I regard gambling as an amusement, no different in principle from any other type of game (except for the money involved). I know the odds of winning anything, never mind winning big, are small and that I won’t walk out of a casino with tons of money.
That said, everyone who goes to Vegas has to come out thinking: how can I win big?
I know of three ways:
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Cheating. This includes things like past-posting (changing your bet to a higher one after the outcome is known), which is immoral, illegal and very dangerous (as it is a type of fraud, it can land you in prison). Also things like changing the dice at a craps table, conspiring with the dealer to fix a deck fo cards, etc. Outside of videogames I don’t cheat. So that’s out.
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Card counting. This does work, but it’s not easy. I’ve tried practicing against a blackjack program, where I can control for variables like the number of players and speed of the game, and I’ve ahd a hell of a time keeping up. I’m so bad at it I didn’t even try it at the casinos this year.
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Dice “control” in craps. Craps is a rather complex game, but it’s not hard to learn. Simplifying a lot, you can win a lot of money if you can avoid throwing a seven. Of course, seven is the easiest number to throw (it occurs in 6 out 36 possible combinations). For some years now some people ahve been claiming they can throw the dice in such a way that the probability of throwing a seven is reduced. This involves setting the dice certain ways, gripping them a certain way and throwing them gently so they barely touch the back wall of the craps table (a shoot has to hit the back wall), while maintaining a stable horizontal axis.
Craps is the game that gives the casino the smallest advantage, therefore any method that further decreases the house advantage would translate into a payoff if betting is handled just right. However, the loudest propponenets of dice control also are people who sell instructional books, DVDs and seminars on dice control. If dice control were a sure way of beating the casinos, they’d be out playing craps and keeping their method a secret. Every time a method comes along that erodes the house advantage, the casinos figure out a way to beat it.
So either dice control does work, but not very well, or it doesnt work in a statiscally significant way. Option 1 means you can win more often than you loose but not overwhelmingly so, therefore you can’t make tons of money out of it. Option 2 means on average you win as often as you loose, which means you can only break even and need “luck” to hit a big score.
There is also a third option: that it does work well and the casinos know it and don’t care. This seems contradictory. Why let any player win big when you don’t have to? casinos are a business that can make money driving away some customers, winning customers. But in this case it might play to their advantage.
Craps tables are large and accomodate several players at once, all playing together on the same rolls. Say you have a dice controller who will win in a full table. How well do the other people do? If most of them loose, that too plays to the casinos’ advantage. besides any table where someone is winning big will draw gamblers like moths to a flame.
One thing I’ve noticed is that when a hot roll gets going lots of people begin to make one-roll and hardways bets. These pay on rates like 15 to 1 and even 30 to 1, but usually loose (besides the house edge on them is higher than on the pass/don’t pass and come/don’t come bets)
I’ve been told casinos do not allow dice setting. I observed several craps tables at Bally’s, the Stratosphere, Caesar’s, Imperial Palace, Harrah’s, Bill’s O’sheas, Paris, the Riviera, the Fremont and Fitzgerald’s, in about half the games I saw one or two shooters setting the dice and none of the 4 employees at the table said anything. Then again none of those shooters shot anything worthwhile. Many craps players have dice-throwing rituals anyway, like shaking the dice, blowing on them, etc, that dice-setting is seen as just one such. The casino employees don’t antagonize players by interrupting their rituals.
I also noticed the nicest dealers tend to be at craps tables. One dealer at Paris even took time to explain the game to bystanders between making change and taking and paying bets. They are more talkative than dealers at other tables, in general. Part of it may be that craps doesn’t use signs the way other games do. In blackjack some dealers get upset if you say “hit me” rather than scratch the table for more cards. I’ve spent almost an hour at BJ table where the dealer never said a word, not even “thank you” after I tipped him (always tip the dealers unless you never plan to return to that casino ever again).
How well did I do at craps? Very well, actually: I didn’t play at all. This trip I merely watched. I never reached a sufficent confidence in my knowledge of the game to make me comfrotable playing it. Enough confidence means that if I decide to play, say, $50 I know I probably won’t loose it all inside ten minutes. Also craps is a more expensive game than most. You can easily bet $50 in a single point. I did want to try a $3 minnimum table (play $30 which would insure ten hands at the smallest risk for the smallest payoff) at Slots-A-Fun, but that craps table dind’t open until 2 pm, it was my last day and I had an airport shuttle pick-up shceduled at 4pm all the way donw the Strip center. Therefore I skipped it this time.
Instead I’m doing two things now: 1) playing free craps online at casino sites (not at online casinos, but in the play for fun sections of bricks-and-mortar casinos like Harrah’s and Foxwoods) in order to learn all the ways to bet and play. It’s always best to see the rules in action. 2) I’m reading all I can about dice control and dice setting. If it can at least allow me to break even, that’s free play.
Oh, one last thing. Suppose dice control does work well. The best strategy then would be to find a table with a proficient dice controller playing in it and bet exactly as he does. That’s risky, since it might tip off the casino and the dice controller wouldn’t like that. Still, I was on the lookout for long rollers making point after point but dind’t find one. Either dice control is a myth, or they play on weekends like most people (all casinos in the US are more crowded on weekends than on weekdays. The reason I stay in Vegas on weekdays is precisely that it’s less crowded and the hotel rates are lower).