Tag: dice control

She is and She isn’t

 

My wife the beautiful AP was a great card counter at blackjack. We played together as a team from 1989 to June of 2001 when our youngest son, Michael, graduated from college. The moment we finished the graduation ceremony she said to me, “I am now officially retired from playing blackjack.”

I had a strong feeling this was coming. We were spending way over a 100 days a year in the casinos – and that was a lot since we live in New York and the shortest commute we had was 3 ½ hours to Atlantic City. For two people who hate to drive those hours dragged by. Indeed, we went to Vegas far more often than we did to Atlantic City because Vegas had the very best blackjack games in the country, including the best of all time at the Maxim in the early 1990s where all but one card was dealt out of a single-deck game. In addition, the game had great rules too.

While the beautiful AP enjoyed going to the casinos, the intense pressure of counting cards because we needed to make money had taken its toll. She was totally burnt out. She liked the swimming pools, the shows, the gourmet dinners, the great conversations with friends but her card counting career was now over. In those days, the great new card counting method Speed Count which I write about in my new book Beat Blackjack Now! did not exist – maybe she would not have burned out had we been playing Speed Count instead of the traditional methods.

“How about playing craps again?” I asked. “I’ll teach you how to control the dice.”

The beautiful AP gave me that look; that look all husbands understand.

“No, seriously,” I said. “Once you learn to control the dice, you’ll really enjoy the game.”

Now, the reason the beautiful AP shied away from craps didn’t have anything to do with the nature of the game since it is – in my opinion – the most exciting table game in the casino. Her rejection of the game had more to do with her own personal experiences shooting the dice.

You see, while the beautiful AP was a consummate blackjack card counter, she was a deadly craps shooter – meaning anyone at the table, players and dealers, faced death while she was shooting and with each and every one of her throws I held my breath praying no one would get hurt. When the dice left her hands, they were like twin-bullets shot from a twisted tortured gun barrel. She had no idea where the dice were going, I had no idea where the dice were going and certainly the dice had no idea of where they were going.

One time she threw the dice so hard that both went whizzing past the head of the player standing at the end of the table. One went past one side of his head; the other die went past the other side of his head. She once threw the dice down the cleavage of a young woman to the cheers of all the salivating males at the table. She once hit herself in the face as she shook the dice in her hand as one die shot out at her.

Perhaps her greatest and most deadly feat was throwing the dice and having one hit the boxman and one hit the stickman. If you don’t know the game of craps, the boxman is on one side of the table; the stickman is directly across from him. Even Annie Oakley couldn’t have performed such a trick shot. The boxman was hit on the forehead; the stickman was hit in the chest. AP turned bright red and gave up the dice. That was her last roll; her last time playing the game.

I tried to convince her to play again. She said, “I could kill someone with the way I throw.” I told her she didn’t have to throw. She gave me that look again, “What’s the point of playing craps if you don’t throw? That’s the thrill of the game.”

In 2002 I had her enroll in my dice control course. She reluctantly agreed.

Now some of my critics like to think that I exaggerate some of my true-life stories. I mean seriously, how could anyone throw two dice to opposite ends of a table with one throw as I am claiming the beautiful AP did? That has to be impossible right?

Well, in the class I had the instructor we call “Old Eagle Eyes” be AP’s mentor. He is a patient, laid back individual who would handle my wonderful wife wonderfully. He sat down in the boxman’s position and I was in the stickman’s position. AP took the dice for the very first time – and performed her miracle again. She hit “Old Eagle Eyes” right in the head and, to top off her first achievement of this great feat, she hit me on the cheek!

Eagle Eyes sat stunned, “I thought you were exaggerating when you said she once did this. I can’t believe it.” He picked up the die. “These things are really sharp!” he laughed.

Over the course of two days, the beautiful AP did get better but she never accepted the fact that she could become a good enough dice controller to make money at the game. So that class ended her craps career.

My wife was a great card counter at blackjack and she also was the deadliest dice shooter the world has ever seen – and that’s no exaggeration!

