Terrible Dice II

Received this email from M of Oregon that would have made John Scarne proud:

While playing craps at at the local Indian Casino I spent a moment and took a very close look at the dice. As I set them on the crap table, I bent down very close to take a look at them. On the six face they have the die serial number largely printed between the rows of pips and filed heavily with golden paint. But then, my eye caught something else….

In the center of the 0 in the serial number was a black hole filled with a black substance. It was 0.5 mm in size and no telling how deep it runs. Given that when the boxman inspect the die when they fly off the table and they always turn them up to view the serial number of the dice and take a close look, as if they have poor eye sight, I now understand this interesting black spot that is in the center of the golden 0 numeral to be the ‘security key’ that is created in manufacturing. In this way nobody can come in with knock-off dice to do the ol’ switcher-roo on them.

Next I turned the die to look at the number one face. On that face deeply engraved in a circular manor around the single pip was the casinos name only very faintly filled in with golden paint.

In describing this die with people who are trained in physics and engineering, without a doubt such a construction of the die would absolutely make it unbalanced towards the six to such a degree that it would have an effect to normal bell curve in the numbers rolled that you see with fair dice with the peek at the seven, but these dice would have a triple peek with the 4 and 10 as the smaller peeks and the seven as the high peek, much higher than normal. In short, these dice increase the house vig.

Playing a normal craps games with these altered/badly manufactured dice, using normal betting methods as taught by experts in so many craps books absolutely fails. Even certain Dice Influence/Dice Control techniques are rendered useless by these dice.

Now it is agreed by all the experts that altered dice can be overcome and used against the casino, and that is exactly what people are doing, that is till the casino catches on and then they switch the dice out. A very smart friend of mine said that if he ran a casino he would absolute want the dice to be 100% balanced because someone could very easily come in with just the right size buy-in and use biased dice to take down the casino. I stated that many players have figured this out, and the casino watches the table very closely and will change dice out if they see someone capitalizing on the bad dice.

Read on to see what exactly occurred.

This is my account of what happened at a local Indian casino while playing craps.

I showed up 4 pm and they had the clear red dice out on the table. These dice are about as fair as the dice come at this casino though the complaint, as always at this casino is “short rolls”. I really don’t take too much stock in that complaint where a six roll is actually very common in the short view of a table, and 8.3 rolls as an average given millions of rolls. I tend to look at the frequency of what numbers come up and these dice tend to follow the normal expected frequency bell curve for dice throws. When I got the dice, I made 4 points by setting the dice to the dice set most likely to hit that point and was hitting the numbers. Table was considered HOT, perhaps too hot for the casino as well.

At 4:30, after one of my good rolls, pitboss comes over and put in the Dark Red opaque dice “the chillers”, and these are the bad dice that are heavier than the others and very unbalanced in my opinion as how I described above when I had a moment to take a closer look. So, now everyone is throwing craps and 6-1 seven outs. The don’ts players are not happy either because of the come out sevens discourage them from betting. Everyone is getting pasted!

One player talks about an half hour roll the other day, a legionary roll in this casino! So, given the slow ‘turtle speed’ of the dealers I am guessing a high thirty rolls to low 40’s. This tells me that the players are now accustom to short rolls, they don’t seem to bitch too much but most have greatly lowered their buy-ins as of recent changes to the tables.

Around 5:30 I leave to go eat dinner and return just before 7pm. This casino actually advertises that 97% return on Video poker is good. Seriously?! Since when was that ever good? I mean only the casinos on the Strip can get away with that, since they can attract the curious, the tourist and the foreign who don’t know any better. But any real casino worth its salt would find such machines empty and only costing them money to even have then turned on.

Back to the sequence of events.

Crew change at 7:00 and no new dice show up, so we are still using the same dark red opaque dice.

