To chart or not to chart, that is the question

One of the biggest debates in the world of casino gambling has to do with charting tables to see if they are hot or cold or in between. Some gaming writers are firm believers that what has happened in the recent past at a table is a good indicator of what will happen in the immediate future at that table. Unfortunately, some of these writers believe that you must bet the opposite of what happened because that trend is about to change, and other writers, equally as fervently, think you should bet with what has just happened because that trend will continue.

Both are right.

And both are wrong.

In some sessions the trend continues, and in some sessions the trend doesn't continue.

On the Golden Touch Craps private website, we've had long and serious debates with some of our members who believe that certain systems of betting can find a trend and capitalize on it. These proponents usually cite the fact that so-and-so was seen winning money on several occasions playing this trend-finding system. However, on the nights when so-and-so lost, the person who won the money was using the opposite system or, in fact, no system at all except whim in order to beat the house. Whim is as good a system as any on certain nights.

The charting debate raged and even took into account controlled shooters, with trend advocates stressing that even with controlled shooters if one shooter was hitting certain numbers, the next controlled shooter either would or wouldn't hit those same numbers.

The debate was lively, heated, and all over the map. So what is the truth of charting? Let's take a look at craps — with and without controlled shooting factored in.

In controlled shooting a force, the skill of the shooter, is changing the normal random outcomes of the dice. If you see the 7 being reduced and the 6 appearing more than normal over many thousands of rolls, you can be safe to assume that this controlled shooter is changing the nature of the game by his skill. If that shooter has passed the software program Smartcraps (which judges axis control) and SRR (seven to rolls ratio) tests of his skill this is also proof that the shooter has some control over the outcome of his dice rolls.

Therefore, an outside force, the shooter's skill, is working on the dice to change the game of craps from a random game into a controlled game — controlled to a small extent obviously. The outside force changing the nature of the game is controlled shooting. Few on the Golden Touch Craps private board would argue against that since many of them are such skilled shooters. More info on this can be obtained from my book Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution!

However what force is controlling the outcome of a random game? No force. The numbers are appearing randomly based on probability. There is no way to predict what is coming next — you may be right, you may be wrong, it doesn't matter. No force is acting on the dice to change the long-range probabilities. Some gaming writers actually believe that some unknown force is working on the random dice. They are wrong.

In a random game, trends will appear and disappear and what happened just now is not necessarily what will happen next. The past is not a predictor of the future.

Now some trend-finders have indeed postulated that maybe the game of craps is not really random. I'll buy that — to an extent. The Captain, my gambling mentor, speculated the exact same thing obviously and he came up with a way to beat the game, controlled shooting, which he called "rhythmic rolling" in the late 1970s. He also came up with a way to deal with random rollers, the 5-Count. We know both these methods work to do what they are intended to do. Controlled shooting gives us the edge; the 5-Count reduces our losses to the random rollers who happen to be at our tables.

But I have a big problem with the idea that the non-randomness of craps allows for a cross-shooter charting strategy that actually works and here is why:

If you have 10 shooters at a table and shooter #1 has been hitting everything but a 5 and then sevens out, is the 5 more or less likely with the next shooter or the shooter after that or after that? Remember these are controlled shooters too. Let's pretend that everyone controls the dice to a greater or lesser extent at a craps table (obviously our eyes tell us this is definitely not the case but let's pretend). OK, fine. Why is shooter #2 more or less likely to hit the 5? What outside force is making his controlled shot make up for the non-appearance of a number from someone else's controlled shot? Or is some "other" force causing him to miss the 5 as well?

If everyone at a table is a controlled shooter, then how is it that the appearance or non-appearance of certain numbers is so correlated among them all? How can a bunch of controlled shooters be charted — across shooters — based on what numbers this one or that one hits when they are all different in their talents?

Now you go through all 10 shooters and what FORCE is causing certain numbers to appear and certain numbers not to appear across shooters? There is no force causing such charting through different shooters to work. Each shooter can be charted individually (if he or she is controlling the dice) but one shooter does not relate and cannot relate to another shooter. Controlled shooting is non-transferable in terms of results. Each shooter is different and their results are not correlated.

So that's the BIG problem with all this talk about charting, even if the charting of shooters is actually the charting of controlled shooters.

What is the correlative factor existing that could cause such synchronicity? There is none. Charting doesn't work on random rollers, or across random rollers, and it doesn't work across controlled shooters either. Charting is an idea with no validity but a heck of a lot of adherents.