Stanford Wong is one of my heroes. He has written knowledgeably about many different casino games — from video poker to blackjack to Pai Gow poker to sports betting to casino tournaments to . . . He is a friend and has been a repeat visitor to Gambling with an Edge. He will be appearing again this Thursday night, 7-8 p.m. 1230AM in Las Vegas. Live streaming at www.klav1230am.com. And it will be archived the next day on www.bobdancer.com.
Dice control is a somewhat controversial concept. The idea behind dice control is that by holding and throwing the dice in a certain way you can reduce the probability of throwing sevens. Since craps (especially when taking odds) has a very small house edge, if this methodology actually works and you are allowed to do it in casinos, this adds craps to the list of advantage gambling games.
Wong on Dice is a testimonial to the fact that dice control works. Wong went through the Frank Scoblete/Henry Tamburin “Golden Touch Dice Control” two-day seminar and received some private coaching and became a convert. He practiced sufficiently (described in the book) and he says he can beat the game. I believe him.
Back in 2004, some knowledgeable members on Wong’s BJ21.com forums took exception to Wong claiming craps was a beatable game. So a challenge was set up. Among others, Michael Shackleford and Steve Fezzik, both extremely competent handicappers and guests on GWAE took the anti-Wong position.
This was the challenge — slightly simplified: Shooters approved by Wong, including Wong himself, would roll the dice at Las Vegas tables of their choosing until 500 decisions were reached. Since sevens occur randomly one-sixth of the time, the expectation is that 83.3 sevens will occur in 500 decisions. The number for the challenge was 79.5. If the shooters shot 79 or fewer sevens during the 500 decisions, Wong would win the bets. If the shooters shot 80 or more sevens, Wong would lose the bets.
Wong agreed to bet anybody, up to a total of $100,000. Wong covered all bets except for that of Michael Shackleford. Shack had volunteered to be an unpaid monitor for the event and one of the conditions set up by Wong was that the unpaid monitors couldn’t have money riding on the event. Due to a scheduling conflict, Shackleford backed out of monitoring the challenge. He got his bet down anyway. With me!
I bet $2,000 that Wong would be successful. My thinking at the time was that Wong knew his capabilities better than anybody else and if he was willing to bet on his ability with his own money, so was I. I had no knowledge of Wong’s dice skills, but I had a lot of respect for Wong’s ability to find advantage plays.
The fact that Shackleford and Fezzik were on the other side gave me some pause. I have a similar level of respect for these guys as I have for Wong. But the fact that Wong himself had more knowledge of his skills than anybody else did tipped the scales. Shackleford was willing to bet me quite a bit more than $2,000 if I wanted, but I wanted to keep it friendly. Winning or losing a $20,000 bet could damage a friendship.
It turns out that in actuality 74 sevens were rolled out of the 500 decisions by a combination of Wong and “Little Joe.” I won $2,000 and Wong won a lot more. Shack paid me, but with a little bit of grumbling. After the challenge but before I saw Mike to collect, Little Joe came back to Las Vegas for a 1,000-roll test. A group of big bettors were willing to invest quite a bit of money if Little Joe could repeat his performance under “slightly” different conditions.
He failed miserably. If you add both the 500 and the 1000 roll trials together, the number of sevens comes out almost exactly what randomness would predict. Shack took the point of view that he had the right side of the bet, but on the specific 500-roll first trial, I got lucky. But he paid me anyway.
In the book, Wong presents convincing reasons (to me anyway) why the results of the second trial should be discarded. I’ll let you read that if you’re interested. We’ll likely talk about this on the show Thursday night.
When we first set up this Gambling with an Edge interview, we planned to have BOTH Wong and Shackleford on the show to duke it out on dice control. Both these guys are highly respected by most intelligent gamblers AND by each other, so we didn’t feel it would get too much out of control. Still, a debate could be fun — and the listeners (including Munchkin and me) would spend an interesting hour listening to it.
A few weeks before the October 27 show, Michael Shackleford expressed hesitancy. It’s not that his position on dice control has changed. It’s not that he is afraid of “losing” the debate. It is that he has a lot of respect for Wong and didn’t want to appear to be “against” Wong. He’s against Wong’s position on this particular issue, but that could be easily misconstrued by somebody.
So I passed Michael’s email on to Wong — and received an intriguing reply. In part Wong said: “Shackleford and I are not far apart in our attitudes towards craps.”
Say what?
Wong on Dice is clearly an endorsement of the dice control concept. Shackleford seems to believe that it either doesn’t work or that it can’t be executed successfully in a casino. Or both. This doesn’t sound “not far apart” to me.
Perhaps Wong’s position on the game has changed since he wrote the book. You can bet I’ll ask him about that. I’m looking forward to it.
In the gambling news recently, Wynn is suing two Argentineans for “sliding” dice. We’re also going to be asking Wong how this is different from what he does.
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