I was wondering how to alter dice in the game of craps so it hits 7 or 11 every time can you help. thank you.

Alter then so that one die has a six on every side, and the other one has all ones and fives.

Do you believe that 'wishful thinking' on behalf of the players can affect the outcome of a game. Note that I'm not concerned with the SIZE of the effect, just your philosophical opinion. Also, do you think that the manner in which a player tosses the dice in craps can cause a bias (good or bad) in the outcome. As always, your site is AWESOME.

Look for games with experienced dice setters. 'Dice setting' is a technique for rolling dice that (theoretically) allows the shooter to control the outcome of the roll to a small degree. The actual usefulness of dice setting is a topic of some debate among gambling experts. Easiest way to lose at craps is by shaking the dice and throwing it down the craps table You've seen this in movies/tv a million times. The guy asks the pretty girl next to him to kiss the dice. Then for some reason he shakes the dice real good - making sure the dice are purely random. Craps Methods of Rolling Craps methods of rolling involve the long and average rolls. Both craps methods have advantages, but it is the average roll that we must focus on. Craps Method for a Dice-Throwing Posture Having the right dice release posture is a vital craps method. The right posture is a craps method that affects house odds to a.

Thanks for the kind words. No, I don't think that wishful thinking helps in the casino, all other things being equal.
The question on the dice influence is a hotly debated topic. Personally, I'm very skeptical. As I review this reply in 2013 I still have yet to see convincing evidence anybody can influence enough to have an advantage.

Just wondering about your opinion of altering the frequency table in craps by pre-setting the dice.

I'm very skeptical of it. I go over some of the experiments on the topic in my craps appendix 3.

I recently learned some information about dicesetting strategies in craps. Some believe that you can set the dice a certain way before the throw, and by keeping the roll of the dice to just one axis of rotation, you can have fewer possible sevens with certain dice sets. I wanted to know if there is any truth to this or is it just a fallacy.

I don’t believe in it. So far I have yet to see a name I respect endorse the method, nor any evidence that it works. While I don’t entirely rule out the possibility I am extremely skeptical of it. I may live in Nevada but when it comes to things like dice setting I’m from Missouri, 'show me' it works.

Are dice truly unbiased? It seems like the sides with the larger numbers which have more holes would be lighter than the sides with the smaller numbers and less holes. This seems to suggest that the heavier sides would more likely land face down with the larger numbers more likely landing face up. I can imagine a craps system that could try to exploit this principle, but I wonder if it would really work. What do you think?

With ordinary dice, the like those you get in a board game, this is true. However casino dice have inlaid spots. At the factory they drill holes for the spots then insert white colored spots into the holes, of the same density as the die itself. So the die is essentially a perfect cube. Even if they did use ordinary dice from a board game I doubt the bias would be nearly enough to overcome the house edge.

Do you believe the toss of the dice at a Casino Craps table is truly random as a RNG would be, or are there good shooters and bad shooters either thru dice 'mechanics' or plain sloppy throwing (short throws as an example), if real world Casino Craps is not truly random , how would I take advantage of this?

I think there is no such thing as a naturally bad shooter. With the possible exception of a few pros all dice throws can be considered truly random. There are seminars on how to overcome the house edge in craps by precession throwing but I make no claims for or against them. I have yet to see enough evidence either way.

In the October issue of Casino Player magazine, Frank Scoblete wrote an article on controlled dice shooting where you state you lost $1800 to Stanford Wong when he rolled only 74 sevens in 500 rolls. Why did you bet on such a small sample (500)? A person who claims to be able to control the dice should be willing to demonstrate their skill with a least 50,000 rolls. Am I wrong in thinking that 500 rolls is such a small sample that just about anything could happen?

I lost the $1800 to another gambling writer, not Stanford. I would have preferred more rolls but there was an obvious time contraint. Assuming one throw per minute it would take 34.7 days to throw the dice 50,000 times. I wasn’t the one who decided on 500 but it seemed like a reasonable compromise between a large sample size and time. You are right that 500 is too few to make a good case for or against influencing the dice, but 500 throws is better than zero.

I know you’re skeptical of dice control. I have been practicing dice setting and controlled shooting for 3 months. What is the probability of throwing 78 sevens over 655 throws randomly? Thanks for the help :)

For large numbers of throws we can use the Gaussian Curve approximation. The expected number of sevens in 655 throws is 655 × (1/6) = 109.1667. The variance is 655 × (1/6) × (5/6) = 90.9722. The standard deviation is sqr(90.9722) = 9.5379. Your 78 sevens is 109.1667 − 78 = 31.1667 less than expectation. This is (31.1667 - 0.5)/9.5379 = 3.22 standard deviations below expectation. The probability of falling 3.22 or more standard deviations south of expectations is 0.000641, or 1 in 1,560. I got this figure in Excel, using the formula, normsdist(-3.22).

This is about controlling the dice at Craps. You previously discussed the Stanford Wong Experiment, stating, 'The terms of the bet were whether precision shooters could roll fewer than 79.5 sevens in 500 rolls of the dice. The expected number in a random game would be 83.33. The probability of rolling 79 or fewer sevens in 500 random rolls is 32.66%.. The probability of rolling 74 or fewer sevens in 500 random rolls is 14.41%.'

Craps Rolling Dice Techniques For Beginners

The question I have about this bet is that 14.41% still isn’t 'statistically significant' [ i.e. p < 0.05 ] , which is usually taken to mean greater than two Standard Deviations from the Mean -- or a probability of less than a *combined* 5% of the event happening randomly on EITHER end of the series.

How many Sevens would have to be rolled in 500 rolls before you could say that there is a less than 2.5% chance that the outcome was entirely random (i.e. that the outcome was statistically significant) ?

Many Thanks & BTW , yours is ABSOLUTELY the BEST web site on the subject of gambling odds & probabilities that I’ve found .. keep up the good work !!!

Thank you for the kind words. You should not state the probability that the throws were non-random is p. The way it should be phrased is the probability that a random game would produce such a result is p. Nobody expected 500 rolls to prove or disprove anything. It wasn’t I who set the line at 79.5 sevens, but I doubt it was chosen to be statistically significant; but rather, I suspect the it was a point at which both parties would agree to the bet.

The 2.5% level of significance is 1.96 standard deviations from expectations. This can be found with the formula =normsinv(0.025) in Excel. The standard deviation of 500 rolls is sqr(500*(1/6)*(5/6)) = 8.333. So 1.96 standard deviations is 1.96 * 8.333 = 16.333 rolls south of expectations. The expected number of sevens in 500 throws is 500*(1/6) = 83.333. So 1.96 standard deviations south of that is 83.333 − 16.333 = 67. Checking this using the binomial distribution, the exact probability of 67 or fewer sevens is 2.627%.

Three years ago, in an Ask The Wizard column, you wrote: 'You are right that 500 is too few to make a good case for or against influencing the dice, but 500 throws is better than zero.' Can you describe what you would require from an alleged dice influencer, in an experiment, in order for you to feel confident enough to start betting significant amounts of money on him? I ask because one billion rounds is a good benchmark for 'reliable' results in some blackjack sims. With the most efficient (i.e. req