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All Fishermen Are Liars
Except for Me and You
or
Stretching Out The Yarns
TNNIGHTHAWK:
You're not gonna
believe this, but this is the way it actually happened.
A friend gave me a gaming book, that explained all the different types of games, one could
find in a casino. Since I had planned on going to Atlantic City, in a few days, I thought
I might pick up some pointers to help me be a decent player. I finally decided to try
craps. This was in 1998.
I earned a trip to Washington, D.C., with my company, and since I don't like to fly, I
drove to D.C. From there it was just a few more hours to Atlantic City. Got to Atlantic
City, around 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday, checked in at one of the Trump properties, eased on
up to my room, and unpacked.
Went down to the casino floor about 8:00, and checked out the craps tables. All the tables
were full, except stick left, at a $25 table. They were hollering and carrying on like a
bunch of hyenas.
I only had $100 set aside for gambling, so I knew I'd need a lot of luck since this was a
$25 table. There was this one guy at the end of the table with a hat on, the kind a boat
captain wears. He was just getting the dice, and I noticed he set them with a 6 and 1, on
top.
I put $25 on the line, and a $4 crap check, to protect my $25. He rolled a 7, then another
7, then an 11, and 3 more sevens. Even with the crap check, and flat betting, I was
already up, well over $100, when he established a point of 8. I backed it up with double
odds, and two throws later, he set, and made a hard 8. The fellow to his left said
"nice going, Captain." I had been watching the others and put $10 on the hard
eight. Everyone else said press it. Not knowing what they meant, I did the same, and now
it became a $100, hard 8. The "Captain" said, "working on the come out, so
naturally, I did the same. He immediately threw another hard 8, and I had $1000.
He continued to roll for about 45 minutes, and finally sevened out. I made about $2500 off
the roll, besides the hard 8. He turned to the fellow on his left and said, "keep it
going Frank."
I looked at my watch, and it was about 9:00. I thought I should go to the room, but the
gaming book said don't quit while you're winning, so I thought I'd wait till this Frank
guy rolled. He started rolling, and he rolled, and rolled, and when he finally sevened
out, it was 10:50. He had rolled for 1 hour and 50 minutes. I was betting come bets, and
double odds. He rolled number after number, all numbers, hardways, everything. The table
ran of of chips 3 times, and had to be replenished. They changed sticks 6 times.
He was to the right of stick, setting the 3 V, and gently letting the dice drop, into the
left corner, just passed the pass line. I made $32,421 off his roll. Ten minutes before
the end of his roll, I had changed to placing the numbers. I had placed all the numbers
for $3200 across, and had pulled them down, the roll before he sevened out.
"Frank" got a 5 minute ovation, even the dealers were clapping. I heard one of
them say later, that they had made over $15,000.
This was my first experience at a craps table, and I knew I had to try this again. I went
to bed that night, a very happy camper, and drove back home with enough money to put
indoor plumbing in our new house.
After that experience, I read other books, and took some courses out in Las Vegas to learn
how to influence the dice. I took the Paar course with Jerry and Chris, and even rolled a
few sessions at the tables with them. The best session we had was at the Mirage. Chris
would close his eyes, call the number, and boom, hit the number he called. He'd hit it 9
out of 10 times. I made $55,048, in three hours during one of our sessions. This was in
1999.
My shooting finally became stagnant, so I enrolled in a GTC course in 2004, and went to
Las Vegas to try and get out of my slump. I was amazed to find when I got there, the
fellow that I only knew as Frank in Atlantic City, back in 1999, was in charge of the GTC
course. I re-learned the game in its entirety, the grip, my betting habits, the whole ball
of wax. I was able to play 4 different sessions with the GTC crew, and my average win of
the 4 sessions was, $18,412. I would buy in each session with my normal $100, and just go
from there.
Well, that has been a while now, and my shooting has fallen on hard times again. In fact,
on any given weekend, you can see me on Hwy 72, in Tennessee, picking up coca cola cans,
and other aluminum cans, to try and get a stake. As soon as I raise another $100, I'm
heading to Vegas again.
