Westload

• Any Craps – You can bet on any roll of the dice. If 2,3 or 12 rolls you win and are paid 7 to 1. If any other number is rolled, you lose. This is a one roll bet. Hard Ways – There are four “hard ways” combinations. Hard four (two 2’s), hard six (two 3’s), hard eight (two 4’s) and hard 10 (two 5’s).
• At a land-based casino, the craps table is often the most exciting and lively game on the casino floor. It always draws a crowd as the shooter throws the dice and is on a winning roll. Now, US players can experience this lively entertainment by playing craps online.
• Patricia DeMauro, a New Jersey Grandma, had the greatest craps roll ever in 2009 at the Borgata. She tossed the dice 154 times over 4 hours and 18 minutes wi.
• These include several online Blackjack variants, American Roulette, European Roulette, Craps, and Video Poker games such as Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild. Borgata Online Slots Players should have no problems finding their favorite slots as Borgata has one of the best selections in the state.

It sounds like a homework problem out of a high school math book: What is the probability of rolling a pair of dice 154 times continuously at a craps table, without throwing a seven?

The answer is roughly 1 in 1.56 trillion, and on May 23, Patricia Demauro, a New Jersey grandmother, beat those odds at Atlantic City's Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa. Demauro's 154-roll lucky streak, which lasted four hours and 18 minutes, broke the world records for the longest craps roll and the most successive dice rolls without 'sevening out.' According to Stanford University statistics professor Thomas Cover, the chances of that happening are smaller than getting struck by lightning (one in a million), being hit by an errant ball at a baseball game (one in 1.5 million) or winning the lottery (one in 100 million, depending on the game). (Read 'When Gambling Becomes Obsessive.')

Play online casino table games for real money! Borgata’s online casino brings the thrill of the casino floor to you anytime, anywhere in New Jersey.

So, how did it happen? On Saturday, Denville native Demauro and her friend John Capra decided to indulge their yen to bet. Their Atlantic City jaunt began innocuously enough, with Demauro, only a casual casinogoer, planting herself in front of a penny slot machine on the Borgata floor and Capra going off to try his hand at three-card poker. (See an interview with the new king of poker.)

By 8 p.m., a few hours later, Demauro had grown tired of the slots. She ventured into the poker room to collect her friend, who was losing money. He offered to show her how to play craps. Of the 14 available craps tables, they sidled up to the nearest one and waited for the three other players to finish rolling. Capra shot next, but sevened out quickly. Then, he handed Demauro the dice.

Craps is known as the world's most common dice game and it is played, with varying rules and sizes of table, in virtually every casino on the planet. Craps is a game of chance rather than skill, and with a low house advantage — around 1.4%, which makes it harder to beat than blackjack but easier than roulette — even novices can win. That is, if they're lucky.

According to the casino, Demauro started her roll at 8:13 p.m. She bought into the game with $100 and when the orange-colored dice came around to her, she rubbed her hands together and let them fly. Demauro says she had played craps only once before, and being an inexperienced better, followed Capra's advice when placing bets.

A craps turn begins with an initial or 'come out' roll, in which the player tries to establish a 'point number' — that is, when the dice add up to four, five, six, eight, nine or 10. Once that happens, the player must roll the point again before throwing a seven, which is statistically the most likely outcome on a pair of dice. If the player rolls a seven before the point, the turn ends.

As soon as Demauro hit her point number (eight), people started betting. She says the game moved so fast after that, she couldn't really keep up. 'There are all these terms I didn't know,' Demauro says. 'People were yelling out 'Yo.' I said to John, 'What's 'yo?' I think that's an 11.'

The table filled up and a throng of spectators gathered. Demauro rolled double sixes, hard fours, snake eyes, every possible combination of the dice. Some people called out requests and Demauro managed to fulfill them. Players from the nearby blackjack table came over to watch, and then came the casino executives, or as she describes them, 'men in dark suits.' Demauro and her audience knew they would never witness anything like this again. 'There was a woman there, and we happened to catch each other's eyes,' Demauro says, 'She smiled at me, and I smiled and said, 'I don't know how to play the game.'

