The Captain vs. Sharpshooter: A Comparison of Two Rhythmic Rollers - Part 2

The Captain never kept a detailed diary of what numbers he rolled or his Seven-to-Rolls Ratio (that is, the number of sevens he rolled compared to all the other numbers – a 1:6 is random as that is how many sevens one would expect in six rolls on average). The Captain merely kept ledgers of how much he won or lost in a given session on a given visit. From the mid-70s through the mid-90s, the Captain played approximately three, sometimes four days a week in Atlantic City. A few months shy of his 80th birthday, the Captain now plays once, sometimes twice a week.

In all that time, over a quarter of a century, he has kept a ledger of his wins and losses – they show that the total he has made at craps is astounding. If he is just lucky, then he’s one of the luckiest men to have ever lived. Still, the reality is that he has won largely owing to his ability to shoot the dice, his long-standing relationship with The Arm, a lady roller of extraordinary talent, and his use of the 5-Count.

I have played with the Captain hundreds of times over the years and I have observed his roll closely, in fact I have mimicked it somewhat. He sets the dice in the 3V but unlike most of us who use this set, he prefers to have the 2:1 and 5:6 faces showing and not the 6s and 8s that I and others use. His grip is very soft, yet his fingers are not equally spread on the dice. His middle finger hangs somewhat over the center where the dice meet and his ring and pointer fingers are somewhat to the sides of the each die. The dice leave his hand softly but do not travel in an exact mirror fashion to each other, one tends to lag just a little – I call this the “delayed mirror roll.” They both bounce in the same area, however, with just that tiny lag between them, then bounce once and hit the back wall softly and die. He uses much more wrist action, than arm-pendulum, to get the dice up and out. He tends to hit the 4, 5 and 6. And when he isn’t playing the Supersystem (or the 5-Count Doey-Don’t – see my book The Captain’s Craps Revolution!), he’ll place those numbers.

He is so relaxed and so focused when he rolls that a tornado could blast through the casino and he’d probably not notice it. He never changes his dice set to something else. He sticks to his way of setting, gripping and shooting and never varies anything but his bets. I think he came up with the doey-don’t style of betting because he has eliminated a significant percentage of the sevens when he comes out (and when you’ve done that, Pass Line betting isn’t optimal) and he wants to be on the “hot” numbers with a lower vig (compared to Place betting, the doey-don’t actually does have a lower vig – I’ll discuss this in a later issue). If he sevens out, it doesn’t faze him. I guess, like a major league ballplayer that’s had a bad game, he knows there’s always tomorrow – or the next roll. So he doesn’t get uptight. I think this accounts for his tremendous consistency. I can say that in any given session of play with the Captain, you are highly likely to make money on his rolls. It’s rare -- I can’t even remember a time actually -- when the Captain doesn’t have at least one good roll a session. In a day of play with him recently, he didn’t have one bad roll! That was left to me, unfortunately.

And what of Sharpshooter? His “perfect pitch” and “delivery” system is finely honed; his Hard Ways Set is a great addition to anyone’s arsenal of weapons that keep that nasty seven at bay. His grip is three-fingered, with fingers even and straight on the front of the dice with very little spillage on the sides. He tries for a “mirror roll,” that is a roll where both dice go through exactly the same rotations; land precisely, bounce once or twice and die at the wall just as they touch it. As of this writing, I have played several sessions with Sharpshooter, and I have observed him closely. He’s a thinker. If the dice aren’t doing exactly what he wants, he analyzes what he’s doing wrong and tries to correct it. He puts some pressure on himself to come up with good rolls. Sometimes, one can think too much – which could be Sharpshooter’s only Achilles heal.

Sharpshooter probably knows more about dice sets and the mechanics of rhythmic rolling than anyone. He is a student of the physics of the game. His contribution to craps knowledge is immense. He is now responsible for hundreds of people learning to become rhythmic rollers – making it even better for those of us who use the 5-Count to have greater success with it. There is no doubt in my mind that the Captain is the originator of the modern concept of dice influence and there is also no doubt in my mind that Sharpshooter has taken the Captain’s insights and brought them to a new level of greatness.

So who’s the better craps shooter: the Captain or Sharpshooter? Who’s the better fighter: Muhammed Ali or Joe Louis? Who’s the better baseball player: Joe DiMaggio or Willie Mays? Answer those questions definitively and you might be able to say who the better of the pair is. There is no doubt, however, that without the Captain, there would be no Sharpshooter; there would be no Frank Scoblete – and most of you, dear readers, would be discussing the math of the game and banging your heads against an unyielding wall.