At approximately 8:30pm a local player who is known as a ‘Wealthy Bastard’ starts raking in chips on the table by betting $200 on the 4 or 10, hopping the 4 or 10 and maxing out the 4 or 10 hardway. This guy once hit all three, and multiple times hit the place bets. Boxman and pitboss phone is busy, apparently they don’t like what they are seeing and losing a couple of grand that fast. This guy knows these dice as do a few other players. If you play the outsides, field and horn bets you can profit on these dice.

Come 9:45pm the casino has had enough of the losing chips and the pitboss come over with new dice, the Frosty Red dice.

The frosty dice are not as bad as the dark red opaque dice but as Mr. B has stated are still bad dice, though not as bad as the dark red ones.

Around 11:40 pm I decided I have had enough and head home. Not a winner this time, but learned something.

This Indian casino has a love/hate relationship with the craps table. At times they over do it with the bad dice where I have walked in on a few Saturday evening that is bustling with people to find an empty craps table. I have asked, what’s going on? And the dealers always say,

Quote:

“Everyone left. Too many 7s. Cold table”.

And as always it is the Dark Red dice out on the table. In the past I never knew why the table would turn ice cold to the point of driving everyone away, though now in reflection of the past events I know why.

My guess is that the Indian casinos have some financial commitments that they have to pay that come with operations in a State where gambling is illegal. First being the overhead, the tribe, the investors and lastly the State in the form of committed project donations such as highway funds and other capital projects that the State and the casinos agree to as part of operating. My guess is that the casino who has such large financial commitments are not going to offer good games to the visitors, and for games where the advantage can be gained, they takes steps to eliminate that with such countermeasures as: biased dice and washboard wood or rubber under the felt at the straightbacks. Now if the casino can increase the house vig by legally buying dice that just so happen to be poorly manufactured as to be biased in the manufacturing process, then who is to stop them? And if you ran a casino and noticed that some dice brands tend to work for the house more than others, well what brand will you stick with.

I don’t think it is a matter of ‘what is fair’, and in this world as it is today such things as ethics, honor and integrity have been long dumped and buried six feet under for such petty things as: short term profits.

In my opinion I think any casino that employs ‘shoddy’ dice, bad dice, biased dice, is only playing with fire. They risk a player or group that can come in and rake in the chips so quickly with their own biased dice as to create a financial crisis. It only takes a pitboss who is not paying attention, a casino manager not watching the monitors for it to happen, and it can happen fast too.

(I have written permission from the author to publish this email)

Quote: Bohemian

At 4:30, after one of my good rolls, pitboss comes over and put in the Dark Red opaque dice “the chillers”, and these are the bad dice that are heavier than the others and very unbalanced in my opinion as how I described above when I had a moment to take a closer look. So, now everyone is throwing craps and 6-1 seven outs. The don’ts players are not happy either because of the come out sevens discourage them from betting. Everyone is getting pasted!

The don't players could have cleaned house by betting the minimum on the don't and then laying max odds.

Quote: drjohnny

The don't players could have cleaned house by betting the minimum on the don't and then laying max odds.

drjohnny, I like the way you are thinking and that is a possible good strategy, but it may not always work as noted below as unbalanced dice also tend to repeat certain numbers, which could very well be the Point. Also, the more than numerous Come-out 7s and 11s make it hard to get started on the DP and hard to recover those early losses if you are only allowed 3-4-5 odds or even Double Odds like some Indian Casinos and Fremont Downtown Las Vegas.

Quote: Bohemian

After 10 months of playing daily almost exclusively on the Dark Side when I encountered cheap unbalanced biased percentage dice, this is what I learned:

1. Biased dice increased the House Advantage on both sides - the PL and DP

2. Not only were more 7s and 11s often seen, but certain other numbers increased or repeated which allowed for Points to be made before the 7-out showed. For Instance a sample roll would be: 7, 12, 4, 11, 6, 4 (Point repeated and made), 9, 7-out. Sure some versions of the Dark Side would have made $$ on that 8 roll, but many versions of the Dark Side would have lost and even most versions of Frank Scoblete's 5-Count would have lost money on that 8 roll.

