The Dice Control Scam: Don’t Fall for It!

Let’s be clear from the start.  “Dice control” or “dice setting” is pure nonsense.  Anyone who says or writes otherwise is either too stupid to know better or trying to dupe you into transferring your money from your pocket to their pocket.  Think with a clear head.  Stop letting your burning desire to make a quick and easy buck cloud your brain to the point that you can’t see it for what it is—a scam designed to take your money.  No matter how many books or Internet articles someone has written on the subject or how many times they’ve been on TV or how many hits their YouTube videos have, none of that makes it legitimate.  Their bottom-line goal is to sway you just enough to get you to think, “Maybe there’s something to dice control,” and…BAM!…you’re hooked into buying something.  There are many ways the hustler takes advantage of your hope and desperation to get your money.  The following are just a few examples:

• Provide training classes on how to properly grip and toss the dice.
• Provide one-on-one tutoring in a casino at a live table.
• Sell books and videos on dice control.
• Sell merchandise (i.e., practice equipment), such as dice, practice boards, and practice tables.  Some dice-control websites even sell real craps tables for thousands of dollars.  Woohoo! Hold on a second while I get my checkbook.  I need one of those!
• Offer monthly paid memberships for access to “exclusive” information and tips, and special deals on training classes and merchandise.

One site as an example that aims to teach dice control is goldentouchcraps.com Golden Touch Craps by Frank Scoblete (click here).

Exactly what is “dice control?”  It’s the notion that you can control the outcome of a dice roll to increase the likelihood of certain numbers appearing more or less often to reduce the house advantage.  It comes in several varieties depending on how far the hustler wants to push the absurdity of the notion.  Some scammers claim you can learn to roll certain numbers at will.  Other hustlers don’t push their nonsense to that extreme and claim, although you can’t roll certain numbers at will, you can learn to increase the chances of certain numbers appearing enough to decrease the house advantage or even give you a slight edge over the casino.  Other more refined sharks try to make themselves sound honest and tell you that the skill isn’t perfect and sometimes you’ll have an off night because you’re not at the proper position at the table or your didn’t fully warm up your arm, wrist, and fingers, or some other stupid excuse.  (If that’s the case, then why didn’t the guy take the time to properly warm up before approaching the table, and then why didn’t he wait for the proper position to become available and then take it?  Do you see the nonsense for what it is?)  In any case, no matter what approach the hustler uses to push it, the bottom line is that money moves from your pocket to his pocket by selling you books, videos, classes, merchandise, memberships, etc.  It’s all based on taking advantage of your burning desire to make a quick and easy buck by beating the casino.

For only $500, their “certified” and “official” coaches can teach you all the different dice grips, including the amazing “all-sevens” grip that will allow you to consistently roll a 7 as long as you apply the proper stance, body angle, and grip pressure, and then toss the dice with the precise launch angle and rotational spin so the dice land and bounce exactly the way you want, and so they’ll then tumble along the tabletop exactly the way you want, and then they’ll hit the back wall that has all those pointy rubber spikes and bounce off those rubber spikes exactly the way you want, and then tumble back along the tabletop exactly the way you want, so they eventually come to rest with a 7 showing exactly the way you want.  Imagine how lucky you are that they’ll teach you how to do all that for the unbelievably low price of only $500.

And on top of that, as a bonus for signing up for their $500 live seminar, they’ll give you a special deal where you can buy a practice box for the unbelievably low price of only $199 (or you can buy one of their real craps tables for only $5,000).  And to entice you even more, they’ll thrown in a reduced rate for the first six months of their annual membership fee.  What an amazing deal!  Hold on a second while I get out my credit card!

Along with the all-sevens grip, you’ll learn the many other grips or “sets,” including the stacked set, the 2-V grip, the crossed-sixes grip, and the ever popular 5-6 grip which you use only on the come-out roll to consistently roll a winning 11.  Don’t wait!  Classes are almost full so sign up today!  Don’t forget, you get the practice box for the amazing price of only $199 if you sign up today!  An incredible value!

