Article Archives

Risk. We face it everyday. Risk from uninsured motorists. Risk from eating too much red meat. Risk from unprotected sex. Risk when we jaywalk in Vegas. Everyone, at some gut level, makes choices about risk every day – and in many cases these can be life or death decisions....

Back about ten years ago I developed a betting strategy based on the observation that the craps table is always trying to stay “in balance” with the probability universe. In other words – Do decisions and Don’t decisions always work to balance out over the long run. You could...

The number of ways to attack the game of craps is unlimited, but some plays attract more attention than others do – particularly from dealers who think they have seen it all. Here is a play I make from time to time that always piques their interest. I call...

While I don’t have a lot of faith in “due number” or “average hand” theories at craps, there is something to be said for “getting in, getting up, and getting gone.” One way to do that is through one of the many variants of the “Hit and Down” play....

Casino Credit can be a great tool for managing your bankroll when you are on a gambling trip. It helps you avoid the problems associated with traveling with large sums of money through the airport, and lessens the fear of getting mugged and losing everything. But it does come...

What’s the difference in craps and blackjack? Ignoring the obvious, one is a dice game and one is a card game, there are a lot of differences in craps and blackjack – just as there are a lot of similarities. But there’s one major difference. A skilled dice influencer...

Have you ever been standing down in the hook with a bet in front of you when the dice hit your chips and bounced onto a seven? You didn’t mean for that to happen, and it’s doubtful that the shooter did either. But it happened, and it’s a great...

Table conditions. It’s one of the most popular topics when precision shooters get together and talk craps. To be successful, the precision shooter has to know what he is up against, and one of the biggest variables is the table itself. What goes into the construction of a craps...

Players who get the opportunity to hang around the tables with me often hear me talk about “the crap between their ears” and how it impacts their play. It’s been that way since the beginning – and I guess it will be that way forever. Most precision shooters have...

I’d been playing craps for over fifteen years before I finally took time to learn the other half of the game – the Dark Side. Up until then I played “the Right Way” one hundred percent of the time. And as the math of the game would dictate, I...

A few years ago I wrote an article called “The Twelvefold Tao of Craps.” You’ll find it posted in several places around the Internet if you feel like Googling it. While it is essentially a humor piece, I have received many comments from readers who were struck by the...

Fight or flight – we’ve all heard it. And it was never truer than at the craps table. For some people stress is simply a tool to increase their performance level. Let’s face it. Most of us perform best when facing a challenge as long as we are adequately...

Let’s face it. None of us has a perfect memory. Most of us mean no harm by misremembering. But misremembering facts can have a serious downside. For example, you’ll often run across conflicting accounts by eyewitnesses to serious crimes. These days it’s not unusual to see convicted felons proven...

If you’re old enough you may remember back when casinos courted table games players and pretty much ignored slot players. Slots were there for table games players’ wives to occupy themselves on while the real action ran through the pit, and craps was the king of the table games....

Bear with me here. I have no idea where this article is going. But a couple of weeks ago we were chatting about visualization on the forum and I was reminded of events that happened the day before. It was a Tuesday, and I was driving my niece, a...

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve had days, particularly in the midst of a prolonged losing streak, where the most I could muster up for a craps session was a couple of hundred bucks. When I step up and buy in for – say six twenty dollar bills the first...

If you play the Strip casinos on weekends you’ll eventually come face-to-face with one of my least favorite animals – the $15 minimum craps game. And if you’re like a lot of players, myself included, you’ll do your best to avoid this anomaly. Oh, it’s not a question of...

Every day thousands of people travel to resort destinations like Las Vegas with dreams of coming away richer. Closer to home, everyday you’ll see people standing in line at the local convenience store to play the lottery. They play the stock market, kick a couple of bucks in the...

One of the many issues recreational gamblers endure is short run bankroll volatility. These are often players with short bankrolls to begin with; guys who step up to a $10 game and buy in for double what they’d buy in for at a $5 game – a whopping $200....

Let’s face it. It happens to all of us. For one reason or another, skills we’ve developed at home don’t make the transition to the casino. Blame it on variance, bad luck, or something you ate for dinner – sometimes the correct craps play is no craps play. So...