Taking the dice away from a shooter

On my private website at www.goldentouchcraps.com came this interesting question from "Bretboy," who is one of our posters:

This may seem silly but the other night some guy threw the dice off the table twice in a row and the boxman said the next time that happened he would take the dice away from that shooter.

Was that right? Could he do that?

What reasons are there for casinos to take the dice away from a shooter?

The boxman seemed really stupid in this instance to me anyway.

I decided to ask a good acquaintance of mine, who is a pit boss at a large casino, what he thought of the above situation. Here was his reply:

"The casinos need to get in as many decisions as possible in a craps game, actually in any game, and anything that really slows down the action causes us to lose money. We base everything we do on gaining the highest possible theoretical loss at our games. The more decisions, the closer we'll be to the theoretical loss in the real world. If you have a lot of craps tables going with a lot of decisions things smooth out for the casino so even a hot shooter at one table is made up for by all the other tables where the shooters are cold.

"Now if this dice thrower was throwing the dice in such a way that it was really going off the table because of his throw, not just the occasional mishap, then the boxman has the right to tell him to shape up and not do this anymore. Time is money as they say. I am also guessing that it was something more than just throwing the dice a couple of times in a row off the table that bothered the boxman. The guy may have been doing other things too. I don't know that for a fact but I am guessing at that.

"There are shooters who throw the dice so hard that the bounces almost all the way back to him. These shooters can actually knock chips off the pass line and off the odds bets. Then the dealers or the players have to fix them. This is annoying to everyone.

"Now the casino can tell shooters for a variety of reasons that the dice will be taken away from them -- all of those reasons have as the bottom line the casino losing money.

"If someone is drunk and slowing the game down because he can't concentrate or he is talking away forgetting to throw the dice, we will take the dice away after warning him. Also drunks will often cause other craps players to leave the table so our bottom line is hurt by such people. Even if the players go to another table, if another table is available, there is still a loss of money and also the thought in the other craps players' minds that this casino might cater to the annoying drunks. We don't want our players to go elsewhere.

"Also some players keep taking the dice off the table or using two hands. We'll warn them many times but there comes a point where we just say if you do that again we are taking the dice away from you. A lot of times these are novice players who we help understand the procedures and we don't really warn them unless they are just stupid and continue to do it.

"One really annoying thing is shooters who throw the dice really fast into the chip stacks in front of the dealers. These stacks of chips then explode and the chips go all over the place and the dealers have to constantly set up their piles again. Again we'll warn these shooters a lot before we threaten to take the dice away.

"Then you have players who miss the back wall, not once in a while as will happen, but over and over again. It is one of the rules of the game to hit the back wall. This randomizes the dice and helps give us our mathematical edge over the players. So these players will be warned and if they persist we will take the dice away from them.

"Now many players today set the dice. That is fine with me. But some of them seem to take hours to do this. So we will warn them to set those dice faster. They should know what numbers they want and how to set them fast. How hard is that to learn? Some casinos have gotten paranoid about dice setters but to me it is just part of the game. I say let them set but let them set in a reasonable amount of time.

"As a pit boss, I want the players to have fun at our tables. The more you warn them and annoy them the worse it can be for the casino. So you only warn when it is absolutely necessary.

"But I do want the rhythm of the game to be somewhat fast but also played in a way that players get into the swing of things. Those shooters and other players who screw everything up are not only annoying to me but to the other craps players as well.

"You know players don't want the game to stall either because the shooter is messing up or other players are throwing in late bets or can't remember the bets that they have placed. Those forgetful players really bring the game to a halt.

"There's also another thing about dice leaving the table -- players can get hurt if the dice hit them in the face."

Well there you have it, the reasons why a casino will threaten to take the dice away from a player. Does such a thing happen very often? Not really.