Have you seen the website that suggests you should practice throwing dice in the dresser drawer of your hotel room before going down to the tables?  This is supposed to hone your rhythm for the evening.  No, I’m not making this up!  The self-described “dice control specialist” actually suggests that you stand in your hotel room and toss a pair of dice into a dresser drawer to see how the dice are trending for the evening.  They must think we’re dumb as dirt.  Even the stupidest imbecile must realize how ridiculous that sounds.  A dresser drawer isn’t anywhere near as long as a craps table so the dice won’t roll and tumble as far.  A dresser drawer and a craps table don’t have anywhere near the same bounce characteristics (i.e., the dresser drawer has a flimsy piece of bare wood that the dice will land on, whereas the craps table has a thick bed covered in felt).  Unlike a dresser drawer, a craps table’s back wall is covered with lots of small pointy rubber spikes (called pyramids).  I could list 10 pages of differences between a dresser drawer and a craps table that would cause the dice to behave differently, but you get the point.  So, this scammer wants us to believe that practicing in a small dresser drawer is going to prognosticate our evening’s dice-tossing results at a craps table.  Yeah, right.

The lunacy of the dresser drawer reminds me of the practice boxes that some of these hustlers sell.  Do yourself a money-saving favor, don’t become so blinded by the false hope of beating the casino that you fall for the notion that a $299 practice box (on sale for only $199 if you sign up for the seminar!) is going to make one iota of difference in the outcomes of your dice rolls on a real craps table.  Like the dresser drawer, the practice box just doesn’t have the same bounce characteristics as a craps table.

Some of these clowns talk about the key to dice control as being able to control the pitch, roll, and yaw of the dice.  The scammer uses this fancy-sounding technical jargon to persuade you into believing he knows what he’s talking about.  Each of these is called an “axis of movement” (or “axis of inertia” or other term).  To understand them, think of an airplane that has three different ways to move.  Imagine an airplane flying through the air.  “Yaw” is when the plane’s nose moves left or right (not up and down, just left and right).  “Pitch” is when the plane’s nose moves up and down (not left or right, just up and down).  “Roll” is when the plane stays flying straight (it doesn’t go left or right, and it doesn’t go up or down) but rotates or rolls side to side with its wingtips dipping up or down.  The scammer wants you to believe if you can control how the dice move on these three axes, then you can influence the outcome of the roll and gain an advantage over the casino.  There are many ways to pick that stupid theory apart, but let’s just look at three key arguments against it.

First, to consistently control the outcome of the dice, they must hit the tabletop the exact same way every time.  If they don’t, then they won’t bounce the exact same way every time.  And if they don’t bounce the same way every time, then there’s no way to control how they’ll come to rest (i.e., the outcome will be random, not controlled).  Therefore, the dice must travel through the air at the exact same speed and height above the table, and along the exact same three axes of movement so they hit and bounce the same way every time.  The slightest difference in any of these factors means the dice will bounce, tumble, and roll differently resulting in a random outcome, not a controlled outcome.  It’s impossible for a human to repeatedly toss a pair of casino craps dice in an uncontrolled environment such as a casino so they consistently fly in the exact same path and orientation from the time they leave the hand to the time they hit the tabletop.  It’s impossible.  Any slight variation in air pressure, humidity, temperature, or air flow makes it impossible.  If you think these “dice control specialists” can lick the tip of their index finger, hold it up, evaluate the current ambient conditions, calculate the necessary adjustment to their throwing technique, and then toss the dice precisely to account for differences in ambient conditions, then I have a piece of oceanfront property in Arizona that I’ll be happy to sell you.  The ambient conditions inside a casino (i.e., air pressure, humidity, temperature, and air flow) may be controlled (such as with an air conditioner) but they’re never all precisely the same throughout the day.

