Dice control in casino

Casino

In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...

 craps

Craps

Craps is a dice game in which players place wagers on the outcome of the roll, or a series of rolls, of a pair of dice. Players may wager money against each other or a bank...

 is a controversial theory where proponents claim that individuals can learn to carefully toss the dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

 so as to influence the outcome. A small but dedicated community of dice shooters claim proof of dice influencing in casino conditions. The concept of such precision shooting claims to elevate craps from a random game of chance, to a sport, not unlike golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

, darts

Darts

Darts is a form of throwing game where darts are thrown at a circular target fixed to a wall. Though various boards and games have been used in the past, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules...

, or pool

Billiards

Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...

. Many within the advantage gambling

Advantage gambling

Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to a practice of using legal ways to gain a mathematical advantage while gambling. The term usually refers to house-banked games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker...

 community still doubt whether dice control can overcome the house advantage on craps.

Controlled shooting

The concept of "controlled shooting" goes beyond simply "setting the dice" prior to shooting. It purports to involve limiting the rotational characteristics of the dice. The theory is that if the dice are properly gripped and tossed at the correct angle they will land just before the back wall of the craps table, then gently touch the wall, greatly increasing the probability of their remaining on the same axis. If executed properly and consistently this technique would be able to change the game's long-term odds from the house's favor to the player's favor.

Notable proponents of dice control

Chris Pawlicki (author of Get The Edge At Craps: How to Control the Dice) explains the math and science behind dice control. Stanford Wong

Stanford Wong

Stanford Wong is the pen name of John Ferguson, a gambling author who is best known for his book Professional Blackjack, which was first published in 1975 and is still in print. Wong's computer program "Blackjack Analyzer", initially created for personal use, was one of the first pieces of...

, well-known advantage player and gaming author, also discusses dice control in his book Wong on Dice. Pawlicki and Jerry L. Patterson

Jerry L. Patterson

Jerry L. Patterson is an American writer. He authored several gambling books as well as a gambling newspaper column.-Bibliography:His first book, Blackjack: A Winner's Handbook, was published in 1977. Patterson wrote Casino Gambling: A Winner’s Guide to Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat and...

 co-developed PARR (Patterson Rhythm Roll) in 1997, which claims to be the first course on how to set and control dice.

Debate over dice control

Jim Klimesh, director of casino operations for Indiana's Empress Casino Hammond believes it is sometimes possible to control the dice with certain throws that do not hit the back wall of the craps table. One example is the "army blanket roll", named after the playing surface of the dice games of American servicemen during WWII. In the army blanket roll, a player sets the dice on an axis and gently rolls or slides them down the table. If the shooter is successful, the dice will not leave the axis they are rolled on and will come to rest before hitting the back wall. A successful shooter would affect the odds significantly.

But most casinos require that the dice touch the wall in order for a throw to be valid. The chances of altering the odds when the dice bounce off a surface of rubber pyramids are much slimmer, no matter what axis the dice were on before they hit. Dice control proponents advocate a throw that gently bounces off of the back wall and comes to rest after barely touching it. Experiments have been conducted on the subject of dice control, with inconclusive results.