Re: Wong on Dice
There's a guy out here named Frank Scoblete who i believe also subscribes to this 'advantage craps' theory of dice manipulation.
It looks kind of interesting to me and he gives occasional classes on this.
I'm not sure if he still does the classes but I do know that he writes gambling articles in the local gambling rag.
The classes though were being given at the Gold Strike in Tunica I believe.
I doubt that a casino would allow a blackjack card-counting class to take place on their site.
So the fact that they would allow the dice-shooting class there possibly indicates how NOT worried the casinos themselves are about this 'dice-handling manipulation' stuff.
Still, I agree that 1.7% change of the odds of rolling a 7 should be a HUGE difference.
If I remember correctly...some of the bets in craps are just 0.4% advantage for the house...so to change the chances of rolling a 7 by over 1% should be enough to swing the advantage to the player in a way similar to blackjack card-counting if my impression of how this whole advantage craps thing works is even close to correct.
Of course, now that I think about it....YOU aren't going to be the one who always gets to do the shooting. So you probably need to change the odds by more than just 1% to make it worthwhile.
unless you are doing the Craps version of Wonging-in and Wonging-out like he does with BJ....meaning you don't even play when you're not shooting....or you just play the minimum until you get to shoot and then you bet bigger when you are getting to manipulate the dice I guess.
but I digress.
Anyway, in BJ card-counting you are roughly just swinging the advantage from 1 to 1.5% for the house to a 1% advantage or so for the player....we're talking HIGH variance here obviously.
I don't blackjack card-count anymore.
I tried to a few weeks ago just for old-times sake after a nice score playing B&M poker....and I got clobbered when every high-count meant the DEALER got the BJ against MY 20 (BJ bad-beat stories are about as exciting as poker bad-beat stories so I'll skip the details...but I got CRUSHED).
Usually if I'll play BJ now I'll just keep a general count and maybe vary my bet from 1:2 (or maybe 1:3) or so which isn't MUCH at all in a shoe-game (or even a DD or SD game for that matter)....but it IS generally enough to get to play a break-even game which I'm okay with since I'm drinking for free. (I have read on BJ21.com that a 1:3 spread on a shoe-game is roughly good enough for break-even. Usually a 1:10 or higher spread is recommended to actually profit on the game).
I would actually be willing to learn how to play craps if I knew I could be playing at least a break-even game and thus there was some actual SKILL involved.
The fact that it's PHYSICAL skill revolving around one's ability to shoot the dice 'less' randomly makes it even more interesting to me.
It's something I could see myself researching a bit more in the future but for now all I know about it are the same kind of generalities that most of us are semi-familiar with.
As it stands now, Craps is just some silly game that I don't understand hardly at all and have played with friends maybe twice (having no idea what I was doing and just following the advice of those who believe, "Woo-hoo!! Don't change those dice! They're running hot!!")
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