Welcome to the Big Saturday Interview! This week I'm delighted to introduce Frank Scoblete and Dom LoRiggio, AKA Dominator. Frank is the number-one selling casino gaming author in America. Frank has written about all the casino games but his passion is craps. Frank has been writing about dice control since the late 1980s. His book Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos: How to Play Craps and Win! (1991), is the best-selling craps book of all time and started savvy players thinking about dice control. His follow-up books solidified him as America's greatest craps authority and his many tapes have made him the only million-selling author in the casino gaming genre. Frank also has his own imprint "The Get the Edge Guides" that are written by some of the best advantage-players in the world. You can find out more at Frank's website: www.scoblete.com.

Dominator is the nickname for one of the greatest dice-controllers in the world; Dominator plays several days a week in the casinos around the country. Graduated with degrees in both biology and math, Dominator knows his way around the numbers and around a craps table. He is a frequent contributor to www.goldentouchcraps.com and our private web site where his insights and observations have earned him the respect of craps players worldwide. His feature column is “Dominator’s Domain.” Dominator is also one of the instructors in the Golden Touch Blackjack course. He has appeared on television, defeating the casinos on the A&E network and demonstrating his roll on the Travel Channel. The History Channel did a complete story of him for their Beating Vegas series.

Ashton: Frank and Dom, welcome to the Big Saturday Interview. Let’s get started by talking about what it is you do and how it all came about.

Frank: Well Dom and I have been partners for several years in several Advantage Play seminars, the two biggest being Golden Touch Craps and Golden Touch Blackjack, where we teach methods to beat the casinos. In Golden Touch Craps we teach a controlled throw, so we can actually offset the probabilities in the dice game.

The Captain of craps in Atlantic City developed this throw originally in 1978. He taught it to me in the mid-80’s and over the years other individuals have also learned the controlled throw. Dom is the master. The other Advantage Play seminar we teach is our Golden Touch Blackjack course, where we teach something called Speed Count, the easiest Advantage Play method ever developed for Blackjack. We also teach the Optimum Basic Strategy, a new form of basic strategy. Essentially Dom and I are partners in business and we are also partners in the fun of attempting to beat casinos using Advantage Play techniques.

Dom: Frank got it first from the Captain and then he wrote this great book called, “Beat the Craps out of the Casinos.” I started out as a blackjack player, and when that became more difficult to beat, I started looking around in bookstores. I found Frank’s book and started to read everything he had written about craps, how to play, the Captain, other people in the Captain’s family, and I decided that it could be really fun. When I finally met Frank, it was like meeting an idol. I had read all these books about him and tried to emulate him while playing at the craps table. And then we met and became a team in this craps game, and also in blackjack.

"Controlled shooting, is the skill to change the probabilities in the dice game because of the way your throw the dice."

Ashton: You mentioned a "controlled throw," can you explain exactly what that is?

Frank: Precision shooting, or controlled shooting, is the skill to change the probabilities in the dice game because of the way your throw the dice. We set the dice with certain pips facing us, facing away from us; I set the dice with the 3-V facing me with sixes and eights all around the dice because I am trying to hit the 6s and 8s – the two low house edge place bets. They are also the numbers that come up most frequently. In Golden Touch we throw the dice with a gentle backspin, keeping the two dice together. They go up into the air at about a 45-degree angle, and because of the backspin, the forward motion when the dice hit the table is retarded tremendously. There’s still a little bit of forward motion left, which propels the dice to the back wall. They hit the wall softly, and then they die. If you do this throw correctly, and it does take a lot of practice to be good, you can change the probabilities in the game. You can increase the chance of hitting certain numbers and decrease the chance of hitting other numbers such as the 7.

Ashton: Can this really be done and if so, can you teach other people to do it?

Frank: Yes. Essentially, that is the Golden Touch craps throw. It’s not easy to learn and it takes practice, but if you’re good, you can get edges anywhere from 2 to 22%. Dom has an edge of approximately 22% when he throws, and we know this from testing his throws with software. That is a monumental edge. In addition to the controlled throw, we have to bet properly so that with our edge, we can overcome the bets that we’re making in the casino. So betting properly and controlling the dice are the two elements that will allow us to overcome the casino’s edge at the game of craps.