Well, there you have it, the way it actually happened.
TossBoss
Even though I have
been implicitly sworn to secrecy, the increasing hunger for knowledge, combined with the
urgency of these dreadful times, compel me to reveal the history of Dice Control and my
role in its development.
My story begins in 1916, when my dear old pappy was on his way back to the East Coast from
France and England, where he recently labored to bring peace to the battered continent of
Europe, or at least to 24 Germans, a couple of unidentified collateral assets, and a dying
horse which had been left beside the road to otherwise die a natural death.
Pappy, even for a 19-year old, was a smallish man, and gifted with extraordinary peripheral
vision and hand-to-eye coordination. He was quiet and alert and never...ever...drank
alcohol. Although he had deployed his talents in the service of his country as a USMC
sniper and with an old M1903 Springfield 30-06, with a 1-in-4 twist barrel, his real
talent was in cutting through femoral arteries as though they were knitting twine wrapped
in butter.
He had tried to teach me his art. I was, however, not able to learn it. And his parting
advice to me was, "Better use a gun, or just bash his skull in; you ain't got it when
it comes to edged weapons."
He had boarded a troop ship bound for New York with the intention of spending a few days
in the big cities before making his way down to Orange, Texas, where he had the promise of
capturing the heart of a virgin bride and working some land on the banks of the Sabine
River.
Somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, Pappy awoke one afternoon to the
sound of "Ho, daddy.! Seven. Seven-come-Eleven! WINNER. AGAIN."
Shuffling over to the noisy crowd, he made his way past the throng of onlookers to the
dice game now in progress on the deck before him.
A dice player was gently lifting the dice from the blanket upon which the game was being
played. With a barely perceivable twist of one die and a roll of the other, the shooter
stacked the dice and gripped the stack with three fingers. The dice were hurled toward the
back part of the blanket, bounced upward and ricocheted off the shiny bulkhead...and
landed back upon the blanket, like a dead cat coming to its final rest. "A dead cat
bounce," thought Pappy to himself.
"Seven..! The Sergeant is A WINNER. AGAIN."
"The Sergeant ..." What a name for a dice shooter," thought Pappy.
"When yur done there, Sarge, I'd like to have a wurd wid ja."
The whiskered "sergeant," cast a squinted glare at dad, scanning his presence
and detecting an opportunist like himself, yet one with few of the restraints that govern
the consciences of most other civilized men.
"Arrrr," growled the one-eyed dice master. "Oim dun herrre," he
intoned, trilling the r's in a rich seaman's brogue.
"Looks like yur a couple hunnert up. An' it really looks like yuh know what yur doin'
wid the dah-ss."
Working their way through the crowds of onlookers and fellow players, the two
impresarios
of random fortune made their way aft toward the stern of the boat and privacy.
"Why are yuh called 'Sergeant?' Y're not even in the military as far as I can
tell."
"Arrrrrr..!" responded the pink-skinned young man--about in his early twenties.
"Whot tipped yer off, mate?
Was it the corn cob pipe between me teeth? Or wos it me Chicago Cubs underwear?"
"Do me a favor, Sergeant: stop talk'in' like that. It's irritatin'. And
"arrrrrr" has nuttin' to do with being a sergeant or bein' in the army, or
anything else I can think of."
"Ya want I should teach you how to roll da dice or not?"
"Sure," said pappy. An' Ah'll pay yuh fer yur effort. An' , by the way: what
gave yuh away was yur eye. The open one. There's nuttin in it that says you just been
through hell on Earth, were ever scared, or had any notion as to what it's like to pillage
the artifacts from the still-warm body of a German you just sent to his maker."
"In fact, yuh look like a slack-jawed huckster from Chicago, who somehow booked
passage on this ship just to fleece the troops. On top of that, yuh smell like moth balls
and Vick's Linoment. I have a strong notion to..."
Pappy stopped short and re-oriented himself around his primary long-term goal: to become
independently wealthy.
"I would like to throw you overboard. But I would also like to learn what you know
about dice and how to win at dice. If yuh do that, Ah promis yuh: I won't throw you to the
sharks."