The next roll may have been a 11, 5, 7 or a technical PSO , but not a pure winner for all versions of the Dark Side.

3. When we had fair dice, you would see many Dark Side players making a decent living off just Laying the 4 and 10. Not any longer as most biased dice kill these Dark Side strategies, as noted from the example roll above.

4. Some dice sticks are unbalanced equally and most are not. I believe Ahigh has noted this before in his findings. So when you get a stick of dice from the Stickman, which 2 of the 5 dice present what bias? How do you know the bias of the 2 dice you picked up compared to the bias of the dice left in the bowl?

Did you just pick up 2 unbalanced dice, 1 unbalanced die and 1 fair die or 2 fair dice? And how do you bet accordingly? Same for the next roller and so on.

5. Not all dice are biased in the same way. Some favor more 6/1s, others favor more 4/3s. What bias you found on a certain table one day during a certain shift may be on a different table and a different shift the next day. It's called changing the combination to the vault. If you were in charge of protecting the Casinos's bank of chips, wouldn't you change the vault combination if you thought someone had the key to taking all the chips, especially if it only cost approximately $3.00 for a new key every 8 hours (new stick of dice).

Harley/Bohemian

Here's where I have a problem with your claims. You're claiming that the casinos are doing this on purpose. I don't. In most cases, I believe the reason the dice are off balance is simply because they're engraved to deeply on the side where the name of the casino is engraved.

Secondly, you should be looking for a way to exploit it, not complaining because you can't beat it.

Why don't you collect a statistically relevant number of tosses and determine what the best bets should be, rather than complaining that the casinos are cheating everyone?

I realize that the dice are regularly changed, but you can very easily feel the dice that are engraved too deeply verses the ones that are not. Consequently you could keep a running tally of the number of times each face shows, by combining the face hits for all of the dice that have the deep engravings, and eventually collect a large enough sample to determine the best theoretical bets.

I too have found the off balance, but I believe that it's just not strong enough with a traditional throw to significantly benefit the player. Theoretically, I suppose, that there would be an ideal way in which a person could exploit the off balance issue further, but I suspect the fastest way would be to slightly dull a corner on the five side. Perhaps you could dull the five side by dropping the five side down each throw, or by rubbing the five side dice edges, and or corners - in some kind of pre dice tossing ritual- on the felt before throwing. I suspect you'll have to determine the best way to exploit it by testing at home, rather than in the casino.

Form a hypothesis, make a prediction, and then test it.


Good Luck,

-Keyser

Keyser,

I am flattered you confuse me with Harley, but I only wish I knew a 10th of what Harley knows about dice. I do play craps with him often though.

Second, I believe you are paying attention to the wrong details. I don't care if the casinos are using unbalanced dice on purpose or not. That is not the issue. The issue is unbalanced dice are on the live craps tables and I am glad you concur. How and why they got there is not my concern. I am not the Secret Service or a judge concerned with white-collar crime. The fact that I am given a choice of 5 dice, some or all that may be unbalanced, to make my wagers with is the issue and my concern!

I can recognize unbalanced dice in live casino play rather quickly and I don't complain that I can not beat it. Where do you get that from? If I don't walk away as if I was sitting at a 6:5 BlackJack table or if I don't capitalize on a particular bias, I have no one to blame but myself. I am simply providing a PSA (Public Service Announcement) for craps players that don't recognize what is happening.

BTW, For the sake of learning, I have asked you some questions about your dice trials. Link

I know you want to believe this stuff but I refer you to Persi Diaconis, professor of statistics at Stanford who when he had crooked dice engineered to precise standards still couldn't make a living from them. If the dice are so warped by all your exotic markings someone would be making a killing with them.

Quote: Keyser

I too have found the off balance, but I believe that it's just not strong enough with a traditional throw to significantly benefit the player.

