Casino dice are also called "precision dice" or "perfects" because they are the most accurate dice available. Only with such dice, the chances of landing on any of the six faces are aboslutely equal. If they vary by more than 2/10'000" they are rejected and can't be used at the tables. You can buy those "culls" or "slightly imperfect seconds" from many different sellers and some times they are the only dice available to the public from certain casinos.
However, every dice is slightly different because of the influence of temperature when the cubes are cut.
Older dice from the 40's through the 60's were smaller than current dice. The size of dice increased for several reasons: (1) it's harder to "palm and switch" larger dice at the table and (2) with the craps table itself growing larger and larger it's harder to see the spots of a smaller dice compared with a larger.
There are several different standard sizes of casino dice. They are refered to using fractions or decimals of an inch. Dice manufacturer call them "640", "690" or "775" which has also refer to their size. I have included their metric size in the below table.
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5/8" 0.625" 640 15,88 mm |
11/16" 0.6875" 690 17,46 mm |
3/4" 0.75" 775 19,05 mm |
These are the only dice pictures on this website that are true to scale. All other pictures are 100 x 100 pixels, regardless of their true size!
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The dice micrometer is used to determine the exact size of a dice. With such a tool, you measure up to 0.0001". If all three sides [1-6, 2-5, 3-4] are equal, you know that this die is perfect. Be careful: Although they were perfect when new, heavy used dice and dice stored under certain conditions can change their shape and won't be perfect any longer. |
| Another cool and helpful tool is the so called dice caliper. You can clamp a die into the caliper and give it a spin. If the die always stop at the same position, there is a problem with the balance. Loaded dice can easily identified that way. |  |
Casino dice are made with different edges. Most of them have so called razor edges. Other known edges are: Featheredge, brushed, slightly beveled and heavy beveled. The kind of used edge has influence on how dice behave on the table felt and during the throw. Cheating dice use also different edges to influence the outcome of a roll. But please: Don't try to make a science out of this! It's definite not the decisive point in dice setting ☺
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© diceman.us (2003-2004) |
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last update: 2006-11-14 |