Pappy learned that the scoundrel was indeed from Chicago and was on his way back to the
mainland U.S. in order to team up with his younger brother who was a waiter at an uptown
New York restaurant called, "Hoaglund's Clams." Their plan was to liaison in New
York and to travel by bus to Chicago, where they would enter the clothing business and
also begin a manufacturing service.
He also learned that, threatened with bodily harm by any conscience-less veteran who might
carry about a bag of plundered artifacts and souvenir body parts and who was armed with,
among other tools, a pair of razor-sharp combat knives, this "sergeant" would
give up any secret he knew.
The ship eventually tied up at a harbor overlooking what would later become Central Park.
Disembarking, Pappy and the "sergeant" made their way to Hoaglund's Oysters and
talked about the science of dice control.
Although the strange little man with whiskers claimed to be a valiant warrior, a wise
prophet and the future inventor of the internet, Pappy allowed him to live long enough to
gain all that the man knew about hard body physics, velocities, arcs, and statistics. And
he learned everything he could about a game called "craps."
Pappy sent his discharge papers to his parents' address in San Antonio and boarded a train
to Laredo. There he bought a horse and trotted into Mexico to hire himself and his rare
skills to the highest bidder. Once he had drunk his brown bottle of root beer at a Mexican
bar while his men stoned a government soldier to death with billiard balls...and wondered
aloud as to why these locals seemed unable to keep a beer cold.
The fighting in Mexico began to simmer down sometime between 1916 and 1917. Pappy thought
that probably meant that the gravy train had passed him by and that it was time to head
back north to Orange, Texas. Besides, Pappy had mentioned, Blackjack Pershing was raising
cain all around him and may not always have been able to tell the difference between
Pancho Villa and an ex Devil Dog in Mexico on a paid vacation.
Old Pappy settle down in Orange and married a fourteen-year old maiden a couple of years
later. The oil business was booming in Texas in the 1920's. But--darn--there was not much
demand at the oil refineries for men whose only talent was to reduce population numbers
one at a time or to persuade others to "kinda go along with" him on various
matters.
After a stint as a cop here and a constable there, Pappy joined up with the corporate
"Strike Breakers," based in--you guessed it--Chicago.
The whiskered "Sergeant" whom he had met on the troopship had begun his march to
success and was at this time, not in the clothing business--but in the refuse handling
business. He owned several trash wagons and was building a bankroll for his younger
brother's number one vision: Waste-to-Energy technology.
the "sergeant's" real name was "Stopyra." Pappy called him
"Sopada" or "Stopper." Stopper's younger brother, Scheiskopf, was
about sixteen years old. Even at that tender age it was clear that Scheiskopf had a talent
for self promotion and loved attention.
He had taken the trash-hauling idea to a new level. He had decided to divert human raw
waste to collection points, where it could be hardened and treated so as to be a
combustible fuel. "Scheis," was proud of his achievement and had taken to
calling himself, the "Captain of Crap." "Yowser," he would often say,
"I now outrank my older brother."
Pappy was gunned down on east 6th street in Austin, Texas on a sunny 1975 Christmas eve.
He was 75 when he moved up to an eternal combat theatre. But years before that, he had
confided in me that he had made his living playing craps. It was only after having met
professional dice setters that I learned that what Pappy did was to influence the dice,
thereby insuring his steady income.
He also mentioned that I should stay way from anyone so ashamed of his name that he would
have to call himself the "Captain of Crap," or just "The Captain."
"This ol' boy," he said, "talks himself up a storm. But he doesn't know
anything about dice or craps."
"Scheis," he said, "witnessed my secret methods--and those of his older
brother. But he never learned how to do 'em. But that didn't stop him from sellin' snake
oil. He went everywhere selling what he thought was nothing more than 'good luck.'"
He looked sternly at me and said, "Promise me that, when it comes to gamblin', you'll
never listen to anybody called 'The Captain,' or to anybody else as stupid as that guy
was."
"I promise," I said.
And so it is today.
