site’s contributor relationship rather than an independently published professional biography.
John’s useful perspective was practical: understand the probabilities, separate table atmosphere from mathematical expectation, and notice how position and crew interaction affect the experience of playing. No betting pattern can make a fair casino game profitable by changing its house edge.
Verified contribution in the current archive
Table Position Can Make or Break Your Playing Experience preserves John’s preference for an end position, his warning about crowding the stickperson’s working space and his memory of a small six-seat table where the people around him changed the social experience.
The current edition identifies what came from John and what CrapsPit later edited. It removed derogatory descriptions, obsolete casino promotion and implications that a social or “hot” table changes the odds. His distinctive position advice and stick anecdote remain.
Editorial and authorship boundary
Some old CrapsPit pages used broad “team of pros” credit boxes that did not reliably distinguish a named contributor’s words from later site edits. During the 2026 rebuild, those generic attributions are not being treated as proof that John wrote an article. A page is associated with him only when its surviving source and editorial record support that attribution.
John is not the current editor of CrapsPit, and this profile should not be read as his endorsement of later revisions, gambling operators or promotional claims. Current mathematical, legal and safety statements are reviewed by CrapsPit under the site’s present editorial standards.
How to read a contributor archive
Treat an archive page as a layered record. First identify what the named contributor personally observed. Then separate that account from calculations, legal information, and safety guidance added during a later review. A preserved anecdote can document table culture without proving a betting claim.
- Follow the linked article to see the surviving contribution in context.
- Use the publication and update dates to distinguish the original period from the current review.
- Check mathematical claims against the current rules and payout guides.
- Do not infer that an archived contributor endorses later edits, casinos, or promotions.
So this John Neslon guy writes an article about how dice control is a “scam” and “pure nonsense”.
With that said how are you going to show us “how to optimize betting
partterns to give the greatest opportunity to win.”? Everyone
knows
the lowest house edge bet on a craps table is the line bets. And trust
me, you won’t be transforming anyone into a “player who the casino will
fear” when you damn well know the casino has the odds in their favor.
Thanks __________, for your comment. We here at the Crapspit share the author’s view that dice control is, indeed, a scam designed to prey on the hopes and dreams of people looking to make a quick and easy buck.
The idea of dice control is, indeed, pure nonsense as explained in the material here at the https://www.crapspit.org . Any craps player in the world will never gain an advantage over the casino when playing a legal game of craps (i.e., not cheating). Never. There are no skilled dice doctors, dice kings, or dice wizards who can consistently affect the outcome of a legal dice roll (https://www.crapspit.org/golden-touch-craps-review/) such that he gains an advantage over the casino. Any suggestion otherwise is either out of ignorance or to con you into buying something (e.g., seminars, lessons, books, practice tables, etc.). So get the idea of using dice control to consistently beat the casino out of your head. We believe that you are only partially correct when saying that the best a player can do is to minimize the house advantage by playing the Pass and Don’t Pass with Odds. However, as explained in the material here at the Crapspit, that can and does get quite boring after standing at the table for a while. Our intent is to help players understand there’s a way to play that can make their time at the table more fun and exciting by taking advantage of the distribution variances that do, indeed, occur over time (i.e., hot and cold streaks — https://www.crapspit.org/hot-cold-craps-table/). We believe a more “optimized” way to play is to take advantage of the distribution variance instead of mind-numbingly playing the Pass and Don’t Pass roll after roll. You are encouraged to browse our site to learn this “optimized” method. The method is no secret, so please don’t think we’re offering any newfound system. We acknowledge that it’s nothing innovative. It’s simply a rock-solid way to play the hot and cold streaks without relying on the dice-control con. And don’t forget, when reading the material on this site, make sure you read the material as it relates to adapting to a cold table as well as adapting to a hot table (adapting to a cold table is just as important as adapting to a hot table). We understand but disagree with you your response regarding the phrase, “a player who the casino will fear.” You are correct that the casino won’t literally be afraid of a rock-solid player, but rather it may feel anxiety toward such a player who knows how to maximize his winnings during a hot streak and minimize his losses during a cold streak (i.e., the casino will likely think differently of you than the average player who plays less solidly, including the dice-control wannabes—that is, the casino may be uneasy over the prospect of an anticipated misfortune, which is a form of fear). In that sense, the casino will “fear” the rock-solid player who knows how to adapt and who knows how to take advantage of hot rolls. For example, if you bet only the Pass Line with Odds (as you mention in your comment) during a blistering hot roll, you’ll likely not win anywhere near as much as other players who adapt their betting patterns to take advantage of the hot streak. (Remember, hot and cold streaks do, indeed, occur in craps because of distribution variance.) ). We believe a more “optimized” way to play is to take advantage of the distribution variance instead of mind-numbingly playing the Pass and Don’t Pass roll after roll. You are encouraged to browse our site to learn this “optimized” method. The method is no secret, so please don’t think we’re offering any newfound system. We acknowledge that it’s nothing innovative. It’s simply a rock-solid way to play the hot and cold streaks without relying on the dice-control con. And don’t forget, when reading the material on this site, make sure you read the material as it relates to adapting to a cold table as well as adapting to a hot table (https://www.crapspit.org/hot-cold-craps-table/). We understand but disagree with you your response regarding the phrase, “a player who the casino will fear.” You are correct that the casino won’t literally be afraid of a rock-solid player, but rather it may feel anxiety toward such a player who knows how to maximize his winnings during a hot streak and minimize his losses during a cold streak (i.e., the casino will likely think differently of you than the average player who plays less solidly, including the dice-control wannabes—that is, the casino may be uneasy over the prospect of an anticipated misfortune, which is a form of fear). In that sense, the casino will “fear” the rock-solid player who knows how to adapt and who knows how to take advantage of hot rolls. For example, if you bet only the Pass Line with Odds (as you mention in your comment) during a blistering hot roll, you’ll likely not win anywhere near as much as other players who adapt their betting patterns to take advantage of the hot streak. (Remember, hot and cold streaks do, indeed, occur in craps because of distribution variance https://www.crapspit.org/craps-math/distribution-variance-casinos. )
Thanks again for your comment. We encourage this type of dialogue because it serves to help everyone better understand the realities of the game, which is what we strive for here at the Crapspit.
Editorial clarification — September 7, 2026: The reply above is retained as a historical response. Fair dice can produce hot-looking and cold-looking sequences, but those labels describe past results and do not predict the next independent roll. Changing a betting pattern after a streak changes exposure; it does not create a player advantage or improve the next-roll probabilities. The original reply is preserved for context.