Two members of the Captain's original crew: Satch & Frank Scoblete

Dom: When somebody looks at it, and thinks about it logically, it is a simple physics project of throwing objects in the air. If we throw these dice the same way, all the time, with the same energy and velocity, and get it to land on the same spot on the table, the dice will hit their pyramids at exactly the same spot, and the numbers will repeat. The trick and skill comes into being able to throw these dice the same way, all the time; that’s what Frank is the master at. That is how we make money and beat the game of craps; it’s not a system, it’s a practiced skill. It takes practice just like making a putt on the practice green or shooting a bunch of free throws; it’s all in the muscle memory, doing the same thing over and over again. Then as Frank said, you have to add in proper betting and money management to figure out what your edge is and to bet into that edge.

Ashton: You said, "Dom has an edge of approximately 22%," that's a huge edge in a casino. What is the house edge in craps?

Frank: The house at craps can have an edge from 1.4% on the pass line bet and the come bet, all the way to 16.67% on the proposition bet on the seven, where you want to hit a seven on the next roll. So the range goes from 1.4 to 16.67, but what does that mean in terms of money? If the house has a 1.4% edge, for every hundred dollars you bet, you will lose a dollar and forty cents. If the house has a 16.67 edge, for every hundred dollars you bet, you will lose $16.67. Now when Dom has an edge of 22%, his expectation is to win twenty-two dollars for every hundred dollars he bets. I want to emphasize that this isn’t something we invented. We had a software developer from Canada, Dan Pronovost, study Dom’s throws and analyze his percentage with a computer. So will he win 22% every time he bets? No, there will be nights when he wins an outlandish amount of money, and there are other nights when he loses. But as time wears on, and he keeps rolling and rolling, approximately 22% of all the money he bets, he will win.

Dom: I always make the comment, that whenever I have one of these big rolls and I’m playing across from Frank, I’ll look at Frank and say, “Yeah, that was good, but you’re always going to beat me, so go ahead and roll.”

"...I found that with craps, because the dice are actually in my hands, I could probably get a much bigger edge than I ever did in blackjack."

Ashton: It sounds like your success is at least in part down to your understanding of statistics. Tell us about your backgrounds.

Dom: I’m a software developer and I own a software company and have a few math degrees. I needed to make some extra income at a point in my life, and I looked at blackjack as a game that could be beaten mathematically. I loved playing cards as a kid; I could memorize a lot of cards. So I went out and bought a bunch of books on card counting and starting going to Atlantic City on the weekends. I would do my thing and come back home with a few extra dollars and it was a great way for me to make some part time money. Then as the game of blackjack became much more difficult to beat, with the rule changes and shuffle machines, I went back to the library and found Frank’s books. He wrote about this Captain, who had a “crew” and seemed to have a lot of fun throwing craps. Frank also showed a method the Captain used, called the “Five Count.” It had some math involved in it, and I thought I could do the throwing of the dice because I used to pitch pennies, as kid and I knew I had good hands. So I started picking up this game, and I found that with craps, because the dice are actually in my hands, I could probably get a much bigger edge than I ever did in blackjack. So Frank interviewed me for his book “The Craps Underground” and we became friends.

Dominator shows his Golden Touch

Frank: I started off in a bizarre way. I owned a theatre company in NY and I was performing in a show called “The Only Game in Town.” That play was about a degenerate craps player and a showgirl in Las Vegas, and I knew nothing about the game of craps. I’m saying all these words, and I had no idea what I was talking about on stage. So I said to my co-star, Alene Paone, who eventually became my wife, that we should go to a craps game and find out with it was all about. So we went to Atlantic City and it was a fortuitous trip. I did learn about craps, and I met the Captain on that trip. I became so enamored with these games, craps and blackjack, that within six months, I sold my share of the theatre company and went full-time into playing blackjack and craps, and writing about them. That was about twenty years ago, and for twenty years I have been involved in my pursuit of pleasure. I say pleasure because it is a combination of attempting to win money in the casinos and also making money writing about it.

Meeting Dom was a major benefit in my life. First I was going to write a book about controlled shooters, and I interviewed him. I said, “Let’s go to the table, I want to see you shoot.” Obviously he wanted to see me shoot, too, so we went to the tables. Dom’s got this incredible confidence, and he had a half hour roll. I’m thinking to myself, “Please God, don’t let me screw up; I don’t want this guy to think I stink,” but I had a decent roll.

Dom: Actually, a great roll.

Frank: So that kind of sealed it. We showed each other we could shoot, we both had the same ideas about craps and how to play, and with some other individuals we started Golden Touch Craps, and we’ve never looked back. It’s been an incredible relationship in the casinos and in business too, so I could say that the best thing that ever happened to me was being in a play about a gambler.

"We did a study a few years ago with a mathematics professor from the University of Massachusetts,
and he found that the 5-Count eliminates 57% of the random rolls."

