The Biggest Craps Winners of All Time

Some Tips for Winning Big

Before we get on to who the biggest Craps winners of all time are, it is worth a roll of the dice to give you some tips to help you topple the king of Craps throne! As with any casino game, it is a game of statistics and luck just as much as it is strategy. Luckily, as a beginner, there are some very simple strategies you can employ to help set you off on the right foot. First, each game starts with the option to make a pass line bet which has some of the best odds in the game to payout (251:244). When starting a new game this is as safe of a bet as any. Next, you should try Free odds (or laying the odds) bets. This is a bet that the shooter will land a 7 before a specific point number is thrown. The reason this is such a great bet is that the odds are not in the house's favor. Nor are they in yours. The odds are a flat neutral 0%. Great for you. Potentially scary for the house.

The House May be The Biggest Winner (Without Proper Strategy)

As with many casino games, the biggest winner (overall) is usually the house. Every bet in craps has different house odds that favor the house by a certain percentage. While there are some neutral, or near neutral, odd bets, most are strongly in favor of the house. The house odds range from 0% - 17% with varying payouts. In comparison, Blackjack has about 4% house odds and Baccarat has about 1.5%. While there are strategies to improve your odds and bets that should be avoided, most players don't pay attention to things like that which allows the house to clean up!

Las Vegas is the Biggest Winner

The "house" may be the biggest winner. Specifically, though, Las Vegas is the real winner. In 2020, Las Vegas made approximately $210 million dollars off of Craps tables which is a HUGE amount of money. More money than any single Craps player could hope to win in their lifetime. In comparison, Las Vegas made an almost equal amount from roulette ($210 million dollars) and almost three times as much from Baccarat. You don't want to know how much they made from Blackjack! But, Vegas doesn't always win. On a one-to-one basis, there are a few players throughout history who have taken the house for a ride. A few players who are not just Craps pros but Craps kings.

The World's Best Craps Player

The world's best Craps player, who is arguably the biggest Craps winner of all time, is none other than Dominic "The Dominator" LoRiggio. The Dominator began his life as a professional gambler by counting cards in the early 1980s up and down the Vegas strip. After devouring all of Frank Scoblete's books on Craps, he began practicing a strategy that was aptly called "controlled shooting" According to LoRiggio he once rolled 56 times in a row before finally rolling the dreaded 7. A hot streak like that could certainly be based on luck alone. However, given Dominic spent 6 months practicing his controlled shooting it sounds a lot more like skill than luck.

It is a hotly debated topic whether or not LoRiggio really can roll as accurately as he claimed. After all, why would the casinos let him play if his strategy was so effective? In truth, we don't know. However, there are PLENTY of casinos that have banned him not just from the Craps tables but also from the premises entirely. Casinos are not in the business of losing money - it's logical to assume that most players who claim that they can control their dice shooting enough to gain a significant edge over the house in actuality are just lucky. Hot, and cold, streaks do happen. Players who delude themselves into thinking they are dice gods like The Dominator are probably very profitable for casinos - compared to methodical strategic betters.

Who is The Captain?

If you spent time around the Craps tables from around 1970 to the turn of the millennium, you more than likely heard a rumor about the mysterious Craps player known as "The Captain". Now, we aren't sure whether or not The Captain was a real player or just a Craps folklore legend. Some well-known pros like Scoblete or LoRiggio claim to have seen him playing - and once even going on a 147-winning streak before hitting that unlucky number seven. The odds of avoiding the number 7 147 times in a row are so astronomically small the figure would hardly fit on your page. Many people claim it is impossible and that the pros are just messing with ordinary players but we can't know that for sure. Given that many pro gamblers have an ego to boot it's more likely to be true simply for the fact that many players would refuse to admit there was another player out there, an old man now no less, who could outshoot them every day of the week.

Summary

Winners and losers are hard to determine in Craps over a lifetime of playing. If you buy into the idea of the Captain, then it seems almost obvious that he would be the biggest winner to strut his stuff on the strip. Players like Scoblete and Dominic LoRiggio have certainly won their fair share. The biggest monetary winner is probably more likely than not a high roller who has never played the game before and just got damn lucky. As is the way when you are playing a game of chance.