Cheating At Craps
Ever since the first dice were handcrafted from bones and stones in Ancient Greece, dishonest players have devised ways to tilt the odds in their favor. Cheating has always been an unfortunate aspect of mankind’s inherent urge to excel.
When immigrants from Europe brought the popular dice game “hazard” with them to America during the early 19th century, the locals soon created a variation known as “craps.”
When a casino-cheat team wants to do a live blackjack move using $1,000 chips, they get those $1,000 chips at the craps or baccarat tables, thus avoiding any heat on obtaining large-denomination chips at the blackjack table they’re targeting. This gives them the element of surprise when putting them into dishonest play. The tradition of trying to swindle casinos continues to this day, so casinos take extraordinary measures to prevent players from cheating, especially at the craps table. Because players handle and shoot the dice, craps is the only casino game where patrons have complete control over the outcome of a wager.
Early gambling halls and riverboat casinos of the era began running craps tables, and the threat of loaded dice loomed large. But the players weren’t doing the cheating back then. The house actually rigged the game by weighing the dice to ensure they’d land on 2, 3, or 12 more often than not.
In those days, craps was played using only the pass line bet, so a 2, 3, or 12 on the come-out roll always meant a loss for the player. Casino operators had free reign to deploy loaded dice at every available opportunity. This turned craps into a nearly unbeatable game over the long run.
. Cheating at the Craps table is common with loaded dice. A player may throw the dice on the floor while tossing it and exchange it with loaded dice while picking it up. A loaded die is heavier on one side so when it lands, the heavier side faces down and the opposite side faces up, helping the cheating player win more rounds.
That came to an end in 1907, when a dice maker named John Winn decided to tinker with the standard craps betting structure. By adding an option to bet against the shooter and the pass line, which he dubbed the “don’t pass line,” Winn ensured that loaded dice were no longer a win for unethical casinos.
- They’re accused of stealing at least $25,000 from casinos in our state using a dice-sliding technique at the Craps table. That means if you’re not betting with the suspects – you’re probably losing.
- Methods for Cheating at Craps. There are numerous methods for cheating at craps. Some require that you modify the dice, while with others you’ll need to have a quick slight of hand. Let’s look at each method more in detail. Method #1 – Modify the Dice. One method for cheating at craps is to modify the dice. For example, you could: Load.
With the 2 and 3 on the come-out roll turned into winners for don’t pass line bettors, and the 12 coming to a push, casinos had little incentive to use loaded dice rigged to land on those numbers.
In one fell swoop, Winn’s addition to craps gameplay leveled the proverbial playing field, putting players back on even ground with the casino. But the house edge still exists.
While it’s quite reasonable compared to other casino table games, the pass line offers a 1.24% house edge and the don’t pass line clocks in at 1.06%. Players who fight fair still face an uphill climb toward profitability.
As a result, the scourge of cheating in craps afflicts the modern game as well. I’ve already covered the various ways gamblers can try to cheat at poker, and slot machines, along with several serious reasons why nobody should take that risk. Read on to learn about four ways you can cheat at craps and four reasons why you shouldn’t try.
1 – Past Posting to Get Paid After the Results
By far, the most commonly attempted method of cheating at the craps table is a sleight of hand trick called “past posting.” Also known as “late betting,” the concept behind this ruse is deceptively simple. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you’ve likely imagined giving it a go once or twice.
Picture yourself grinding out a fun session, while you stick to a conservative betting strategy of pass line + odds + placing bets on the 6 and 8. A few other players are taking their shot at more exotic wagers, and their excitement attracts your interest.
On a lark, you decide to go for the gusto and slide a $5 chip out on the 12, betting against 35 to 1 odds that you’ll roll a perfect 6 + 6 to nail the sweet 30 to 1 payout.
You let the dice fly and send a prayer up high, then watch the prettiest sight in all of craps as they tumble perfectly to spike a 12. The table whoops it up in celebration on your big win, while the dealer stacks up a hefty $150 payout on your $5 wager.
