Discount Gambling

I just figured out the perfect way to play card craps at Viejas Casino. I always see Baccarat and Roulette players recording and studying the hand history right at the table, so I figured I’d make real use out of the right to pen & paper at the craps table. I sat down at the CSM craps game tonight, and recorded each roll on paper. That allowed me to look over the last 5-6 rolls, and see if the count was positive for laying odds on my Don’t Pass bet. This took all the guesswork out of counting, and was quite fun and relaxing. Before, I’d have to think back and guess if I saw the key cards for the point. It was inaccurate, and I probably made a lot of mistakes. Now, it’s smooth sailing, and I know exactly when to lay odds.

I had a good winning session (my 3rd in 3 consecutive nights), and played for about an hour or so. The play is pretty fast out of the CSM, and I recorded about 300 rolls (all of them). I played Don’t Pass on 62 points, laying odds on 24 of them (39%). It was really easy to see when the count was good. (Of course, any time the count is positive, I should be laying 10x odds.) When I change my odds, I note it to the right of the roll. I also use exclamation marks (!) to indicate the outcome when I’m laying odds. For example, “win!!!” means I won when laying 3x odds; “lose!” means I lost when laying 1x odds. I use a horizontal line to indicate the come-out roll.

I played with two other semi-regulars tonight (compared to me, everyone else is semi-regular). One guy was playing $5 pass line with 5x-10x odds, and got killed. He watched me vary me odds bet during the roll, and saw I usually won when laying odds, and I usually didn’t have odds when I lost. After he busted out, he brought out another $200, but decided not to play. Instead, he watched what I was doing with the notation. I’m sure he knows that card craps is not normal, and that its possible to count the cards in some way. Of course, you’re not really going to figure it out unless you have a lot of time and energy on your hands. Or find this site. I really hope someone reads this, and understands how good the game is. For crying out loud … you can count with pen and paper right at the table! This is completely and absolutely classic.

Below are photos of my session (I don’t have a scanner). Take a look, and you should see exactly how to play. I highly recommend taking advantage of this method of playing. It’s the only way I’m going to play the game in the future.

Card craps session notation, pages 1 & 2

Card craps session notation, pages 3 & 4.

After some debate and discussions with the (very cool) floor supervisors and dealers at Viejas Casino, I developed a much more accurate model for the CSM, and re-analyzed the effects of counting in the craps game. Initially, my model of the CSM was a conceptual one, and involved a random shuffling of cards in a reservoir, fronted by an continuous, 10 card deep buffer. In fact, after detailed discussions of how the CSM actually works, I re-modeled it after these mechanisms.

The CSM actually consists of an elevator shuffler, which uses 20 slots that holds from 0 to 14 cards. When the dealer feeds the muck into the hopper, it raises/lowers the elevator to select a random slot, then pushes a muck card into a random position within the chosen slot. The buffering consists of dropping an entire slot (of 0 to 14 cards) into the chute, from which the dealer pulls cards, until it empties. Then another random slot is dropped into the buffer for dealing.

Using this model, and the new, no accumulated muck dealing policy (the muck is fed back into the CSM after each roll), I determined that the actual window depth a counter should use is 4 rolls. I.e., your odds decisions should only be based on the last 4 rolls out of the CSM. Of course, if you could open the CSM and see how many cards are still left in the buffer (dropped slot), you’d know the exact distribution of the next roll. But, alas, that’s why there’s an opaque front panel cover, and we don’t know where we are in the dropped slot. So we just run simulations, and look for the best and simplest overall correlations we can devise.

I’m pretty pleased that a 4-roll windowed fair weighted count works out pretty well. The chart below shows an overall lower effect of the count, because we’re averaging in the variability of the buffer depth. But, the overall EV for laying 10x on a positive count is still +1.6% of the flat bet. It’s better than nothing, and the count is even simpler with the smaller window, and is still 100% fun.

CSM Craps Counting Advantage