zengrifter said:
No, no proof like in counting.
That hits the nail on the head.
Hate to sound like a broken record player on this one, but dice control is a very facinating topic out there. There are supposedly some gurus that have made quite a bit of money out there on it, but I wonder if it is more from seminars than from the casinos.
Renegade--you have the right idea about why someone would want to control the dice, but in theory a dice controller would want to use his or her skill to make money. Whether that is on the pass line or by placing numbers, you would want to find a way.
To sum up the premise of DC, there are different "sets" of the dice that, if kept on a particular axis, have inherent probabilities of outcomes that is different that the complete set of random outcomes of the dice. As you know, the 7 is the most probable outcome of the dice (6 out of 36), 6 & 8 next, 5 & 9 after that, etc. If kept on axis, different sets have different probabilities for the numbers...some don't even exist on some sets, and the probability of the 7 can be reduced IF KEPT ON THAT AXIS. In fact, there are sets (maybe just one, can't remember off the top of my head) that actually have a greater than 1:6 probability of the 7.
So, it's all in how you set the dice up and how you bet that DC works. Of course, you can't forget about that little detail of KEEPING THE DICE ON AXIS. Some claim that all you need to do is keep the dice on axis once in so many tries to give you an advantage. It makes sense, but what mystifies me is that nobody that I have seen ever calculates the negative effect of when the dice go onto an axis that is not favorable to how you are betting.
Anyways, I am rambling, but that is a quick and dirty from my perspective. And I'm sure there's a lot more that we could get in to!