The History of Modern Dice Control
by Dominator

I think people on this site should know exactly how dice control became such a hot topic and the "in" thing for intelligent craps players to learn as a winning craps strategy and also where GTC fits into the scheme of things.

In 1991, Frank Scoblete published the book Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos: How to Play Craps and Win! This book was written in 1989 and 1990. Beat the Craps recounted the adventures of the Captain and his Crew of high rollers, including the greatest dice controller of all time (according to Frank) known as the Arm, during the 1970s and 1980s.

It was the Captain who coined the term "rhythmic rollers" to describe players who were changing the nature of the game by their controlled throw of the dice. In Beat the Craps, the Captain described the basic controlled throw that many of us now use – the soft roll that touches down at the end of the table and dies upon contact with the back wall. Frank followed this book up with The Captain’s Craps Revolution!, which was published in 1993. In that book, he has an extensive discussion of dice control and why it is a winning craps strategy for strategic players. Frank’s books were written and published long before Zeke Feinberg’s books, Yuri’s book or anyone else’s book on dice control.

In the mid-1990s, Jerry Patterson created the PARR seminars – the Patterson Advanced Rhythm Roll – and sold these craps seminars to the public. Sharpshooter soon joined him and between the two of them, they developed the PARR course that many of the current certified GTC instructors first took. The members of the GTC group worked as coaches for several years in PARR to hone their own skills.

During this same time, Frank Scoblete and Sharpshooter gradually developed a professional and friendly relationship. Sharpshooter wrote for his magazine Chance and Circumstance, and Frank helped to publish two of his books, the latest being Get the Edge at Craps: How to Control the Dice. We can legitimately say that because of Frank’s books, dice control was placed on the map. And we can safely say that there would be no PARR, no Dominator, no Sharpshooter and no dice control books by other writers had Frank not opened the door to this kind of thought and playing method.

We can also say that without Jerry Patterson, no one would have thought to create seminars that taught this skill, as both Frank and the Captain were content to use it with little fanfare, although Frank did write about his adventures. We can also safely say that without Sharpshooter the skill would not have been brought to a higher level of development through the application of science and mechanics.

Several of the coaches had the opportunity to play with Frank in the casinos during this time and, as most of you by now know, he impressed them, as his roll is beautiful. Frank had ideas about how to improve upon PARR, as did the coaches and Sharpshooter. These included certifying our teachers through knowledge and performance testing, and breaking down the controlled throw into its eight primary physical elements and sub-elements. We all worked together to create Golden Touch™ Craps and our hands-on teaching of "the method."

I say "the method" because what we teach in GTC is the method that was first developed by the Captain, independently refined by PARR and Sharpshooter, and now strengthened even more by Frank Scoblete, Sharpshooter and our GTC certified instructors. We can now say - and we say this with the Captain’s blessings - that we are teaching the most powerful dice control method in the world, the one that is in the direct line of descent from the Captain to us.

I hope this sheds a little light on the subject of dice control, the who, what, when, where, why and how of it all!

Yours truly,
Dominator