Quote: FleaStiff

I know you want to believe this stuff but I refer you to Persi Diaconis, professor of statistics at Stanford who when he had crooked dice engineered to precise standards still couldn't make a living from them. If the dice are so warped by all your exotic markings someone would be making a killing with them.

I think FleaStiff and Keyser are both right. The ones making a killing off the unbalanced dice are the Casinos. Here is a conversation with stats I found on the Golden Touch Craps FaceBook page:

Quote: Frank Scoblete 9:37am Feb 5, 2013

Why would the casinos want to add to their already monumental edge at craps by using based dice? When you review the actually winnings at the craps tables, they come in at 16-20 percent of the money wagered. Why slaughter players even worse than this and then run the risk of these folks going into semi-retirement from the game or fleeing to casinos where they occasionally win? I just don't see the motivation behind cheating with biased dice.

The Casino Hold percentages that Frank Scoblete mentions are consistent over 50 years and the same that John Scarne said the House should take off the craps table with fair dice. Corporate greed seems to be the answer in this rebuttal to Frank Scoblete:

Quote:

@Frank - Tropicana, NJ Craps hold for Jan, 2012 was 70.03%
Elko County, NV Craps win percentage for Nov. 2012 was 29.4%
Resorts Casino, NJ craps Win % for Sept, 2012 was 24.1%
Caesars Atlantic City craps Win % for February, 2012 was 32.2 %
Tropicana, NJ Craps win percentage for April, 2012 was 39.0 % according to their NJ tax return signed by Jeff Bohrer, Casino Controller
Harrah's Resort Atlantic City craps Win % for February, 2012 was 29.6 %

beancounters are under pressure to make profits to cover increasing Debt service incurred in building Mega-resorts. Casinos are now run by corporations -- corporations are greedy --- No CEO is happy with 20% .... 20% will barely cover the suits salary, not their Christmas bonuses and the Lake Bellagio water fountains and other mega-resort perks

... supposedly GTC alumni are winning at the tables, so the casino win percentage should be a lot less than the built-in 16-20%

Quote:

@Frank - BTW, changing the Slot paybacks by a tenth of a percentage point would have only netted $214,207. more cash compared to the $2 million in craps for Caesar's (May, 2012)

The Bottom Line = If Caesars can double their monthly profits from 16% to 32% -- which they did in 2/12, that is an extra $2 million profit a month just from Craps .... that is significant in anyone's books.

FleaStiff is right, someone is making a killing off the unbalanced dice, THE CASINOS.

Quote: Bohemian

Quote: FleaStiff

I know you want to believe this stuff but I refer you to Persi Diaconis, professor of statistics at Stanford who when he had crooked dice engineered to precise standards still couldn't make a living from them. If the dice are so warped by all your exotic markings someone would be making a killing with them.

I think FleaStiff and Keyser are both right. The ones making a killing off the unbalanced dice are the Casinos. Here is a conversation with stats I found on the Golden Touch Craps FaceBook page:

Quote: Frank Scoblete 9:37am Feb 5, 2013

Why would the casinos want to add to their already monumental edge at craps by using based dice? When you review the actually winnings at the craps tables, they come in at 16-20 percent of the money wagered. Why slaughter players even worse than this and then run the risk of these folks going into semi-retirement from the game or fleeing to casinos where they occasionally win? I just don't see the motivation behind cheating with biased dice.

