Question of the Day - 01 October 2022

We last answered this question in 2017, so it's certainly time for an update. 

The vast majority of crapshooters hold the dice for less than 10 minutes. But a select few, who manage to hang onto their roll for 60 minutes or more, are honored with plaques on the pedestrian bridge between the California and Main Street Station hotel-casinos in downtown Las Vegas.

The Golden Arm Club was inaugurated in 1992 to celebrate the epic roll of one Stanley Fujitake, who held the dice for three hours and six minutes on May 28, 1989, between 1 and 4:06 a.m. and rolled 118 times. Even at that hour, 30-40 players were trying to place bets at the table, the dealers struggled to keep up with the payouts, chips were stacked so thick that the numbers were no longer visible, the chips disappeared so fast that they had to start issuing scrip, the casino ran completely out of $1,000 cheques, and a crowd of onlookers and cheerleaders was four deep around the table. The casino manager was called every time the losses went up by another $100,000 — every 15 minutes.

When the dust settled, the California was out more than $1 million, the biggest single table-game loss in the casino’s history. The largest winner took down $100,000, while Fujitake himself was somewhere “in the middle of the pack,” around $30,000.

Fujitake, who was 77 at the time, went on to hold the dice for more than an hour three more times; his second-best roll lasted an hour and 36 minutes. He became known as “the man with the golden arm,” which gave the Wall of Fame its name.

The majority of the Wall's members are Hawaiians, to whom the Cal and Main Street Station market; on the Wall are a lot of crapshooters from Honolulu and Pearl City, but it’s also a geography lesson in Hawaiian place names: Kailua, Wailuku, Waipahu, Waimanalu, Kapaa, and of course Papahanaumokuakea (just kidding).

The vast majority are men, though several women also grace the Wall, including Margie Masuda from Pearl City (one hour 43 minutes), Dottie Fujimoto from Ewa Beach, who has two plaques from 1997 and 1998, and Amy Lee from Honolulu (one hour 7 minutes).

There are more 320 members of the club; before the pandemic, on average, one new member per month earned a spot on the Wall. Since then, it's been a little slower, but since early this year, the pace has picked up somewhat.

A Platinum Arm Club was started in 1999 to honor those who've held the dice for more than 90 minutes or for more than an hour on two separate occasions.

There's no tournament, at least that we know of, but crapshooters at the Cal can qualify anytime with a 60-minute roll or longer.

Fyi, the world record for craps was set on May 23, 2009, by Patricia Demauro at the Borgata in Atlantic City. She held the dice for four hours and 18 minutes and rolled 154 times. Demauro, a New Jersey grandmother, had played craps only once before.