2006 World Craps Championships: Results and Context
Craps history · July 22–23, 2006
The 2006 World Craps Championships brought 167 entrants to Las Vegas for a privately organized tournament built around controlled-shooting claims. Linda “Lowroller” Mabry won the main event. The results are an interesting part of modern craps history—but they are not scientific evidence that a player can control casino dice.
What happened
Gambling author Frank Scoblete organized the event on the weekend of July 22 and 23, 2006. A contemporary report published by ReadyBetGo recorded 167 players and described it as the first non-casino craps tournament of its type. Linda Mabry won the championship, with Jerry Patterson second and Bob Brunson third.
The weekend also included a separate “No-Sevens” contest. In that event, the objective was to roll as many times as possible before producing a seven. Phil Corder won with 57 rolls, followed by Beverly Miller with 42 and Patterson with 39.
| Event | Result |
|---|---|
| World Craps Championships | 1. Linda Mabry; 2. Jerry Patterson; 3. Bob Brunson |
| No-Sevens contest | 1. Phil Corder (57 rolls); 2. Beverly Miller (42); 3. Jerry Patterson (39) |
| Entrants reported | 167 |
| Date | July 22–23, 2006 |
What the results do—and do not—show
A tournament identifies the winner under that tournament’s rules. It does not, by itself, establish why that person won. A long roll is expected to occur occasionally in a large field even when every throw is random. To demonstrate repeatable dice influence, researchers would need a predeclared test, a sufficiently large sample, controlled conditions, complete result data, and analysis that accounts for normal variation and selection effects.
The championship was promoted within the dice-control community, so it remains relevant to the history of that debate. But treating the winners or roll counts as proof would confuse a competition result with a controlled experiment. CrapsPit’s position is straightforward: no published evidence from this event establishes a reliable player advantage over casino craps.
Why a 57-roll result is possible without control
On fair dice, a seven appears in six of the 36 equally likely combinations. That makes seven the most common total, but it does not create a schedule. Every new independent roll still has a 1-in-6 probability of being seven and a 5-in-6 probability of being something else. Long seven-free sequences are uncommon for one shooter, yet a tournament with many entrants creates many opportunities for an uncommon sequence to appear.
This is a classic selection issue: after the event, attention goes to the longest roll. A meaningful test would need to evaluate all predeclared attempts, not only the winning performance, and compare the complete distribution with what fair dice predict.
Tournament play is not ordinary casino play
In a tournament, the objective is usually to finish ahead of other contestants under a fixed session or contest rule. That can reward tactical bet sizing, awareness of opponents’ bankrolls, and willingness to accept variance near the end. Ordinary casino play has no field of contestants to beat; every wager is settled against the game’s paytable. A tournament champion can therefore be skilled at the format without demonstrating an advantage over the underlying dice probabilities.
Why preserve this archive
Older gambling stories are useful when the date, source, and evidentiary limits are made clear. This event shows how strongly dice-control culture influenced craps discussion in the mid-2000s and gives readers a documented result to examine rather than a recycled legend.
- Read the contemporary ReadyBetGo report.
- See CrapsPit’s evidence review of dice control.
- Learn how modern craps tournaments differ from ordinary table play.
- Understand why streaks occur in the guide to the gambler’s fallacy.