Morton
I was a college
freshman. It was New Years eve 1979. At the bar in Resorts I met the beautiful Playboy
pin-up of the day Barbie Benton. After some small talk we went to her suite where we had
an incredible love making session. About 3 AM, while sipping Champaign, we heard furious
knocking at the door.
Barbie wrapped a sheet around her beautiful naked body and answered the door. When the
door opened a short man that resembled a garden gnome was excitedly yelling, "Arm,
Arm, the big guy needs you downstairs, we are getting killed at the craps table. Barbie
replied why would you need me? You have the big guy with you. The gnome replied he can't
shoot. He in juried his shooting finger. It seems he was punched in the nose and his
finger was fractured.
While Barbie was putting her pajamas on. The gnome explained that Barbie was an expert
craps shooter known as "The Golden Arm" she developed a one of a kind
"knuckle ball" shot. It seems she was once Phil Niekro's girlfriend and he
taught her how to adapt his pitch to craps.
As we entered the casino I saw a roped off craps table. There was a large group of guys
including a doctor in a surgical scrubs, another was apparently a dentist as he had a
drill in his back pocket. At the head of the table was the Bell Captain from the front
desk, He had on one of those bellman caps. He was the leader and he was referred to as
Bellboy or Captain Bellboy.
Barbie the Golden Arm grabbed the dice in her knuckle grip and rolled until the sun rose.
A giant crowd was gathered around the table. Large crowds bring pick pockets and this was
no exception. After a while I heard a guy screaming that his Brannock Device was stolen.
At the time I did not know what a Brannock device was so I asked the guy. The man told me
it was a device for measuring feet he uses at his shoe store job. He came to play the big
wheel and saw the crowd when he was robbed.
I saw the shoe salesman months later we began talking. He said after watching the
Arm he
figured a way to toss the dice perfectly. It seems he was practicing in the Thom McCann by
using a shoe horn and tossing the dice into a Jimmy Choo high heel box.
This is a true story. If you do not believe me you can ask the witnesses that were there,
Roger Raymond and Jimmy Dice.
Nicklemidnight
It all started more
than 50 years ago one December morning when I was a child of 7 or 8. An aunt had given me
a child's board game that included two dice. The day after the Christmas gift was opened,
my Dad was playing the game with me.
"This is kind of a lame game, son," I remember Dad saying. "Let me teach
you a MAN'S game -- craps." As my father took a grocery sack and drew a rough layout
with a crayon, he explained how to play craps and he told me of some of his exploits in
the Army during World War II.
"While I was just a buck private, I was so skilled with the dice that I became known
as the 'Sergeant of Shooters,' "my Dad told me. "Eventually, I was known simply
as 'The Sergeant,' " he said.
Dad put the dice in my hands that very first time and a huge feeling of excitement came
over me that I have never in intensity experienced since. Dad told me, "Son, let me
show you how to hold them and throw them and you will become a dominator in this
game!"
What followed were weeks and weeks of practice, after school and on weekends. I first
practiced my toss against my bedroom wall, then into a peach crate (with one end sawed
off) set on our long kitchen table. Did my mother mind? Hardly! She was a "soft
touch" for father-son "togetherness." I fondly remember her saying,
"Isn't it cute that your Dad is your dice coach."
There was so much I learned from my Dad. A little bit of a heavy-set man, he taught me
"See a Horn, bet a Horn" as a mainstay comeout play. He taught me the different
sets to bring out desired point numbers. "See this little vee set with the 2's, and
this bigger vee set with the 3's -- I was the person who invented these," said my
father.
On our peach box/kitchen table practice rig, he would have hands of 100 or more tosses on
dozens and dozens of occasions. His record was 449 throws before a seven-out on a practice
hand that went on more than six hours. How vividly I remember it!!!
A few years later, when I was in my late teens, Dad took me to Las Vegas. While I wasn't
21 at the time, being mature looking for my age, I was never asked for my ID. This was in
the early 1960s, and Dad was -- you'd better believe me -- far better at a real craps
table than our practice rig! There were monster rolls morning, afternoon and night at
casinos all along the Strip.
