Beginner's luck pays well in Craps

In news that is quite lighter, a new record has been achieved this holiday weekend. In Atlantic City, Patricia Demauro, a true novice craps player having only played the game once before, beat the 20 year old record for the longest craps roll. She was rolling for 4 hours and 18 minutes. Beating the old record by 1 hour and 12 minutes.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with craps (my absolute favorite game to gamble on) what Deauro did is insanely improbable. With 2 die, the highest probability on every single role is a 7. There are 6 separate combinations to reach 7 – the most of any combined 2 die. Odds on rolling a 7 are somewhere around 40+ percent on each roll of the dice (Odds of going 7 out on a point is quoted at some sites as ~60%). Patricia Demauro rolled for 4 hours and 18 minutes – for a total of 154 times. I can’t even figure out the odds on that – but I think you would have better odds on winning the lotto.

The casino, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, bought Demauro a bottle of champagne once she did finish the run. Which I am sure is not the least thing she was comped after such a run. They won’t mention how much she won, but I’ll take a stab at it.

Let’s say IF she only had a $10 bet on the pass line (which pays 1-1), took no odds, and only played the 6 or 8 (paying out 6 – 5). Let’s say that she worked with a strategy where she let her bet ride 3x, and then dropped the bet to 2x what she started with. On 154 roles, the 6 or 8 are the second highest chance to appear on any given roll, that means a hit at least some 38 times. So on an original bet of $6 I get a total of around … $57,000 or so. The chance of this kind of win is around .04% or so.

Even if I am off just a little bit, this is a huge and great win for just 4 hours and a second try at craps. And that’s only if she made a relatively simple bet, and played with the house’s money. And some people don’t believe in beginners luck.