The Casino Hold percentages that Frank Scoblete mentions are consistent over 50 years and the same that John Scarne said the House should take off the craps table with fair dice. Corporate greed seems to be the answer in this rebuttal to Frank Scoblete:

Quote:

@Frank - Tropicana, NJ Craps hold for Jan, 2012 was 70.03%
Elko County, NV Craps win percentage for Nov. 2012 was 29.4%
Resorts Casino, NJ craps Win % for Sept, 2012 was 24.1%
Caesars Atlantic City craps Win % for February, 2012 was 32.2 %
Tropicana, NJ Craps win percentage for April, 2012 was 39.0 % according to their NJ tax return signed by Jeff Bohrer, Casino Controller
Harrah's Resort Atlantic City craps Win % for February, 2012 was 29.6 %

beancounters are under pressure to make profits to cover increasing Debt service incurred in building Mega-resorts. Casinos are now run by corporations -- corporations are greedy --- No CEO is happy with 20% .... 20% will barely cover the suits salary, not their Christmas bonuses and the Lake Bellagio water fountains and other mega-resort perks

... supposedly GTC alumni are winning at the tables, so the casino win percentage should be a lot less than the built-in 16-20%

Quote:

@Frank - BTW, changing the Slot paybacks by a tenth of a percentage point would have only netted $214,207. more cash compared to the $2 million in craps for Caesar's (May, 2012)

The Bottom Line = If Caesars can double their monthly profits from 16% to 32% -- which they did in 2/12, that is an extra $2 million profit a month just from Craps .... that is significant in anyone's books.

FleaStiff is right, someone is making a killing off the unbalanced dice, THE CASINOS.

Bohemian; I warned SuperRick and now I'm warning you; don't be bringing arguments onto this board from other websites and forums. It's a copyright issue, and also a content issue here. ESPECIALLY don't be bringing other members' quotes from other boards here out of context. Thank you.

Very well written article, well documented with good evidence. This is the full unedited version of the article (Some Craps message boards have not allowed the full version to be posted):

(EDIT: article removed by moderator for copyright issues specific to this website; full article is found at the following link, titled "Not all dice are created equal")

http://playerscasinoguide.tumblr.com/

(I have written permission from the author to publish this post)

I'm thinking about laying the nine! Wish I could get these results in MS. Now I'm thinking Beamer!

mods can you move this thread to dice setting sub forum.

One thing that I know for sure. People who think they can influence the dice are very passionate about it. Imagine if they used their passion for something good instead of something nonsensical.

Quote: GWAE

mods can you move this thread to dice setting sub forum.

Could you point out the dicesitting part? Missed that somewhere.

Quote: DeMango

Could you point out the dicesitting part? Missed that somewhere.

DeMango is correct!! This is about the basic math and odds of the Craps game that effects the pure bettors that never touch the dice.

just a small exert from a post

As for a dice set, the X-6 or S-6 is clearly the one obvious option. Any dice set with the six on the side will just set that die to wobble in the air.
If you are to shoot the inside then try this
3-4,2-5 with the 6 and 3 facing you (a 5 and 9 set)
3-4,4-3 with the 6 and 2 up (this is the 6 and 8 set)
Hardway with no backspin is what I used for my legionary hour and a half roll at SM.
On a CO roll use a YO set


There may be a lot of math speak in here but biased dice and how you throw said biased dice is definitely part of "dice setting/influence"

However, I have the ability to block threads so sorry for the derail.. carry on.

This conversation was heard yesterday at a Las Vegas casino that has the Craps Bonus Bets featuring the All, Tall and Small bets during a normal change of dice.
The 1st Base craps dealer asked the Stick:

What are the serial numbers on those new dice?

Stick: "The Serial numbers are XXXX."

1st Base dealer: "Damn, those dice do not hit the All, Tall, Small Bonus Bets as often as the other dice with the serial numbers beginning with XX."

Stick: "I guess our tips will not be as good this shift."

Quote: Bohemian

This conversation was heard yesterday at a Las Vegas casino that has the Craps Bonus Bets featuring the All, Tall and Small bets during a normal change of dice.
The 1st Base craps dealer asked the Stick:

What are the serial numbers on those new dice?

Stick: "The Serial numbers are XXXX."

1st Base dealer: "Damn, those dice do not hit the All, Tall, Small Bonus Bets as often as the other dice with the serial numbers beginning with XX."

