The Captain vs. Sharpshooter: A Comparison of Two Rhythmic Rollers

When I first started writing about the Captain’s concept of “rhythmic rolling,” I was met with some hostility and much incredulity by other gambling writers and the reading public. This was in 1991 after my first book came out. I received a letter that accused me of making up the Captain and contriving to create a fiction that someone could actually beat the game of craps. Some letter writers were irate. One guy wrote me a letter and in a huff concluded: “Scoblete, you are a fraud and a *^&%#$&!!! moron!”

Before the publication of Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos: How to Play Craps and Win! no one was writing about “dice control” or “dice influence” and the terms “rhythmic roller” or “rhythm roller” didn’t exist. Just about every book on craps looked at it from a mathematical perspective. Of course, based purely on the math, the only way to beat craps in the long run is to hope you can buy someone’s Don’t Pass or Don’t Come bet if he’s getting ready to take it down. Otherwise, the game is unassailable from the math end.

The Captain was the first to realize that you had to do two things to be able to beat craps in the long run: 1. you had to avoid shooters who sevened-out early, yet be on the shooters who would have hot rolls, and 2. you had to take care with your own dice sets and delivery, become what he called a “rhythmic roller,” one who changes craps from a negative to a positive by physically altering the parameters of the game through skill. The Captain developed the 5-Count to try to weed out the early seven-outers. In fact, it works like a charm (I’ve been using it for over 14 years!) as it eliminates about 50% of the shooters, most of whom, in retrospect, would have lost you money. In the other 50% will be plenty of losers as well, but there will also be all the good, great and epic rolls. By saving your money on the “bad” shooters, you’ll hopefully be around and solvent enough to take advantage of the good shooters, some of whom will be rhythmic rollers, including yourself.

For many years, I was on the fence about rhythmic rolling. It made sense, yes; but so many gambling authorities dismissed it out of hand that I was quite frankly afraid to come right out and say: “Yes, it’s a fact!” By 1994, I was inexorably being convinced that “rhythmic rolling” was indeed a fact. Having been with the Captain and his Crew, having seen the Captain’s rolling technique; having seen the lady known as “The Arm” have good, great and epic rolls almost on a weekly basis; having won money on both the Captain, The Arm” and my own rolls, it was getting harder and harder not to get splinters from sitting on the fence. By then I was using my 3V set and I found that with my delivery, I was making money when I rolled. When you play winning craps for half a dozen years, at some point or other, you have to say to yourself: “Why am I ahead of this game? Is it luck? Or are all the things I’m writing about and speculating over as real as this money I’m putting in the bank?”

I had no idea that while I was struggling with these ideas, a young man dubbed Sharpshooter was looking into the physics and mechanics of the matter. What the Captain had learned from vast experience and deep intuition -- and what I had been forced to believe because I was actually experiencing it (and writing about it), in short, that “rhythmic rolling was real,” that it accounted for the long-term success of the 5-Count and that the Captain, The Arm, and I were actually changing a negative into a positive in the game of craps -- Sharpshooter was analyzing scientifically, coming up with dice sets and grips and delivery systems to maximize the potential for beating the game. Most readers of this newsletter are well aware of who Sharpshooter is and what he and Jerry Patterson have accomplished with the PARR course. Although Patterson has been criticized by some gambling writers, mostly for his marketing genius, the fact remains: PARR is a legitimate course that teaches a real skill. (I’ll discuss PARR in a future issue.)

The Captain is a great rhythmic roller. So is Sharpshooter. How do they differ? And by extension how does Sharpshooter’s technique differ from the Captain’s technique? And who is the better shooter: the Captain or Sharpshooter? I’ll cover that, next week!