Casino Player / Scoblete / February 2011

Scobe Speaks by Frank Scoblete

One Year Without the Man

The man who taught me everything I know about gambling died on February 10, 2010 at the age of 88. It was snowing heavily at the moment of his death. Had the wind been slightly stronger it would have been called a blizzard. Those of you familiar with the great individuals of history and of mythology know that great events take place when a great person is born or dies – moving stars, titanic winds, earthquakes. Certainly, it was probably merely coincidence that the severe weather reflected the passing of this great man.

Many of you know who I’m talking about – his nickname was the Captain, a legendary Atlantic City craps player and leader of the “Crew” of 22 high rollers. Some observers liked to call his group “the pumpkin patch” for the color of the chips they wagered.

The Captain revolutionized the game of craps during the 1980s and 1990s with his ideas and his successful play. Today it is common to see craps players setting the dice, taking care with their throws, playing and discussing such things as controlled shooting, rhythmic rolling and the 5-Count, his method of eliminating 57 percent of the random rolls while playing the game.

Indeed, before the Captain no one talked about how to legally beat the casino game of craps with a controlled dice throw, what he called in the late 1970s “rhythmic rolling.” He was able to push the casinos to offer a better game than they advertised by using “buy” bets on the 4 and 10 which were way out of proportion to what casinos had allowed previously.

Today, my company Golden Touch craps and I teach classes in how to control the dice, how to properly use the 5-Count and how to bet appropriately into a dice controller’s real edge. We use the Captain’s concepts throughout our classes. There are also dice control classes taught by others as well. Indeed the first formal dice control class used a variation of the Captain’s “rhythmic rolling” by calling dice control “rhythm rolling.” No credit was given to the Captain by that company’s owner.

Sadly, there are individuals who jealously try to deny the Captain the thanks and glory the rest of us craps players should give him. Such bitter denials don’t matter, really, as denials by the envious often represent tacit though begrudging agreement.

When I first presented the Captain’s ideas and related his casino adventures, many critics claimed the great man did not exist; that he was a fiction created by me to sell books.

Well, I certainly sold an amazing number of books to craps players hungry for the Captain’s extraordinary ideas but over the years so many individuals have met the Captain, played with the Captain or talked to him over the phone that it is now impossible for any but the most dense to deny that the Captain is everything I said he was. With the exception of Satch and his wife Annette, and my wife the Beautiful AP and me, the Captain’s “crew” now plays craps in the heavenly kingdom.

I wrote about the Captain’s ideas of dice control and the 5-Count in my 1993 collector’s item book The Captain’s Craps Revolution! And I have now put all his ideas and betting methods into my latest two books Casino Craps: Shoot to Win! and Cutting Edge Craps: Advanced Strategies for Serious Players! In Cutting Edge Craps I have a whole chapter about the Captain’s remarkable 147 number roll too, which was the world record until Pat DeMauro broke it in 2009. Her roll is recounted in Casino Craps: Shoot to Win!

Over the years many brilliant men have refined and expanded on the Captain’s ideas based on long-term computer research and experience. We now have computer analysis of the 5-Count and stunning information about on-axis dice throws which indicate radical betting styles as the best way to exploit one’s edge. Dan Pronovost, a computer expert from Canada, created a software program called SmartCraps that can tell a player if he has any on-axis dice control ability and if he does, what are the best dice sets and bets he should make.

None of this would have been possible or even conceivable had not the Captain led the way. His concepts were a blinding light in an otherwise dreary approach to the game of craps.

I enjoyed the years I knew the Captain. I played with him so many times in Atlantic City and got to watch in action the Babe Ruth of craps. Think of what it is like to be at the table with the best of the best; awesome is too trite a word to describe such a feeling.

I feel a profound sadness at this first anniversary of the Captain’s death. While I now play with a new crew, known as the Five Horsemen, no one can replace the Captain. In fact, no mention of the Captain can be complete without mentioning “the Arm,” a woman who was the greatest dice controller I ever saw. She and the Captain were an amazing team. She passed away in June of 2007.

Our greatest writer, Shakespeare wrote: “Do not measure your sorrow by his worth / for then it has no end.” And Dr. Seuss wrote: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

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