Ashton: You touched on betting strategies earlier; what kind of betting principles and money management do you use?

Frank: There are two betting situations that you deal with playing craps in the casino. The first is, what do you do with all the other players. They’re obviously not professionals; they don’t show up at six in the morning and play when the table is empty. They’re going to be at tables with other players, on the weekend. So what do you do with them? If you bet on these random rollers, these other shooters, you are definitely going to lose money. But you don’t want to lose so much money that it takes money from your own edge.

Even an edge as gigantic as the Dominator’s edge can be hacked away if you’re betting money on random rollers. So we had to come up with a way to bet on random rollers. The Captain came up with a way to deal with random rollers, the Five Count. The 5-Count is a strictly mechanical way of choosing which random rollers you are going to risk money on. The Captain believed that it would eliminate about fifty percent of the random rolls. We did a study a few years ago with a mathematics professor from the University of Massachusetts, and he found that the 5-Count eliminates 57% of the random rolls. Of the 43% that we bet on, we only use the lowest possible house edge bet, which are a pass line and come bets. We always bet low on the random rollers, so that the amount of money we risk on them is relatively trivial compared to the amount of money we risk on ourselves. So we keep to a minimum the amount of damage that the other shooters at a craps table can do to us.

Dom: Frank and I preach three things to make money at the crap tables. With the dice in your hands, you need to learn the controlled throw, learn what your edge is, and then bet into that edge. As an example, if someone is practicing for six or seven months, he or she will probably have a 3% edge against the house. So the best bet for that person to make is that pass-line bet, right around 1.4 edge against them, or the 6 and 8, which has a 1.5 edge against them. So when they are throwing the dice with the 3% edge, and they are betting properly, they are gaining 1.5 points against the house. They wouldn’t be making any center bets, these hard way bets, with edges over 10% because they would be giving up too much against the house. The idea here is “How do we stand at a table, save our spots at the table, and look like gamblers?” The Captain had this Five Count, and he was 100% right, eliminating a lot of shooters. Our money we bet on other people is only at risk 43% of the time, which is a very small amount. We know what our edge is when we have the dice in our hands, and the bets we make have a positive advantage.

Ashton: So when the probability of success is low, reduce your bet size, and when the probability of success is high, increase your bet size to take advantage of the situation.

Dom: Absolutely. We’re going to be betting 5 to 10 times the size of the amount on our own throws than with a random throw.

Ashton: What about risk capital. How do you stop losses from getting too large, especially for people new to the game?

Frank: We advocate for everyone who plays casino games, from your advantage player to normal player, that you separate your normal money from your gambling money. To do that, set up an account in a bank, a checking account. We call this account a 401G, and the G stands for gambling. Put money into this account and let it grow, and put all of your winnings into it. Now you would have an account that doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of your life, from which you take your gambling funds. You don’t ever want to be at the casino, playing a game, and say, “Oh I could have really used that money for my heart operation.” You just want to say, “Hey, I have the money in that account; it doesn’t have anything to do with my real life.” What’s important for an advantage player is that you want to be relaxed at the table. The last thing you want to be thinking about is money. If you have money in your 401G, and you have the proper amount for your level of betting, you can be very relaxed at the game of craps while shooting. And you need to be relaxed to beat the game.

Dom: Frank just made a strong, strong point. When you are shooting, or playing blackjack, the money really has to mean nothing to you. You have to be able to put out those bets and bet into your edge without thinking about the money. No matter how much money a person has, if you have it in this 401G account, you will have that relaxed feeling because this money is put away strictly for this person. A businessman who opens a business would put money into a checking account to start the business. A stock trader begins his trading life with X amount of dollars to work with. That person should know that there are days when he wins and days when he loses, but he knows his statistical edge. When the year is over with, there should be a positive cash flow into that account. That’s the way it has to be played.

Ashton: That’s very much what successful traders teach. There are so many similarities between both endeavors, the more we speak the more obvious it becomes. When you start in trading it's important to have an account that you can afford to lose but hopefully before you do lose it all you will develop a trading system that works. After that, you have to be able to follow your system, and that can be difficult too.

Dom: You have some techniques in trading that have worked for you in the past, or worked for other people. And you know that when you open up the day, a particular trade you make might not work, and that’s just the way it is. But with the separate account, those losing days aren’t going to affect you because you still have another account with money in it to come back tomorrow, and it’s going to work for you. We know that every time we get the dice in our hands, it won’t be a homerun. But if we’re a .300 hitter, when it’s all said and done, we will have a profit at the end of the year.

"Dom is the most consistent shooter. I was there when he rolled back to back to back, 30, 33, and 38 rolls before he sevened out."

