A Beginner's Guide to Paylines, Ways to Win, and Scatter Symbols
The longest craps roll ever documented was 18 minutes by a player named Stanley Tomchin at the Plaza Casino in Las Vegas in 2009. He rolled 154 times
The longest craps roll ever documented was 18 minutes by a player named Stanley Tomchin at the Plaza Casino in Las Vegas in 2009. He rolled 154 times without sevening out. The probability of rolling 154 times in a row, assuming a probability of sevening out of about 1 in 6 per roll, is approximately 1 in 4.7 billion.
Key Points
This is extraordinarily unlikely.
Tomchin probably did not break any laws, but he certainly beat the odds in an almost unimaginable way
The second-longest roll was 40 minutes by a player named Patricia Demauro at the Atlantic City Borgata in 2009. She rolled 154 times as well, which makes both rolls tied for the longest documented.
These are incredible statistical anomalies. The probability of a single player ever rolling more than 40 times is so low that these rolls should only occur once every several thousand years of continuous craps play across all casinos globally.
The reason these rolls are so rare is that craps is a fast game. You roll 10 times a minute, on average. To get a 40-minute roll, you need 400 rolls without sevening out. The math doesn't support it.
There are theories about how Tomchin achieved this. Some people think he had exceptional control over the dice, a concept called "precision shooting." The idea is that you can throw the dice in a way that reduces the randomness. Physics experts generally disagree. The speed of the throw, the height of the bounce, and the surface of the table introduce so much randomness that precision shooting is likely impossible.
The casinos that documented these rolls did so because they were extraordinary and newsworthy. The rolls were legitimate. The dice were fair. There was no cheating. Just an improbable statistical event. The underlying principle is that exploitation works when your opponents are not playing optimally. Most of your competition is not optimal. They are human. They are tired. They are emotional. They are making mistakes. The strategy that works against mistakes is the strategy you should play. Not the strategy that works against perfect play. Not the strategy that works in theory. The strategy that works against the actual people you're facing. The pattern across all of these is that casinos are more sophisticated than players assume. Players think of casinos as simple places where you gamble and either win or lose. Casinos think of themselves as experience designers, probability manipulators, and behavioral economists. Understanding the casino's perspective helps you understand why rules and restrictions exist. The document of recorded long rolls is actually quite sparse. For a century, the longest roll was rumored to be 27 times in a row at the same Monte Carlo incident mentioned earlier. Then Tomchin and Demauro came along in the same year and both rolled longer. This is a statistical coincidence that's remarkable. The bottom line is that understanding these systems gives you a more realistic perspective on your relationship with gambling and with casinos. You're not fighting against bad luck or a rigged game. You're accepting mathematical disadvantage in exchange for entertainment. Once you accept this frame, you can make informed decisions about how much you're willing to spend for that entertainment. The casinos have systems. You have choices. Understanding both helps you navigate the situation more wisely than someone playing on pure intuition.