Now, here’s where the enticement of past posting comes into play… What if you could magically exchange that $5 chip for $25 without the dealer noticing? That would turn the same lucky roll into a $750 payout, upping the ante to produce a session-defining score.
If you’re like most players, this thought exercise is just that, a hypothetical to ponder. For past posting cheaters, however, this bait and switch is the name of their game. Past posters place small wagers using different denominations, then wait to see the result.
When they lose, they chalk up defeat and play the next roll. But when their bets turn a winner, past posters surreptitiously slide additional chips on top of the stack.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Past Posting
Craps tables are hectic. With a dozen players standing around the elongated table, everyone is adding bets to the board while simultaneously calling out verbal wagers. But there’s a reason why craps tables are staffed by four casino employees at all times (two dealers, the stickman, and the boxman).
Past post cheaters try to prey on inexperienced dealers. They pounce on any available distraction. When they spot an opening, a past poster will use lightning-quick movements and deft chip handling to increase their bets after results.
But with all of those dealers on hand observing the action, and surveillance cameras keeping a constant lookout using high-resolution footage, attempting to past post in a modern casino is a losing proposition.
Cases of past posters getting handcuffed for their conduct at the craps table are a dime a dozen. You’ll find incidents ranging from former NFL player Quinton Carter getting arrested in 2013 for adding three $5 chips to winning wagers to “Big Al” Grossman scamming Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut out of thousands before getting caught.
2 – Colluding With a Dealer to Rig the Game
Past posters try to “double down” on their cheating by convincing dealers to betray the casino. When a cheater is able to bring a casino employee onboard, all sorts of schemes become possible.
You might have a dealer turn a blind eye to past posted bets or one who slides you stacks of winning chips even though you didn’t have a bet out to begin with. Other corrupt dealers can let you pull back or reduce losing wagers with no repercussions.
In the case of former craps dealer Mark Branco, his cheating partners were allowed to verbally place high-risk “hop” bets just as the dice were coming to a rest.
Between 2012 and 2014, Branco conspired with two players and a fellow dealer to rig high-stakes craps games at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. With partners Tony Granito wagering an average of $4,400 per bet, and Jeffrey Martin betting $2,200 a pop, Branco oversaw a scheme which stretched out over two years and nearly 4,000 rounds of rolling.
Right before the dice landed, Granito and Martin would mutter a hop bet to Branco that the dice would land in an exact combination. When the dice cooperated by spiking the combo exactly, Branco would slide out sizable stacks of chips to pay off the supposed four-figure bets. But when the hop bet was a swing and miss, Branco pretended he never heard the verbal command or that it was made too late to count.
The hop bet is an exotic that pays out to the tune of 15 to 1, so using Granito’s average bet size of $4,400, the team was clearing $66,000 on a single successful cheat.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Colluding With a Dealer
The casino eventually caught wind of the improbable winning jag, as the team collectively wagered more than $12 million. This amount should produce an expected loss of $712,000 when legitimate craps odds are applied. Instead, the cheaters won $1.08 million during their rigged run, which statistical outlier gaming analysts have calculated as a 452 billion to 1 longshot.
Like any cheaters who don’t know when to quit while they’re ahead, this high-rolling collusion team wound up ensnared by surveillance cameras and astute casino employees.
In the end, Branco was sentenced to four to 10 years behind bars, while Granito and Martin each received 8.3-year sentences. Those sentences came after all three pleaded guilty.
Chief Deputy District Attorney J.P. Raman explained to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that casino cheats in the Silver State will always be penalized to the full extent of the law.
“This is not about sending a message.
It’s about punishing appropriately, and it’s about preventing anarchy.”
District Judge Valerie Adair told the newspaper that her harsh sentencing was based on the obscene sums of money the trio of cheats stole from the Bellagio.
“It seems to me that when these offenders concocted this scheme and executed it time and time again, they had to realize that if apprehended, the likely outcome was prison.
I’m not aware of any other offenders receiving probation for like amounts.”
