Craps Cheating

Introduction

Because craps players handle the dice, there has always been a strong element of cheating at craps. The cheating tends to fall into 3 different patterns: dealer involvement, altered dice, and changing bets. Here are some descriptions and real life examples.

Dealer involvement - "Mr. Casino"

In 2009 State police arrested the alleged ringleader of a scam in which dealers were recruited to pay the ringleader on late bets and later collected a kickback for the favors. Richard “Mr. Casino” Taylor of Memphis, Tennessee was the mastermind behind the elaborate cheating scam at casino craps tables at the Mohegan sun Casino and Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, which lost a combined $69,965. He was charged with conspiracy to commit cheating at gambling, cheating at gambling and first-degree larceny. The State Police Casino Unit began investigating in December 2007 after a floor person at Foxwoods notified a manager that one of the craps dealers was cheating.

Taylor bragged about cheating at casinos around the country and talked about how they were going to make a movie of them ripping off casinos. Some dealers claimed it has been going on for years. A Foxwoods employee even colluded with the group in order to schedule craps dealers that would be working with the group. The scammers used code names for identification. They would say the phrase "strawberry daiquiri" or "hot chocolate" when they approached the table in order to identify themselves. They also held secret meetings with Taylor at local hotels and restaurants where dealers collected their payoffs. There was one employee from the Mohegan Sun and eleven from Foxwoods that were connected to the scam. The dealer from Mohegan Sun accepted money from Taylor in exchange for paying Taylor $11,500 for four late bets placed in 2008. One dealer stated that he made a total $60,000 in overpayments while dealing. Taylor earned a 10-year sentence for the cheating that occurred Foxwoods before his trial for cheating Mohegan Sun started.

Taylor denied orchestrating the scam and said that the casino was suspicious of him because he always placed bets for the dealers instead of tips as well as the fact that he had a system that beat craps. He then went on to blame the dealers saying that they have all the power to reject bets that they believe are late.
Past posting

Past posting is where a player places a bet (or adds to a bet) after he already knows what the winning outcome is. This is a common method of cheating and is not restricted to craps - it happens at most table games. If a casino has a rule where a player isn't allowed to touch their chips then this scam is much harder to pull off.
Weighted dice

Weighted dice have extra weight (usually in a form of a dense metal like lead) added to one side (many times inside the depressed dot in the dice) to increase the odds of that side being faced down at the end of the roll. This is the reason that casino dice are translucent, so the casino can see anything that has been placed inside them.

Dice that been partially hollowed out are another example of weighted dice.
Rounded edges

When a die lands on an edge that has been rounded, it is more likely to keep rolling off that side and more likely than usually to land on the next side.
Shaped dice

Shaped dice have been shaved so that one of their sides has become either convex or concave so that they will be either more or less likely to land on that side.
Mis-spotted dice

Sometimes the dice was painted with only 5, 6, and 2 dots on all sides so that every roll will results in a 7 or 11. This isn't done often because it is easy to spot
Shaved dice

These are dice where one side has been shaved down just a little bit so that a couple of the sides are more rectangle than square and have less surface area.
Magnetic dice

Magnetic dice are dice that have a small piece of metal inserted in them. A magnet is placed into, or under, the table and the magnetic attraction causes the dice to land with the metal-side faced down. This is an elaborate cheating system and is never really attempted.