Second, usually a lot of chips are scattered all over the layout, including the stacks on the sides of the table that the dealers and stickman use.  These chips are never in the exact same quantities and configurations on the tabletop.  For example, even if all eight players at the opposite end of the table from the dice setter were to always make a Pass line bet using a single $5 chip, those chips would never be in the exact same locations on the Pass Line.  In this example, although the quantity of chips on the table is constant, their location is not (i.e., the player’s don’t always put them in the exact same positions on the Pass Line).  You ask, “So what?”  After the dice initially hit the tabletop, they begin tumbling and rolling toward the back wall.  As you learned in our other article about how to properly roll the dice, the crew regards a roll as “good” if the dice hit the back wall.  If they don’t hit the back wall, the stickman politely asks the shooter to hit it on the next roll.  If the shooter again doesn’t hit the back wall, the stickman or boxman may very likely call it a “no roll.”  To get to the back wall, the dice must pass those eight chips on the Pass Line.  The dice oftentimes hit one or more chips on the table and deflect in random directions.  Therefore, as any clear-headed thinker can realize, if the chips aren’t in the same position each roll for the dice to hit them precisely the same way so they deflect off the chips precisely the same way, how can the dice consistently land with the desired outcome?  They can’t.  Once the dice hit the table and begin to randomly roll, tumble, and deflect off chips and then bounce off the back wall, the outcome is completely random.  Even if the shooter were to precisely and consistently control the dice’s movement along the three axes while in the air, it’s impossible to have any control over how they roll, tumble, and ricochet off chips and the back wall.

Third, and most importantly, there’s no way for the shooter to consistently control how the dice hit the back wall, which is lined with all those little pointy rubber spikes (pyramids).  Refer to the two figures below for illustrations of the pyramids.  There are literally hundreds of those little spikes.  They’re specially designed to a specific size and shape with a springy material that guarantees the casino a random bounce when hit by tumbling dice.  As noted in the previous paragraph, the casino has a strict rule about hitting the back wall when you roll the dice.  Why do you think that rule exists?  Yes, of course.  It’s so the dice hit those spikes.  So, after the dice fly through the air several feet, hit the table, tumble and roll along the tabletop randomly hitting chips along the way, and then hit and bounce off those rubber spikes, do you honestly still believe the shooter has any control over the way the dice land?

You ask, “But the casino hates dice control specialists, so why would they hate them if it’s all a scam?”  Fair question, but the answer is simple.  The casino is in business to make money.  Mathematicians have figured out how much the casino can make per hour per table per roll assuming a certain average bet amount.  It boils down to simple profit.  Dice setters take forever to roll the dice.  They delay the game and get on everyone’s nerves, not just the casino’s.  When the number of rolls per hour decreases, the casino’s profit also decreases.  Instead of taking two seconds to pick up and roll the dice, the dice setter takes what seems like an eternity.  His ridiculous routine goes something like this.  He picks up the dice and drops them three of four times trying to connect with them and get a feel for how they’re behaving tonight.  Once his Vulcan mind meld with the dice has concluded, he slowly rotates one die and then the other finding the perfect pattern.  For example, he rotates each die individually so the sixes are facing up, and then aligns the sixes so they’re either parallel or perpendicular to each other.  Then he delicately takes the precise grip and then pauses to go into another telepathic technique to pass his mojo to the dice.  Finally, he throws the dice and, sure enough, it’s a losing 7-out.  That’s why casinos hate dice setters (i.e., they dig into the casino’s profits by reducing the number of rolls per hour).  I dislike them, too, and so will you after you experience their irritating delays.

Still not convinced the idea of dice control is a scam designed to sell books, seminars, DVDs, and merchandise?  Ask yourself this question and be honest with your answer, “Would the casino allow a dice setter to play if the casino truly believed the setter could influence the outcome of a dice roll?”  Of course not.  Do you think the casino hasn’t fully researched and tested the idea of dice control?  Of course they have.  If their research had shown even the slightest chance that a “dice control specialist” could achieve any decrease in the established house advantage, the casino would ban them from playing.  The casino can stop or prevent anyone from playing for any reason and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.  Consider card counting in Blackjack.  Card counting is completely legal but if the casino suspects you’re counting, they’ll tell you to leave the table.  In craps, or any game, if the casino thinks you’ve cut into their established advantages, then you’re out, plain and simple.  The casino knows you can’t gain an advantage in craps, especially not by learning dice control.  They know the idea of dice control is pure nonsense.  They know that they’re guaranteed a random outcome when the dice tumble across the tabletop and ricochet off those rubber spikes on the back wall.

