The dumb and dumber of craps thinking

11 November 2012

By Frank Scoblete

So many players and self-appointed "experts" are such non-cognoscenti when it comes to the game of craps that it is startling what they don't know; what they don't care to know; and what amazingly inept concepts they have about the game of craps and everything that surrounds it, especially betting, and, worse, how freely they share their knowledgelessness (I invented that word) with hapless readers who eat it up as if it were delicious pizza – pizza that costs a fortune.

Add to the above what these self-proclaimed "experts" don't know about dice control and one ponders how the average reader of articles, books and craps/gambling Internet sites gets any useful information at all.

Seriously, you have Internet websites that recommend mystic “feelings” to determine if a craps table is a good one or not – as if such mystic feelings can spot future winning trends. They can’t; they don’t; they never have. There are no such things as good or bad tables in terms of trend spotting – any good craps aficionado knows this.

When craps is random, which it usually is, then randomness prevails and there are no trends that can be predicted based on past decisions. Yet, the craps non-cognoscenti actually believe that this isn’t so; that they can win money by trend-spotting; be such spotting mystic or based on past decisions. Some get quite worked up over this even though their losses through the years and decades are staggering.

Now, true dice controllers know something more important, however, and that is which tables their throws work good, better and best on. But this is different information than frantically looking to the “ether” to discover the mystic table trend. This is a skill-based understanding of how one’s dice throwing ability reacts with this or that table in this or that casino, a completely different thing than trend-spotting at a random game.

Why the craps players go for idiocy is open to question but one answer leaps to mind, a low IQ. However let’s go for a somewhat less reasonable answer, giving the non-cognoscenti some credit for some intelligence – they just don’t know any better because the landfill of craps detritus is immense. In truth, there are many otherwise smart stupid craps players, something I have learned in my 22 years of dealing with them in my talks and my Golden Touch dice control seminars.

People who have been successful in business, the various professions including doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, and pilots; also athletes, arts and entertainment folks too, suddenly become part of the hordes of Crazy Crappers that flood the casinos looking to give their money away by playing as if they haven’t care in the world or a brain in their heads.

Now I have divided the types of craps cognoscenti into three categories: true experts; truer experts; and absolute Crazy Crappers.

True Experts: Don’t necessarily believe in dice control because they haven’t seen the Golden Touch crew at work, but do recommend the best possible bets at the game based on the math of those bets: the Pass, the Come with odds; the Don’t Pass and Don’t Come with odds. They recommend, correctly, to get as much money in odds and the least money on the Pass, Don’t Pass, Come, Don’t Come since the Odds bet has no house edge whatsoever. Some true experts will also recommend the placing of the 6 and 8; also the buying of the 4 and 10 for $25 or $50 paying a one dollar or two dollar commission respectively – but on wins only. The idea is to keep the house edge under about two percent to have a chance to get a close game with the house. True experts rely on math; not mysticism or nutty notions of trend spotting.

Truer Experts: The above betting information holds (mostly) for the truer experts as well, except these truer expert players know that the Golden Touch dice control skill really works and they can get an edge over the house on the better and best bets by altering the probability of the game – for most this means decreasing the appearance of the 7. For the more advanced Golden Touch dice controllers they can increase the appearance of certain numbers such as the 6 and 8, not necessarily reducing the appearance of the 7, doing this based on their sets and the types of tables on which they are playing. They know that so-called “signature numbers” seen at home practice are not usually transferable to various casino tables.

Crazy Crappers: The late Captain of Craps, my mentor, and an individual who revolutionized the game of craps with his brilliant ideas – ideas that I have written about in a half dozen books – calls players who make foolish bets Crazy Crappers, because they have to be crazy to make these bets.

An idiotic slogan, “See a horn; bet a horn!” is one of the sayings of a low-brow tribe of players who think that random games can be predicted by adhering to such nonsense. These players aren’t mystics, just mistaken.

Many of the dice control “experts” on the Internet have, interestingly enough, started to parrot the Golden Touch rules of play because these rules are right; more important by not adhering to them – or at least claiming publicly that they adhere to them – makes them seem – I’ll be kind here – less stupid than they really are.

The Crazy Crappers deny the existence and/or historical worth of the Captain (even though many people met him and saw him play); they attempt to strip him of his deserved place in the pantheon of gambling’s greats; they even deny he rolled 147 numbers before sevening out, and they show their disdain for his ideas by misrepresenting them in order to attack him. Strangely enough, after attacking the Captain’s ideas, these Crazy Crappers then go on to parrot them as if no one will notice that they are saying what the Captain has already said.

The Crazy Crappers are, unbeknownst to themselves, the world’s greatest craps dummies who, when playing, conversely make the wrong bets, do the wrong strategies, while simultaneously pretending to know what craps and/or dice control is all about.

They bet the Horn – even on random rollers; they bet the Hardways – even on random rollers; they bet every Crazy Crapper bet on the table including, heaven help us, the Hop bets and the Any 7, otherwise known as Big Red (which will be the color of their bankrolls after making this bet over a period of time). They have placed their dice control faith in transferable signature numbers; kooky come-out hedges; trend-finding even at random games, and many more inane and crazy ideas such as betting the Field, a bet with a five and a half percent house edge!

The Bottom Line: If you follow the true experts in group one, adding in the Captain’s 5-Count to reduce the number of random rollers you face, then you are playing a smart game of craps. If you become a member of group number two, you have advanced to the most sophisticated way to attack the game of craps and, if you get good enough, beating the casinos. However, if you join the Crazy Crappers, you’ll be ultimately or metaphorically buying a dumpster to live in.