Practice Guide for Precision Shooters and Dice Control

One of the most important parts of dice control is practicing how to do it correctly. Precision shooting is not something you can become good at just by reading a book. It is a lot like throwing darts or bowling and requires a lot of time and effort to get good at the skill. The payoffs are enormous since you are getting a huge advantage in a game of money, casinos and gambling.

When you practice dice control, you should be focusing on what the dice are doing as they leave your hands. Most of the problems arise from what your fingers are doing to the dice right before you let them go. This is also hardest to diagnose since this is also the time when your arm, elbow, hand and fingers are moving most quickly. There are other things to watch out for as well.

Tips for precision shooting practice for beginners and novices

If you have never had experience with dice control or precision shooting, then here is what you should do. Beginners should start by finding a long flat surface that is elevated similar to a craps table. A few good surfaces can be a nice flat bed or a felt clothed table so that the dice can land in the same sort of environment as a real craps table. You do not want to practice on hard surfaces since the dice bounce and can chip more easily, plus this doesn't represent a real craps table. Another good idea is to put a chair in front of you in order to simulate the need to put your arms up higher in order to throw, which will be neccessary at a real craps table when you need to put your arms over one of the walls to throw. A typical craps table has a surface about 28 inches off the ground.

If you are a novice at precision shooting and you just want to start out, the best thing to do is make the table as simple as possible. First of all, you should not be practicing at a casino since you can get in trouble and possibly kicked out if they catch you. You should be doing this at home. If you have some cash and you are going to get serious about dice setting, it may be wise to actually buy an actual craps table so you can practice all you want at home and can show your friends the game as well.

Beginner skill level shooters should actually start practicing without a wall. That means just throw the dice onto the bed but not too far. If you have a craps table, do not worry about hitting the wall just yet since this will be used a little later on. Just learn how to throw the dice parallel and straight. It is very important to get the dice to throw on a similar axis that is perfectly horizontal to the table, which is basically getting the dice to move as if they were glued together. In fact, it is highly recommended that you actually stick the dice together with putty or glue (as long as you can remove it later).

Once the dice are together, they should resemble a long rectangular solid, which is how you should always throw the dice as a precision shooter. Next, you should throw them straight down and parallel with the surface of the table. The key here is to make sure they do not wobble in the air. Do not worry about trying to land on specific numbers yet, just practice on throwing them straight. Once you get good at it keeping the dice straight and not having them wobble, then remove the glue or putty. Start practicing with throwing the dice exactly the same way and keep them spinning together as if they were still a solid piece through the air.

The last step is to align your dice so that there are hardaway numbers (4, 6, 8, 10) on all four rectangular sides (2,2 3,3, 4,4 and 5,5). If you are throwing correctly, your dice should roll on one of these hard way numbers. These numbers are great for showing if your dice are stopping on axis and spinning in sync. The 1 and 6 should be on the ends of the axis on the square sides of your rectangular shape. When you get good at throwing these hard way numbers, you should never see a 1 or 6 show up or else it would be a bad throw.

Once you got this down consistently, then you are about 85% of the way through the battle and you are now an intermediate precision shooter!

Intermediate and Journeyman dice control practice advice

One of the major rules of craps is the dice must be thrown so they hit the opposite wall and bounce off, otherwise you will have to rethrow. Casinos put triangle shaped pyramids or bumps on the walls to produce more randomness when the dice bounce off of them. For practicing purposes, you should remove this padding and start off at the easiest level of difficulty and just get the dice to land on the numbers you want. Most importantly, without the pyramids and extra randomness, you can see more clearly what you are doing wrong and understand what is happening with your dice as you thrown them.

There are now a few things to watch for as you get better at dice control. If you notice the dice hitting each other, one of the most common causes is because of the thumb having too much contact on the dice right before they are released. A way to fix this is to release the dice quicker and that the thumb leaves contact with the dice before the fingers.

Also watch how the dice are bouncing after they hit the table. Do not worry about what numbers come up, but watch which directions they go after bouncing. One common tell that gives off information is if the dice bounce to the left. This means that the right corner of the dice makes contact with the table before any other part of the dice, which means your throw is not level with the table. The dice should be bouncing straight ahead.

Practicing tips for advanced shooting and for real casino craps

One of the advanced tricks that players need to learn is the backspin. The backspin is used to counteract the randomness of the pyramid bumps and the wall that the dice need to touch and every advanced player should learn to do this since the pyramids are the most serious obstacle for dice control. Once you get this down perfectly, you will become close to an expert at precision shooting. The rest is just touching up on minor skills or precisely getting control of the dice to land on specific numbers. Any advanced practice involves the full craps table without all the handicaps. Either practice with a real table at home if you have the money to buy one, or do it unnoticeably at the casino.

One thing to practice is throwing at different lengths. Craps tables are typically 12 feet long but some are 10 or 14 feet. A good tip is to visit the casinos that you plan on playing at and look at their craps table. Then make adjustments to your dice control strategy. If you throw the dice at different distances, then you can learn to adapt to any table at will.

Finally, you should practice with some obstacles in your way as well. A real casino craps table will have things such as chips and markers all over the table that can alter the path of your dice. If the dice hit these chips, then they will become random and you will lose control of the dice. So practice throwing over things on the table once in awhile.

The most important thing to do is to keep on practicing for months at a time. Practice makes perfect! This is not something you can do in 2 weeks, but you can make some massive improvements in that time, especially if you are a fast learner with good dexterity in dice tossing. Typically, it is a good idea to just follow the basics and the beginners guide for a few months and just advance to higher levels. If you practice every day for 6 months, you can become very decent at controlling the dice. Although, many people will practice for years to get the technique down like second nature.