John Scarne happened to be in Las Vegas that same week and witnessed one of my Dad's
150-plus toss hands. "Your Dad, the Sergeant, really is the best I've ever seen --
and I've seen 'em all," said Scarne.
Dad and I played a little blackjack from time to time to "take a break" from the
crap tables. Once on that early 1960s trip, while playing BJ, my father and I met a
scholarly looking man who turned out to be a math professor. This man had an avid
analytical interest in blackjack. "Let's have a cup of coffee together and I'll teach
you how to count cards, Professor Thorpe," my father told the man. "Don't get me
wong (Dad had a bit of a problem saying R's) but I alone invented card counting," Dad
said.
That Las Vegas trip is a collage of fantastic memories. It was followed by many, many more
trips together to Glitter City. On each visit to Las Vegas, many people came up to my
father to greet "The Sergeant." I worshipped my Dad for the adoration and
respect he got from players, dealers and "suits" alike. Every craps stickman and
dealer treated the "Sergeant" with total respect, letting him take as much time
as he needed to set and throw the dice.
Many people asked about the books they had heard my father was writing about craps,
blackjack and all other casino games. Dad would tell everyone who inquired about his
planned books: "You know, it's a Doey-Don't situation.'' He would explain:
"Should I 'Do' this and tell the world these gambling secrets, or is it better that I
'Don't'. "
Dad did write those books on craps, blackjack "as a business," roulette and all
other games, but he never had the chance to have them published. On our way to a New York
book publisher in the late 1970s, we first stopped at Atlantic City as its first casinos
were opening. There was an early-morning break-in at our hotel room while we were at the
tables. All of his manuscripts were stolen. It broke my father's heart.
"Some slob let ee self into our room (Dad had a bit of a Scotch accent) and stole my
life's work," my father shouted in anger and anguish.
My Dad was never the same after that theft. His anger smoldered and then grew as he began
to hear from player acquaintances that a New York real estate developer, known as a real
"captain" in his field, was using my father's ground-breaking gambling
innovations.
Still in all, I told my father many, many, many times over the years: "Dad, what's
important is that I KNOW that you are the best, the very best, at any casino game, any
place, any time."
Mastercrapsman
Aboard our tincan USS Vogelgesang,
we call him Dice Mc Call. Though his real name is Harry Mc Call. The saltiest E4 I have
ever met. Wears the WWII Pacific Campaign Medal among his chestfull of medals and five red
hashmarks (20 years service) in his sleeve on formal inspections.
He got his nickname shooting dice at the ASW helo hangar. He plays dice against the single
E-5s and E-6s who have less time in the Navy than he had spent in the chow line and
payline combined.
I got a chance to watch this Bro operate with the dice one night when I had to go find him
so we can prepare the midrats (midnight rations) while we were plane guarding in the
Tonkin Gulf.
I watched him pick up the dice, the dots forming the Vee (to commemorate the Victory in
the Pacific, he told me later) He is kneeling on the blanket and facing starboard and
waits for the starboard ship's roll before he would throw the dice. His hand movement was
deliberate and slow like he does with the poached eggs quite a contrast when he is
scrambling country style eggs. This mate was rolling the inside numbers after inside
numbers, sometimes bullfrogging the same numbers the next throw. Had to leave while he was
rolling so I can cover for him.
The next morning I found a wad of twenties on my ditty bag courtesy of Dice Mc Call. I got
me a nice sum of liberty money for our scheduled R & R in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Being
single at that time, of course most of the money went to Mamasan for a night with her nice
looking (that is how she introduced her) niece Meihling. My first piece... mind you. That
is why I'll never forget my shipmate Dice Mc Call.
Dice Mc Call retired when our ship pulled in at the D & S (destroyer and submarine)
Pier in Norfolk, VA. He retired an E-4 although got busted in rate twice for fighting at
the messdeck. The Skipper gave him field promotions twice too. The guy never got seasick
and was a hell of a hard worker, rough seas in all.
He did not want a formal ceremony, just wanted to go home to Philly. He told me..."I
want my shipmates to go home to their families instead of standing a few hours for
inspection".
