Casino Dice: It’s All About Randomness

By Silas Twist

Why do the casinos put so much effort into their dice? Their profit at the crap table depends on it. In the long run, the more random the roll of the dice, the more likely the casino is guaranteed to make money.

The success of the casinos' craps tables is dependent on the complete randomness of the roll of the dice, and any threat to this must be neutralized.

The dice are probably the most important tool the casino has to insure a profit on their craps tables. To the casual player the dice may seem just like any other kind of dice, but there are some big differences. Casino dice are precision-made, security-riddled, and discarded often.

The first threat to total randomness is the dice themselves. The casinos make sure they have the best dice money can buy. The dies are precision cut (as close as possible) into perfect, balanced, razor-sharp-edged cubes, to insure total randomness.

The second threat to random rolls of the dice is from players that believe they will have a better chance of winning by using their own dice. This is considered a big "no no" on the dice tables. Each die used by the casino has several security features to insure that casino dice are the only ones used. Each die is transparent, so that it is easy to tell if a die is "loaded". Each die also has a casino logo and serial number that match the other dies. This makes it easier to see if an illegal die is slipped into the game.

The third threat to total randomness is time. After every shift the dice are discarded and a new set of dice are used. After 8 hours of rolling on the table, hitting all kinds of obstacles, (such as other players) bouncing on the floor, the dice are not considered as random as when new.

So, you can see that the casinos make a great effort to make sure the dice produce a random result with every roll. They like to "spin" this effort to the public by telling them that the crap players get a fair and honest roll of the dice, with no casino advantage. When the reality is, everything about crap table dice was created to protect the casinos profit; the spin "honest dice for the player" does make good public relations, though.