3 – Stealing Chips From Other Players at the Table
Speaking of stealing, a surprisingly frequent form of cheating at the craps table involves nothing more complicated than a simple snatch and grab.
At the craps table, players keep their chips in grooves that line the armrest or the “rail.” Preying on fellow players who are either too trustworthy, too drunk, or too focused on the dice “rail thieves” work craps tables by keeping an eye out for folks who aren’t watching their chips.
From there, all it takes is a quick hand and a poker face to reach for a few chips from your neighbor. Because craps is such a fast-paced game, players are moving chips back and forth from the table to their rail in rapid succession. Even experienced craps enthusiasts seldom have time to count their stack after every bet or payout.
Knowing this, rail thieves hope their marks never notice their stack is light, making their move quickly and cashing out before anyone catches on.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Stealing Chips
As you might suspect, this crude and cowardly form of cheating is only utilized by the lowest of the low. Thankfully, awareness campaigns by craps-focused media outlets are teaching players to keep a close eye on their chips by using a hand to cover them during the roll or asking a dealer to cover them with a napkin while taking a bathroom break.
As with most casino cheating schemes, the best reason to avoid stealing chips at the craps table is the cameras. Whether it’s the victim noticing their shortened stacks and asking for a camera check, or the surveillance team spotting something amiss and alerting security, you can only get away with pickpocketing from the rail so many times until you’re caught on tape.
4 – “Sliding” or “Scooting” the Dice to Nail Numbers Automatically
As a craps player, you’ll find all sorts of advice from supposed “dice controllers” on how to make certain numbers appear more often than the odds dictate.
Some players “set” the dice before rolling, others try to go for a specific launch and bounce angle, and a few even attempt to control the spin rate and rotation. By and large, this craps strategy is fool’s gold for recreational players.
But what if you didn’t roll the dice at all?
Can You Cheat At Craps
A wickedly inventive form of cheating in craps is known as “sliding” or “scooting,” which describes a player arranging the dice with preferred numbers face up, then pushing them across the felt rather than tossing them through the air. If you’re looking for a hard 8, for example, setting the dice on 4+4 face up before sliding them to the other end of the table is an easy way to guarantee yourself a sweet payout.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Dice Sliding
Dice sliding might seem too crazy for even the most courageous cheater to try, but as Las Vegas-based casino surveillance specialist Willy Allison told the Review-Journal two years ago, the old ruse is enjoying a renaissance of late.
“It is the scam of 2017. Dice sliders never used to be common but seemed to have made a comeback in recent years. Dice sliding isn’t that difficult to master with a bit of practice. The key is finding weak or corrupt floor staff and supervisors. Casinos are so desperate to keep players who bet big they’re willing to turn a blind eye to questionable rolls.”
Allison was commenting on the case of Badri Tsertsvadze, a dice slider caught at the Flamingo casino and charged with 18 criminal counts.
Tsertsvadze was far from alone though, as the Wynn casino suffered a $700,000 loss in 2011 before a team of dice-sliders was taken down.
Craps dealers are trained to watch the dice at every turn from the stickman’s push to the shooter, to the shooter’s handling, and at every point in the roll. You might be able to fool them once or twice using the slide trick, but cheaters never prosper, so expect this scam to be spotted eventually.
Conclusion
Craps holds a well-deserved reputation as the most exciting table game on any casino floor. There’s a low house edge on the base bets, huge payouts on high risk exotics, and an entire table celebrating pass line winners as a group. What’s not to love, right?
Well, cheaters love how craps’ complexity and commotion provides the perfect cover for deception. With so many players placing so many bets, and a lot of chips moving to and fro after every roll, the craps table is a casino cheater’s home away from home. But as you just learned, when you try to rig a game of craps in your favor using these four cheating methods, jail time and huge fines are the only outcome.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Craps is a wonderful game played with dice and if you love dice games then you should select craps to play at casinos. Most players specially the ones who are new gamers always look for easy method to win the game and therefore search for cheats and hacks. But the truth is you end up behind bars if you are caught up cheating at games when playing at land casinos so better understand the game and practice for free first at online casinos and then jump to play with real dollars.
