Craps concerns and video keno

9 February 2014

By John Grochowski

QUESTION: I have a question about craps procedure. I’m pretty new, and I guess my roll was bugging the supervisor. He kept watching, and telling me to get more loft on the roll. I tried, but I guess my trajectory was too flat for his liking. At one point, he called “No roll!” while the dice were in the air. It should have been a winner 9, and the other players were all mad. The supervisor told them, “Talk to him. He’s had enough warnings.”

Could you explain to me why the supervisor was so worried about the loft, anyway?

ANSWER: The casino’s primary interest is insuring a random roll. As long as the dice bounce enough to assure something close the randomness, the odds will hold up and the casino will make money.

There will be short-term deviations, of course, with hot streaks that will bring occasional big wins. Casinos need winners. If there were no winners, there would be no repeat customers. But most of all, casinos need the odds to be reliable in the long run, so the house can bank on the profits that come with average results.

The concern with your flat roll was that it could reduce randomness. Would the dice bounce fewer times than the operators like? Would one die just skid, rather than bounce, and never turn over?

Probably not, but the casino takes as few chances as possible. The rules are there to reduce the chances that a shooter could take advantage of a less-than-random roll.

QUESTION: I was wondering if you had an opinion on a video keno system. I think I read about this in a magazine, but it was so long ago I don’t remember exactly where or when. I’ve been playing it for years and years. Sometimes it works pretty good and I win. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I lose.

What I try to do is pick patterns of numbers. I like six-number cards, so if I see six numbers grouped closely together on one play, I’ll play them again. For example, just yesterday there were hits on 41-43-44, then right below on 52, then right below that at 61-64. You could draw a pretty small circle around that. I played that group on the next play, and five of them came up again, so I had a nice payoff.

If I do that for a while and don’t win, I move the blocks around. Instead of 41-43-44, I might bet 21-23-24. I keep the same pattern, I just move it around the screen.

What do you think?

ANSWER: You pretty much summed it up yourself when you wrote, “Sometimes it works pretty good and I win. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I lose.”

That’s how it works with any keno system. The numbers drawn on the screen are random -- or at least as close random as humans can program a computer to be. Whether you choose numbers by birthdays, by charting frequently occurring numbers, by trying to identify repeating patterns or any other method, you’ll have some winning sessions, including a few big wins, and many more losers.

Your pattern system is no worse than any other system. It does nothing to hurt your chances of winning. On the other hand, it does nothing to help your chances, either. Given enough playing time, your overall results are most likely to reflect the odds of the game, with a profit for the house.