That's the kind of shipmate he was... always looking out for the troops.
I found his collection of Motown records and a pair of dice on my bunk the day he left.
What a shipmate.
Fair winds and following seas Dice Mc Call, wherever you are!
Jeffrey47
The fire at the old MGM wasnt
as much my fault as everyone wanted to believe. A confluence of energy? Yes. Intentionally
set? Absolutely not, at least not by me.
My trial on the arson and murder charges would have been more high-profile had it not been
kept so completely under wraps. The judge had gagged the lawyers, sequestered the jurors,
and closed the courtroom. When I last checked, the court file and all the transcripts were
still being called missing. I suppose the international insurance
conglomerates wield their power in ways we dont dare to imagine. Certainly the press
has always seemed weirdly muted about the whole fiasco.
With my acquittal, and after all the forensic investigations concluded, Krikorian
collected of course, and everything at the MGM was replaced down to the last paperclip in
the counting room. My heart sank when the property was later dealt to Ballys.
The realization that I had a valuable skill in my extra-sensory and psychokinetic powers
hadnt sunk in yet when, at about ten years old I was mystifying my moms Mah
Jong clatch with card tricks. I can still hear my moms best friend, Edna, saying
With talent like that, Lil Jeff, you could make a fortune in Vegas. They
all cackled like chickens and I never let on that I could barely tolerate the heady smell
of their combined perfumes, along with the cigarette smoke, the chopped liver and onions,
and the alcohol.
As a psych major in college, I had read about experiments at Duke University in the 40s
with dice and psychokinesis (PK), and thats pretty much when the light bulb went on.
Professor Rhine had reported that caffeine aided in the effect, so I began consuming Nodoz
and instant Yuban and sliding dice on boards, eventually tossing them onto my desk, and
later onto a little practice rig I devised that, by the way, would become the
standard with dicesetters later and came to be known as a practice rig. Well
into the wee hours I experimented, for weeks. And I kept meticulous records. It didnt
take long, though, in my heightened state of extra-sensory, caffeine-buzzed,
way-beyond-Carson-time consciousness to ascertain that not only could I influence the dice
a little bit with my PK abilities, but they could also be arranged and tossed in ways that
would add to my telekinetic skill and produce winning outcomes a lot more often!
Weirdly, however, there were some dice arrangements one in particular that Id
set with the two dice exactly the same but without the snake-eyes or boxcars (all the
hardway outcomes showing) - which seemed to actually produce poorer
results even as my PK skills continued to improve (unless I bet the dont and only
used the set after the comeout)! Go figure. There is still a lot we dont understand
about psychic energy.
One thing that Rhine had found, and which, unfortunately, I had not fully understood at
the time, was that PK skills seem to become progressively more effective as the subjects
targets for his PK energys attention increase in number.
Thats why things got so out of hand, I think.
There I am in the MGM craps pit. The dice are doing exactly what Id learned to make
them do at home. The cheering had finally become deafening, the crowd around the table had
grown to about three or four deep. It wasnt that I actually kept the dice for those
5 hours. It was just that nobody else ever wanted to toss them for themselves - even when
I rolled an occasional loser.
And as you looked around the dice pit, it was becoming clear that I was not the only one
getting hot. The other tables were packed too, and they were getting equally loud; all the
tables were dumping. After a while, it was just pandemonium in the entire craps pit. Chip
fills werent coming fast enough, and no one was leaving.
I realized Rhine had been right. Some forty years after his experiments, I was proving him
correct in a big way. As I stood there and just kept tossing, and as the dice on every one
of the nearby tables kept obeying my will, nobody knew it but me. PK! I was concentrating on
the dice and my targets had become all the dice rolling on all the tables in
the pit. My PK skills peaked in a frenzy of an every-gamblers wet dream of a
prolonged, relentless, widespread, and irreversible casino losing streak, mind over matter
forcibly beating back every applicable law of probability. Mind overcoming mother nature
herself, it seemed.
When the fire alarm sounded I was sure someone was simply hoping to take me out of the
zone. But the alarm could barely be heard over the cacophony. When the smell of smoke
started coming, though, well youve never seen anything like it. Talk about heat.