Here we bring to you three tricks to cheat at the game of craps most commonly used by players. Our intention is not lure you to cheat but to gain information on such hacks at the craps game table so that you know if other player cheats and save yourself. Like popular cheat for any table game going at real land casinos is that other players might try to steal your chips while you’re involved in the game and not looking. Craps can be such a high action game that players often forget to keep an eye on their rail chips. Other cheats will try to collect your bets off the table. Since you are responsible for collecting your own winnings you must be sure to keep track of where your money lies on the craps table. Some players may also try to cheat the house by placing their bet after the decision has been made. This doesn’t hurt you directly but it’s not the kind of play you want to see at your craps table.
Also there are many players who cheat with the dice. Some players will attempt to slip a pair of altered dice into the game. The alterations maybe in the form of a loaded die which can weight down on one side to increase the odds of a certain number being rolled. Or it can be crooked dice that will have certain sides rounded out and others left flat, again to increase the odds of a certain number. There are many ways to catch such altered dice. Just hold the sides of the two dice together in and turn them in a very methodical order. You will find that rounded sides will not match up correctly causing the dice to wobble. Also to check for loaded dice try holding each die by the corners between two fingers with little pressure applied you will find that weighted sides will rollover repeatedly.
#1 Cheat by Dice Control
Dice control is a way used by cheats to shoot otherwise legal dice in a manner that controls the roll of the dice. If done correctly, dice control causes some numbers to appear more often than others. To do so, you have to set the dice in your hand before the roll. Setting the dice means certain desirable numbers are arranged as you hold the two dice. But this is difficult, because casinos have rules against holding dice with two hands. You would have to learn the various dice control methods before getting an accurate idea of whether dice control works.
The most difficult method of cheating is the “whip shot”. The whip shot is a throw that sends both dice spinning on a vertical axis all the way down the table without tumbling over. Most craps supervisors are trained to recognize this throw and modern dice rarely maintain a vertical axis on craps tables equipped with speed bumps and rubber bumpers. An attempt to roll a whip shot will usually result in the box man calling “no roll”.
#2 Cheat by Making Late Bets
Making late bets can be effective in craps, though a cheater has to be quick with sleight of hands. By making late bets after the result of the roll is known, you take all the guesswork out of dice shooting. In our previous posts we have talked about this kind of cheat called “past posting” in the game of roulette and is an effective way to cheat, if the cheater and the croupier are colluding. Remember as craps tables has four dealers, making late bets is less effective. It is much less likely you could get 4 dealers to collude, because of the risk and the need to share winnings 5 ways instead of 2 ways. Even if you did, the chance one of the dealers would rat you out is much higher. Making late bets on your own without dealer help means you have to fool 4 sets of eyes, or 5 if you count the pit boss.
#3 Cheating at Craps with Fixed Dice
There are various methods used by players to fix dice. The risk of using loaded dice is great in legal casinos and private dice games alike. Remember that a craps cheat has to switch their loaded dice with the official dice at the craps table.
One of the ways is weighted dice where the players change the center of mass in the dice, so one side is favored when rolled. If you weight the die to the 6-side, then it will be more likely to come up the number on the other side. The common materials used to weight a die are lead, platinum, and gold. These are heavier, so you don’t need as much metal to weight the die.
Most casino cheats weight dice by drilling a hole in one of the dots and placing metal inside. Then they replace the hole in the pip and do their best to assure the die looks natural. A gaming inspector with an expert eye can usually spot an inconsistency, such as a dot that’s deeper than the rest of the dots.
The other way is tappers which are weighted in a more sophisticated manner, and makes them harder to spot. Tappers have a shape inside them which looks like a dumbbell, with the dumbbell arranged in such a way that one end is in the middle of the dice and another end is toward one side. This dumbbell is filled with mercury, a weighted medal that is liquid at room temperature.