Stick: "I guess our tips will not be as good this shift."

And a conversation between two morons that think the dice are going to affect their tips is about as relevant as the conversation between two dice influencers arguing who is better at having the dice finish on numbers they want after flying wildly off the back wall.

I've heard conversations between people talking about how 9/11 was planned and carried out by our government. Doesn't mean it's true.
I've heard conversations between people talking about how Newtown murders didn't really happen. It was a setup to try and take guns away. Doesn't mean it's true.

Your overheard conversations mean nothing.


ZCore13

The casino ONLY has an advantage if the dice are fair. If the dice are predictably unfair, then the players can exploit this advantage. In your case, you claim the opaque red dice roll 7s more frequently than within normal statistical expectations, so just bet any 7 every time. If it's not frequent enough (you'd need to hit one 7 every 5 rolls or so), then there's no reason you can't bet don't pass with max odds. Also, assuming the casino wins more by having those dice out there, why would it ever have other dice out there?

The fact is the casino doesn't need to cheat to win - the payouts/odds already ensure it will win. Given that players' bankrolls are limited, too, (the casino's bankroll is virtually unlimited) further ensures that the casino will win in the long run, as it keeps playing forever while players eventually experience ruin and can't win back their money. Note that even if players had an advantage (say player 60% vs house 40%, which doesn't exist in reality, but just for the sake of argument), the players would STILL lose. It's easy to see this point through an example. Game is just a single die roll where the house wins on a 1 or 2 roll, and the player wins on a 3-6 roll (giving the player a 66% to 33% edge). Eventually, at some point, there WILL be a string of rolls in which just 1 or 2 appears, and this will cost the player his entire bankroll. Because the house has virtually limitless funds, this can never happen to the house, so it continues playing until it finally hits its winning string of rolls.

In other words -- the casino isn't using rigged dice, and if it is, omg you should exploit the hell out of it because that's your only way to get an edge.

Quote: nodiceman

The fact is the casino doesn't need to cheat to win - the payouts/odds already ensure it will win. Given that players' bankrolls are limited, too, (the casino's bankroll is virtually unlimited) further ensures that the casino will win in the long run, as it keeps playing forever while players eventually experience ruin and can't win back their money. Note that even if players had an advantage (say player 60% vs house 40%, which doesn't exist in reality, but just for the sake of argument), the players would STILL lose. It's easy to see this point through an example. Game is just a single die roll where the house wins on a 1 or 2 roll, and the player wins on a 3-6 roll (giving the player a 66% to 33% edge). Eventually, at some point, there WILL be a string of rolls in which just 1 or 2 appears, and this will cost the player his entire bankroll. Because the house has virtually limitless funds, this can never happen to the house, so it continues playing until it finally hits its winning string of rolls.

In other words -- the casino isn't using rigged dice, and if it is, omg you should exploit the hell out of it because that's your only way to get an edge.

That's just silly talk, if the game is random and strategy mistakes can't be made. If there's any players advantage the house will lose, even at less than 1 % PA.

Individual players might lose, but others will win. The game doesn't know 1 player from the next. All combined players have more money than the casinos.

If the casino sets a slot at 5% players advantage with a reasonable jackpot hit frequency, do you believe the casinos can outlast all the combined players?

The answer to your question depends on the actual house bankroll, which I don't know. If the house bankroll is >> than combined players' bankroll, then the house will win as players (individually and as a group) continuously go busto. While I genuinely don't know what the house bankroll typically is, I think it's probably >> than combined players' bankroll (meaning how much they will actually play for, not their net worth).

If you start imagining that all potential players would be willing to play for all their money, then you're destroying the hypothetical by now making players' bankrolls collectively limitless. If you're saying that casinos' bankrolls are actually more limited than I'm assuming, though, then that's fine...but they'd have a pretty bad business model, then, as short term variance should bankrupt them pretty quickly.