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Cutthroat Craps - Part 219 January 2002
A TALE OF TWO SHOOTERS You are watching a craps game in action. Shooter A is on the come-out roll. Everyone places his or her Pass Line bets except for one weaselly-looking guy who's betting on the Don't Pass. Then Shooter A picks up two dice and flings them unceremoniously down the table where they hop, skip, jump and careen all over the layout until finally coming to rest several feet from each other. He establishes his point. Let us say it is a 6. He immediately calls over the cocktail waitress and orders another seven-and-seven, guffawing as he does so: "Heavy on the Seagram, honey, and light on the Up, ha! ha! ha!" Shooter A then throws out some chips and says: "Oh, give me like all the hardways and, uhm, I don't know, all the numbers I don't have and, uhm, ah, a yo-eleven and, uh um, boxcars." The stickman now passes Shooter A the dice and he grabs and fires them down the table again. Here's a question for you: Would you bet on Shooter A? If you said: "Yes, of course, craps is a random game and this guy has as good a chance as anyone else to make me money," then you are a typical craps player. If you bet Shooter A by making the Pass and/or Come with Odds then you are a typical good craps player as you have made the mathematically best bets at the game. But you aren't a Cutthroat Craps player. If you just went berserk and started betting hardways, hops, yo's, boxcars, snake eyes and Big Reds then you aren't a good craps player or a Cutthroat Craps player -- you are just a dumb craps player. Now, you are watching a different shooter -- Shooter B -- on his come-out roll. The Pass Line bets are down, the weaselly-looking Don't bettor has taken his chips and skulked away from the table, and the stickman passes the dice to the shooter. Before the shooter picks up the dice he puts $170 on the table and says: "Sixty dollar 6 and 8, buy the 4 for $50, everything off on the come-out." (The casino we are at only takes the vig on the 4 if it wins!) Shooter B now picks up the dice and carefully sets them with the 3-spots facing him in a "V." Then he carefully positions his fingers on the dice, checks a spot at the end of the table that he seems to be aiming for, and gently lofts the dice down the table. Once in flight, the dice do not rotate or even separate much, but move rather languidly in the air, side by side with the 3-spots staring at the ceiling, and when they land, they land together, just touching the back wall, where they come to rest without much movement a few inches apart. The point is 6, made the hardway, 3:3. The shooter points to his Place bet and says: "Down on my 6 and give me the odds behind the point." The dealer does so. You now notice that Shooter B throws down a red chip and says: "Five dollars on the hard 6 for the dealers." So I ask the same question as I did above: Would you bet on Shooter B? Obviously, if you would have bet on Shooter A you would bet on Shooter B because to you it does not matter who rolls the dice. You make no distinctions among shooters as you believe every shooter is the same as every other shooter. However, if you were the type of player who said: "I'm not betting Shooter A because I don't like the way he rolls them bones, but I am betting on Shooter B because he seems to take great care with his roll," then you are indeed on your way to becoming a Cutthroat Crapper. Next time: The Golden Shooter This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Articles in this Series
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