Some hustlers offer seminars at live tables in real casinos.  They claim they’ve perfected their skill by playing at live tables for more than 30 years.  But the casino never seems to deny service to these so-called “dice wizards,” “dice doctors,” “dice control specialists,” and “dice captains.”  Remember, the casino has the right to say no to anyone for any reason.  If they simply don’t like the way you look, they can prevent you from playing.  Therefore, if the dice setters are so skilled at beating the craps out of the casino, why does the casino continue letting them play?  It’s because the casino knows the “dice wizards” are full of bologna.  If I owned a casino, I’d actually encourage the hustlers to bring their seminars and students to my casino!  If the students are so gullible that they pay hundreds of dollars for an idiotic seminar on dice control, then that means they’d be easy pickings at my casino.

At this point if you’re still a believer, you may be wondering, “I was at a table yesterday and saw a dice setter roll point after point, and he had the dice for half an hour, so what do you say about that?”  Apparently, you haven’t yet read our other lessons, such as the one about distribution variance.  The answer is simple.  That situation can happen to anyone.  It was simply the dice setter’s turn to get lucky and he just happened to be the shooter when the distribution variance took a short-lived deviation from the norm.  Anyone can have a hot roll (or cold roll), but all hot rolls (and all cold rolls) have nothing whatsoever to do with the shooter’s technique for rolling the dice.  You should follow-up your question above with this question, “Was that shooter a consistent winner not only last night but over the past several nights?”  The answer is always no.  Sometimes, you see it as soon as a few minutes later when the dice go around the table and come back to the setter.  He goes through his wacky motions to set the dice and then immediately throws a losing 7-out.  If he’s so skilled, why did he throw a loser on the very first roll?  Suppose the same shooter does get lucky and has another hot roll the next time he touches the dice.  That simply means he got lucky twice in a row.  You can be sure that his hot streaks will turn ice cold later in the night and the distribution variance will settle back to normal.  Whatever he won earlier will be lost later, you can bet on that.

You may be wondering, “Who dreamed up the idea of dice control?”  I have no clue, but a well-known gambling author claims it was “the Captain of Craps,” or “the Captain.”  I’m skeptical of such claims, so my guess would be that it was dreamed up by a hustler who used to sell “winning craps systems” to unsuspecting victims.  Maybe, as people learned that no craps system exists that will consistently beat the casino, they stopped buying those “winning systems,” which then perhaps caused the hustler’s profits to tank, so he had to dream up another way to rip off people.  Maybe that’s how the idea of dice control was born.  Maybe the guy thought, “If these idiots have finally realize that my winning system is bologna, maybe I can convince them that they can still beat the craps out of the casino by telling them they can control the dice, and that I’m the one who can teach them…for a fee!”

If you’re still a believer, then you’re too filled with hope or desperation to think clearly.  All you can see is an easy way to make a quick buck off the casino.  Nothing we say will change your mind.  The only way you’ll learn the reality of it is to go ahead and give the hustlers your money for books, DVDs, seminars, and practice boxes.  Then, when you think you’ve achieved a state of harmony and enlightenment such that you can telepathically speak to the essence of the dice and encourage them to land your way, go to a live table and apply your skill.  Then, after you’ve lost all your kid’s college fund, maybe you’ll finally understand and admit you got conned.

One final note.  The best way to avoid dice control specialists and their annoying antics and delays is to avoid live tables.  Instead, play at your favorite online casino. Check out some best rated rtg casino such as Sun Palace, Casino Max, or Slots Plus to play craps for money. We also have a bonus guide and some Craps FAQ.

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Also see does the casino use loaded Craps dice?