First the screams; then the disbelief; then the utter panic. Nobody could possibly carry
all their chips even if they wanted to, and those that tried, dropped most of them,
sending bodies diving to the carpet like wild animals. Players, dealers, cocktail
waitresses, even bystanders were all groveling over one another for the chips.
Like everyone else downstairs, I eventually escaped before the actual firestorm came and
consumed the casino. I managed to take a fistful of purple chips home with me, and without
even realizing it, Id stuffed the pair of dice Id been throwing in my pocket.
I still love having those little mementos.
It wasnt the eye in the sky or any witness accounts of my actual tossing that nearly
caused me that wrongful conviction for aggravated grand arson and murder. It was the
aggressive investigators who found my storehouse of used dice, my practice rig, and all my
research notes on PK at my apartment -- plus a clever prosecutor who proceeded on the
novel theory that this was no accident and that my PK skill was just
not to be condoned in a righteous community like Las Vegas. I was painted not only as an
eccentric and dangerous dabbler in a very dark voodoo magic, but also as a racketeer with
an elaborate scheme to defraud the casino and its shareholders and the insurance companies
that stood to payout hundreds of millions in claims. Only jurors could quash the scheme,
prosecutors argued, by finding me guilty, since, due to some quirky language in the
insurance contract, arson by a winning patron was not a covered risk, only arson by losers
-- or by valet-parking employees.
My defense of course centered on the casinos motive to torch the place, given all
the money being lost to players in the craps pit. There was some testimony on my behalf
about some frayed wires and a purely accidental fire, but I never believed it. My lawyer
insisted we get that in.
For all the clever antics of the prosecution, in the end jurors must have concluded Id
only exhibited a purely physical skill when, in my in-court dice throwing demonstration, I
rolled 24 primary hits in a row, twice (in one run,19 of them were the hard 6) and
exhibited an astonishing 47:1 SRR over the 240 rolls of the demonstration, rolling just 5
sevens. Since there had been no smoke and no fire in the courtroom, even with all that
skill on display, I had to be innocent. As my lawyer told jurors in closing argument:
If the hardways hit you must acquit.
Sadly, the day after the trial ended, a fire broke out at the courthouse. The cause was
found to be a smoldering electrical short in the very courtroom where my trial had taken
place. Go figure.
In case youre wondering how I could afford Johnnys millions in lawyers
fees; I won every penny off the tables in Vegas before and during trial, using only my
physical skills, no PK, though it was always tempting.
If youre ever playing craps in a big casino on the strip, and you notice that all
the tables are dumping at the same time its probably just me, finding it
impossible to resist the urge to use my powers once again. If you hear a fire alarm, Soft
Touch is right, head for the cashiers cage.
Kelph
First let me say that
while some of you may know me from my posts here and on other boards, I do not have a
readily recognizable name as a DI master even though my abilities can be quite
frightening. Why? Cover my friends. I write about being so-so, and when I know Im
being carefully observed at the tables by casino personnel or players who may know me, I
deliberately screw up my shooting. Its all about cover.
My first trip to Vegas was on a business trip in the late 60s and an eye opener. I
saw and felt all the excitement of casino table games, especially Craps, but didnt
know a damn thing about them. This led me into some deep thought when I returned to my new
home and city, Los Angeles. While I always enjoyed playing games and friendly competition
from child to manhood, I had never seriously gambled and wouldnt until I felt I had
enough knowledge and training to win. The game I decided to make my primary focus was
Craps.
I, like many others before me, bought every book I could about Craps and quite a few
systems in the attempt to learn any hidden secrets or advantage that might be nestled
therein and easily overlooked by the majority of readers. Mostly what I learned was that
the majority of writers were saying the same trite things that didnt pan out in my
testing. The approaches of the so called experts might vary, but the actual results were
rather disappointing.