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

The Captain Invented Modern Dice Control

The Captain of Craps, the Atlantic City legend, was responsible for discovering how to beat the modern casino game of craps with controlled shooting – which he used to call “rhythmic rolling” as well as “controlling the dice.” He applied this technique to beat the casinos from the late 1970s through 2007 – almost 30 years of constant play. Yes, he won millions.

Since 1998, some writers have tried to take away the dice control laurels from the Captain and assign them to other people who merely tried to build (sometimes incorrectly) on what the Captain had created. These pretenders to the throne are many, of course, since a good idea is always worth pilfering.

In 1993, my book The Captain’s Craps Revolution! was published and in it the Captain addressed the issue of controlled shooting – long before any of the pretenders came out of the woodwork to try to take credit for this brilliant technique and his brilliant ideas. Here is an excerpt from the above referenced book:

The Captain: “I don’t need to guess. I know that some people have trained themselves privately or at the tables to control the fall of the dice. ‘The Arm’ has had remarkable success fixing [setting] and controlling the dice. ‘The Arm” consistently has major rolls. Recently at the Sands casino in Atlantic City, during a Sinatra weekend, with the place packed with free-wheeling high rollers, and then several days later at the Claridge right across the street, ‘The Arm’ had monster rolls of positively legendary proportions. This isn’t coincidence or merely fluctuations in randomness. ‘The Arm’ controls the dice! [Bold lettering mine]

“Does it mean that every time ‘The Arm’ picks up those cubes, a big one is coming? Of course not. There are times when she isn’t at the right spot on the table or the throw is a little off. Having played with ‘The Arm’ for years, I can recognize the signs of an off night. So can she. But if the groove isn’t there, just like a pitcher, ‘The Arm’ leaves the game and does not roll.

“When we talk about fixing and controlling the dice, we aren’t looking for perfection. Pitchers don’t pitch perfect games every time out. In fact, each separate roll of the dice to a player who can control them is like a pitch in a game. The good pitchers will consistently throw strikes and have good games, not every time out, but enough that you can say this isn’t just randomness or luck. Also, you have to define what you mean by a good roll. My definition is simple: a good roll is one where the seven doesn’t show long enough to make me money or one where I can make a good profit because there is a rapid succession of repeating numbers. Fixing and controlling the dice has more to do with certain numbers being repeated than it does with monster rolls. You don’t have to have monster rolls to win. I’ve seen rolls by ‘The Arm’ where the four will come up four or five times in a row, followed by some other numbers, then another string of fours before sevening out. It’s a wonderful feeling to be up on only one number after the 5-Count and have that number hit repeatedly in rapid succession. People who can control the dice will tend to have certain faces of the dice appear more often than these faces would otherwise by chance.”

In the book, the Captain then continued about how one should practice to actually get control over the dice; how many rolls one should do to see if such control was actually there. He mentioned that he sometimes had control but other times he didn’t, but he denied he was very good at it. He thought of himself more as a rhythmic roller which is, I guess, the equivalent to “control light.” I also guess that assessment of himself was his humility talking because in my over dozen years of steadily playing with him (and ‘The Arm’) in the late 1980s and 1990s, he was damn good and had the prototypical roll that works best for most controllers. He was aware that using the word “control” meant a high degree of accuracy with the dice – so he considered himself more of an influencer. This coming from a man who rolled 100 times in 2004 and 147 times in 2005 before sevening out – the only player I know of who has had two hands of over 100 rolls!

To me the use of words such as dice control, rhythmic rolling and dice influence all mean the same thing. The shooter has the capability to get an edge over the casinos.

Unlike today when you can find controlled shooters in greater numbers, in the Captain’s early days they were few and far between. But they were there and the greatest of them was ‘The Arm’ and the most brilliant of them was the Captain.

The Captain was the first to fully understand dice control and its ramifications, and no amount of taking his words out of context or trying to give the laurels to someone else can take these achievements away from him. All the current vocabulary of dice control; all the analogies to baseball or golf or other sports; all the talk about being at the right spot on the table; all of our understanding of when to leave the table; the knowledge that repeating numbers can also be the way to win money even without monster rolls – yes, all the modern parlance of the dice control world come from him.

The Captain was the MAN then; he is the MAN now; and he will remain the MAN forever.

[Read more about the Captain in my book I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps.]