Part 1: Establishing My Baseline
I built Craps@Home for entertainment and utility — to automate the tracking and data analysis that you might already be doing at your home table. It wasn't built around any theory about dice control. But once you're actually capturing a shooter's numbers, it turns out to be pretty powerful way of answering the question: does practice do anything? (Other than keeping you away from your family :))
So I'm curious and want to try it on myself. Work on grip, toss, and landing for a while, track every roll, hand across multiple sessions using Craps@Home, and let PRO Sight tell me what actually happened. This is Part 1. There'll be more of these whenever there's enough new data to say something.
Establishing the baseline
Can't tell if anything's changed without knowing where I started. So here's where I'm starting: 950 hands, 97 sessions for a total of 7,915 rolls from June 13 to September 8 — this is a pretty large set to use for the baseline.
For anyone wondering what "shooting" actually looks like on my end during all this: I don't set the dice the same way every time. I mostly take them as they're swept back to me — leave the left die alone, whatever it's showing — and rotate the right die until its left face adds up to seven with whatever the left die is already showing me. So if the left die happens to be sitting on a 4 facing me, I'll turn the right die until its left face reads 3, and just make sure nothing's showing a seven combination anywhere else in the process. (Clear as day, I know.) Then I pinch the dice and toss them, aiming to land a few inches short of the back diamonds. That's really the whole routine. No real grip training behind it, and no dice set I'm deliberately repeating — just that one habit of lining the two dice up before I throw.
!! Pontification Warning !!
On the actual "is dice influence real" debate — I don't know, and at the end of the day it's not what I'm personally chasing. Three decades of playing this game have left me with a few real convictions instead. First, the ritual of setting up the dice calms and focuses my mind, the same way a golfer runs through a routine before teeing off. Second, even if dice influence is real, something like 99.9999% of the people at any table are random rollers, and I like playing too much to sit out their rolls — which means strategy and discipline matter about 1000x more to actually winning than anything I'm doing with my own dice. And third: show up with a big enough bankroll, enough dry powder, to still be in the game when those god rolls finally come.
A review of the baseline data
SRR is 5.85. That's below the 6.0 random baseline (not ideal!!). Point conversion, 40.9%, sits almost exactly on the 40.6% theoretical number. Both exactly what the report says: nothing individually distinguishing yet.
The interesting part is the chi-squared: 19.6, clears p<0.05. The overall number distribution is a real statistical deviation from random. Digging into the per-number breakdown, 6 is running a little hot (14.8% against an expected 13.9%), and unfortunately so is 7 and that's suppressed the SRR below 6.0. 8 and 9 are both a touch cold. Could be nothing. Could be an early wrinkle worth watching although 950 hands should be enough of a dataset. The data shows a preference for numbers 7 or less. And maybe that's useful in itself for my next visit to the casino
All Tall Small and Fire Bet are both low across the board — nothing weird there, just how rarely those specific combos show up in any real sample.
Next steps
I'll start by watching some YouTube videos on dice setting. Then I'll create a new player profile in Craps@Home and put in the reps. I'll post updates periodically as I get more hands rolled out.
Part 2 is up — a new setup, an early hot streak, and what actually held up once more rolls came in. Read it here →
If you want to see your own numbers — or you're already convinced you've got something going with your grip and throw — the door's open.
Read the Dice Control Challenge →