Ashton: Let's get into some actual numbers here. How long are your winning streaks?

Frank: I would say that today Dominator is the greatest dice controller in the world. All deference to the Captain, at age 83, who started it all back in 1978 but I do believe that the Captain is in semi-retirement, while Dominator is playing a hundred to a hundred and fifty days a year. He is the most consistent shooter. I was there when he rolled back to back to back, 30, 33, and 38 rolls before he sevened out. Dom has rolled many big hands when I’ve been at the tables. These are called monster hands. He just rolled 64 a few days ago in Vegas. He’s had many hands over 50. Not only does he roll these big, big rolls, but also he is tremendously consistent. He’ll go time after time after time on money rolls in a row; he might not win millions every time, but he gets a hit. I would say he’s a .400 hitter as opposed to a .300 hitter.

Dom: The Captain had a 147 hand roll, which is the world record. Frank had an 89-hand roll I was at, and he didn’t even know how long he was rolling for. He was so zoned into that roll, and he didn’t realize that he held the dice for well over an hour and a half. It was right after a big roll I had, and, like I said, he always comes back with a much bigger roll. Frank is known for having monster rolls. I learned so much more about focusing at the table through watching and playing with Frank than I ever did before knowing him. I could be a little bit of a hot head at the table, but being with Frank and his relaxed atmosphere at the table, I learned how to relax and hit my consistent rolls. But if it weren’t for him at the table, they probably wouldn’t happen as often as they do.

Frank: When you’re playing Golden Touch blackjack, using our speed count and basic strategy, you could be in a bad mood, as long as you do what you need to. If you follow the rules, you still have the edge, no matter your mental state. However, in craps, you create the edge; your roll creates the edge, not the cards being dealt. At craps, your mental state is a primary ingredient in a successful throw. If you’re angry, upset or tired, everything is going to detract from your ability to control the dice. I learned this from the Captain: that you have to be relaxed and calm; you can’t let anything bother you at the table.

Ashton: Sounds like that takes a tremendous amount of mental discipline, which is another key to trading successfully. How did you develop that discipline?

Dom: When Frank and I met each other, we were both into meditation and calming effects, even though I was a hot head. I meditated everyday and tried to get myself focused at the craps table, and Frank was doing the same thing. We trust our ability at the table to know that if we have a bad roll, a good one is going to happen. You can’t let what happened in the past affect the way you shoot in the future. That all comes through getting yourself mentally prepared for the battle at hand, the same way a trader might. We use the same kind of technique at the crap table. That bad throw we just had cannot affect the next time we have the dice. We have an edge and know that our way of playing works, so the next time should be an even better hand than the one before. We use some breathing techniques and relaxation techniques, and trust our abilities.

Frank: It is two-fold. The first thing is that you actually have to have the ability. You could go to the table and have no ability, use your breathing and relaxation techniques, but you will fail. You need both. The first thing you work on is the skill, but if you’re mind isn’t there, your skill level will deteriorate. It’s very much like a baseball hitter. When they are in a slump, the mind starts to interfere with the skill level; they start to get tight, the bat doesn’t turn as fast. The two things have to be operating in sync. I meditate everyday, using a form of transcendental meditation. Even before I go to play, I meditate. When I’m at the table, I am relaxed. Even if I have a crummy roll and I’m not happy about it, by the time the dice come back around to me, I am totally relaxed again as if the bad roll never happened. That is an important skill to have, the skill to stay sharp and relaxed without letting anything bother you. You have to work at that too. It’s not like it comes to you naturally; nobody is naturally relaxed. You’re in the spotlight when you get the dice; you have to shoot and people’s money is in your hands. What are you going to do? You have to perform.

Ashton: What is the next step for someone wanting to learn more about these techniques?

Frank: We have a terrific book out, “The Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution,” which goes through the technique we use in the casino. Anyone interested in beating that game should read that book first. If you like what you’ve read in the book and say to yourself that it would be great to beat the game of craps, take the seminar. You will get hands-on instructions from the best dice controllers in the world, with a student to teacher ratio of 4 to 1. It’s very much like if you want to be a baseball player, eventually you have to put the books down and get on the field, get a coach and a manager. I would recommend that to anyone who wants to become an Advantage Craps player.

Ashton: Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Frank: Yes, I’m sexier than Dom.

Ashton: Well, all that's left is for me to thank both of you taking the time to talk to us. I know how busy your schedules are and I really appreciate it. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking with both of you and I hope that next time I'm in a casino I'm lucky enough to see you guys at the craps table!