Perfect Might Be Imperfect
By Frank Scoblete

This is my first attempt to explain why “perfection” is often imperfect in dice control and that slight imperfections as the dice float through the air might be the best thing for a winning controlled shot. So bear with me as I think out loud. All feedback is welcomed too. I don’t know if I am right in this analysis.

The two best shooters I saw before I became involved with the great shooters of Golden Touch were the Captain and the Arm. The Arm was the best shooter I have ever seen, even better than the greats of Golden Touch such as Dominator, Howard “Rock ‘n Roller, Stickman, Street Dog, Mr. Finesse, Sharpshooter and all our other great shooters we have in GTC as well. Satch, one of our assistant instructors and the youngest member of the Captain’s Crew, also saw the Arm shoot in her glory days of the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, and his opinion is the same as mine. She was by far the best. No one could touch her throw.

But the Arm’s throw is nothing like any throw I have ever seen before or since. I have been calling it a knuckleball throw for lack of a better descriptive term but while I have tried to duplicate it, I have never gotten close to it. It was a unique and also an eccentric throw.

The Captain’s throw is the model of the Golden Touch throw and is the throw that Sharpshooter also arrived at doing his own independent research. It is the throw that works on the modern craps table with those nasty pyramids on the back wall. It contains the backspin which acts as a break, an energy release, and a way to keep those dice together in the air; the gentle touchdown, the soft touching of the back wall and the gentle coming to rest of the dice.

It is the perfect throw for just about all of us in the game who wish to get the edge over the casinos.

Now, many of us have set the dice, aimed the dice, launched the dice, seen the dice in the air in seemingly absolute harmony and when they touch down, they go to the wall and…damn seven out!
You’ve heard yourself and other Golden Touchers say something such as, “Now that throw was perfect! How did I seven out?”

You sevened out because the throw was perfect! Let me show you why I think perfection might be the culprit in such seven-outs:

Picture the perfect throw. The dice are seemingly glued together in the air. One die is not even a nano-inch in front of or behind or above or below the other die. They are as if one. All the way down the length of the table the float and when they touch down you expect that they will be exactly as you set them before the toss. After all, they are perfect.

Now here is what you don’t see. When the dice hit the table, they are touching each other – as “glued dice” would. The table is not perfect. The felt is not one hundred percent level. There are imperfections now entering your perfect throw. You don’t see them but they are there. There can be small quantities of link – one almost invisible link ball would be enough to throw those perfect dice towards a horrifying seven out.

The imperfection that causes the seven out could be something as simple as a slight rearrangement of the distribution of force when the dice hit. Instead of the energy being dissipated downwards and the remaining energy moving the dice along to the back wall (which is what our Golden Touch technique does), a small amount of energy is released sideways causing one die to push the other die. If the dice were not so close to one another that slight alteration of one die would not cause as great an effect. Now this slight push causes one die to skewer a tiny fraction. The dice hit the back wall differently from each other just enough so that the “perfect throw” (which is no longer truly perfect) ends in a seven out.

The Captain’s throw is rarely perfect and I have seen him throw since 1985. He has a slight, usually extremely slight, delayed mirror effect when his dice are in the air. One die leads the other just a little. There is a little split in the dice and they are somewhat apart. He does not try for this effect, it’s just the way he throws the dice and has thrown them since around 1978.

I am not sure if imperfect throws are actually better than perfect throws, but I am leaning into believing that slight imperfections along the way will result in better results than “glued dice” will get because of the landing problem I have shown with “perfect” dice.

Now do not mistake me here. I am not saying to deliberately throw imperfectly – most throws most times will be so slightly imperfect that to attempt to make them more imperfect will be self-defeating. Your best throws, your best sessions, are rarely perfect. So attempting perfect throws is the only way to throw but on those occasions when the perfect throw has been achieved and those dice are in flight do not be surprised that you seven out.

I do not believe any of the greatest shooters in the world today, most of whom are reading these pages, can deliberately influence the dice just a nano-inch imperfectly so that all the throws are just right for a roll that never ends.

Therefore, you must strive for perfection in your throws.

Thankfully, man is an imperfect creature and we will rarely achieve such perfection.

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