If the mercury is in the center of the die, then it will seem normally weighted to an expert. Once the game begins, the cheater can “tap” the die to cause the mercury to flow to the side. Some tappers have a tiny ratchet mechanism inside, so the tap manipulates the mechanism. If this method is used, then the tapper needs rubber inside, to keep the die from making noises.
Then there is a way called floaters or “floats” which are dice with hollow insides. Because they weigh slightly less, they float on one end of the dice. This is the opposite of the weighted die, except with the opposite effect. Instead of one number being favored because it’s opposite is heavier from metal inserts, one number is favored because that side is hollowed-out and thus weighs less.
One of the method also used is Mis-spotted dice which do not have the normal number of spots. Most dice have three sets of opposite sides: 1-6, 2-5, and 3-4. On a mis-spotted die, one or more of the numbers is missing, while one or more of the numbers is doubly-represented. Some of the common names given to Mis-spotted dice in the craps cheat are “horses and tees”, “mis-spots”, “tops and bottoms”, and “tops”.
Dice with duplicated numbers generally are easy to spot, but some unobservant dealers might miss them at a casual glance. Mis-spotted dice are an old dice shooter’s trick. In April 2018, Norwegian archaeologists excavated a part of Bergen, Norway and found a set of mis-spotted dice later determined to be from the 15th century.
Often used are shaped dice that do not have an even side on all six sides but are shaped to have a slight curve or parabola, which affects the die roll. If the side is convex or curved like a hill, then that number is not likely to appear, because the dice keeps rolling. If the side is concave or indented like a valley, then the dice is likely to land on that number, meaning it’s opposite number is likelier to appear. To make shaped dice, cheaters heat them and shape them.
Similarly there are Beveled dice that are made to have one or more convex sides. These raised side keep the die rolling, so other numbers are more likely to appear on the roll. This is a sub-type of shaped dice.
Cheating At Craps
Suction dice are another kind of shaped dice with a concave or valley in them and are the opposite of beveled dice. Due to the suction effect created, the die is more likely to land on the number that is concave.
Raised Spots is another way to affect the roll, much like beveled dice. In this case, the numbers or pips are raised from the surface of the die, instead of sunken. Because this side of the die has protrusions, it is more likely to keep rolling on the side with the raised spots. This is also easy to spot, either visually or by rubbing one’s finger across the die’s side. That’s why dice with raised spots are not used that often to cheat, but instead are used for practice.
Another way players cheat is paint the dice and this is done by a transparent substance that makes one or more sides sticky. To make the painted die stickier, the cheater has to get the painted side slightly wet, either from moisture from one’s drink, spittle, or palm sweat. This is a dangerous way to cheat at dice, because if the painted dice are too sticky, they might stick to the table, pick up detritus on the table, or stick to another player’s hand.
One way also to use this method is a slick die that has a substance on one side which makes it slicker than normal. This assures the dice will not land on the slick side, changing the craps odds. Slick dice are a safer way to cheat at craps, because older dice wear a bit and become more polished and slicker. When the slick side is noticed, dealers might well believe they simply need to replace old dice.
Some players in history have sticked a filament of some sort in one of the die’s numbers, so that it protrudes and causes the die to slow down when it rolls over that side. Naturally, this eventually will cause the die to come to a stop on the bristled side. Bristled dice sometimes simply are called “bristles”.
Many players create capped dice by shaving off one side and replacing it with a material that looks the same but has different properties. It might be because the new material is heavier, so the die lands on that side more or the new material made that side of the die bouncier, so the die lands on that side less.
Capped dice are effective and hard to spot, except when it gets worn down with use at which point it is easy to spot. Dealers who handle the die might apply pressure to capped dice and learn that one side pushes down more.
So basically it is the dice that players use to cheat often in the game of Craps. Remember again that it is better not to cheat in the game but play for free first to learn the game and play different bets to get the best out of it.
When playing at the land or real casinos keep an eye on your bets and on your chips specially when you win.