As I moved on to study Probability and the Law of Large Numbers, I began to realize that
if my play was merely based on different approaches I was accepting the Casinos
limiting view of how the game worked and therefore their built-in advantage. It was at
this epiphany of realization that several things became very clear to me. Trends are
short-term random number Probability aberrations feeding into the grander organized Law of
Large Numbers. Some of my books, systems, articles and newsletters made quick or fleeting
references to some allegedly skilled players with special shooting abilities which may or
may not have been improved by certain carefully selected face sets on the dice. I had now
reached a new plateau in my climb to the mountain top of Craps Nirvana.
It now seemed obvious that one would need to affect Probability in order to break out of
the accepted limits casinos had believed carved in stone. I eagerly took on this
challenge. The family pool-table was converted into a makeshift Craps table so I could
experiment on how to gain some type of potential and hopefully consistent control of the
dice. To make this short, I discovered through lots of trial and error, that I could
skillfully toss the dice on axis and thereby reduce the amount of randomness in the
outcome. Furthermore, through careful examination of which numbers appeared on each
position of each die's face when combined with the skilled toss, I could not only reduce
randomness but potentially increase the frequency appearance of certain numbers. Nirvana
was within my reach, practice would make it possible, actual casino experience would make
it better. This took a couple of years of honing to achieve.
Each business trip to a city with gambling allowed me to further test and refine my skill.
As I added purely gambling trips to my schedule, I began to recognize the faces of certain
other players who obviously also traveled around the country to play. Some even made a
living at Craps. This was a two-way street as I also was being noticed, especially for my
so called superstitious rituals. I was happy to share what I had discovered
with these other serious Crapsters, but as human nature is, some believed, some didnt
and some just thought it way too hard to even try.
Me, Im a loner when I play. Some of these other guys travel with their buddies, but
being a buddy doesnt mean they play at the same level or with the same skill. Mostly
theyre hanger-ons, who scratch out a living off the rolls of other better players or
are continually borrowing new stakes from their better playing friends.
One stands out in my mind but Im too much of a gentleman to mention his name. Lets
just say he was a short, obnoxious sycophant (call him SOS) in the group of one of the
many friends (call him Pops) I made in my early years of playing. SOS was always asking
questions, yelling at all the table players to watch what I was doing, my set, my toss and
how I bet. While I was happy to teach Pops and his friends, SOS was causing me way too
much heat at the tables and finally had to ask Pops to either keep SOS quiet when we all
played together or away from the table if he couldnt shut-up. That was always SOSs
big problem; he just didnt have enough common sense to keep a good thing quite. End
result was that I taught Pops what I learned with Pops telling SOS not to join the group
at the tables while I was there.
As it turns out, SOS was/is a sneaky and vengeful little SOB. A couple of years later,
once he felt I had imparted all I knew, he instigated a breach in my friendship with Pops
using several untruthful allegations I prefer not to go into explaining. I firmly believe
that Pops and I could have straightened out the entire matter except he soon suffered a
coma producing stroke that left him in a State run nursing home the last twenty years
before he passed. May his gentle soul rest in peace.
Needless to say I decided to back off sharing my hard learned information with anyone
else. However, the cat was out of the bag and the other members of Pops group passed on
the basics to friends as did any other astute players who had repeatedly witnessed my
phenomenal hands at various tables over those years. Smart players with brains picked up
on the basics and had a head start working out what took me years of hard work and sweat
to accomplish. If I sound bitter, Im not
.except for one small SOB.
SOS, with the only control on his oily and seedy personality hospitalized and comatose,
began presenting himself as a key member at the very heart of this method of dice control.
Ive watched him become famous (infamous) and rich by presenting selective truths
woven into whole cloth lies. SOSs trouble is that he was never any good at telling
the truth and not any better at telling lies. Anyone who takes a little time to dig into
whatever he writes (and re-writes) can plainly see the shifting sands of his clouded mind.
Im not writing this because I want recognition. Im writing because SOS doesnt
deserve it.
(NOTE believable fiction is best when combined with a small amount of truths that
add credibility to the fabric of lies it contains. If the lies are too excessive, the
truths will not help. Hopefully you have found this to be an entertaining and almost
believable recounting of the true beginnings of Dice Influencing.)
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