Although there is no official organization that keeps track of gambling world records, a number of clubs record significant dice rolls. Before Demauro's, the longest craps roll lasted three hours and six minutes — accomplished at a Las Vegas casino in 1989, with 118 rolls. And according to gambling expert and author of Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos, Frank Scoblete, the highest number of successive dice rolls was 147, thrown by a man operating under the pseudonym the 'Captain' in 2005. The average number of dice rolls before sevening out? Eight.

Given the rules of the game, there are any number of ways to achieve 154 consecutive rolls without crapping out, though all of them are highly unlikely. Unlikely but not impossible. Stanford's Cover explains: 'Let's say we have a million gamblers trying a thousand events at any one time. That's a billion different rolls of craps.' Out of a billion different games, the probability of getting an event that special is reduced to one in 1,000. 'It's not out of the realm of possibility,' he says.

Demauro declined to reveal how much money she won, but gambling experts estimate that if she made good bets, her winnings were probably in the hundreds of thousands; expert bets would have put them in the millions. Demauro and Capra spent the rest of their holiday weekend in Atlantic City, and even returned to the same craps table two nights later — but only as spectators. 'The expectations were too high,' she says. 'I wasn't ready to be the shooter again.'

Once the shock of her good fortune wears off, however, she says she'll try throwing the dice again. After all, sometimes lightning strikes twice.

Table Of Contents

The long legal battle between poker superstar Phil Ivey and East Coast casino Borgata over nearly $10 million that the former won in baccarat may finally be coming to a close.

NJ Online Gamblingreported Wednesday morning that Ivey and Borgata had reached a settlement, citing a July 2 filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Per usual in these cases, terms were not disclosed.

Ivey initially won the money all the way back in 2012, playing a series of sessions with gambling partner Cheung Yin “Kelly” Sununder agreed-upon conditions that enabled the pair to have a sizable edge on Borgata, unbeknownst to Borgata officials.

Borgata filed suit in 2014 and a legal war ensued for the next half decade.

According to gaming attorney and sometime PokerNews contributorMac VerStandig, the only real surprise is that the two sides took this long to come to terms.

'It's unsurprising to see litigation settled, especially at the appellate stage where both parties have had the opportunity to air respective grievances, and the cost of going forward may outweigh what either party stands to gain,' VerStandig said. 'Cooler heads normally prevail sooner but it's not at all surprising to see it come to pass here.'

History of Legal Back-and-Forth

While the legal war started in 2014, it took until late 2016 for a big inflection point to finally occur. At that point, the judge presiding over the case sided with Borgata and ordered Ivey and Sun to return more than $10 million they'd won — the at-issue baccarat millions plus some craps winnings.

The case continued on appeal, and some sources reported Ivey was in danger of losing tens of millions to Borgata if things continued to go poorly in court.

Further damage against Ivey came when Borgata was granted clearance to seize his Nevada assets early last year. They followed through on that in high-profile fashion, garnishing Ivey's winnings when cashed in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship.

Ivey's Hidden Progress

However, while every turn was seeming to go against Ivey, he was all the while making some small gains in the background, like a poker player stealing enough blinds to stay afloat in a tournament.

'Borgata's case has always had serious vulnerabilities'

The appeals process was apparently going far better for Ivey than the initial case. Of central concern was the issue of whether he had cheated by marking cards. While nobody disputed that he hadn't marked the cards in the traditional sense, Borgata argued that turning the cards in different directions so Ivey and Sun could identify tiny imperfections in them — 'edge sorting' — constituted marking.

NJ Online Gambling reported that Ivey was likely a small favorite on appeal, a sentiment with which VerStandig agreed.

Conclusion Not Thrilling, Not Surprising

If Ivey were to win his appeal, the case would have continued on remand, going back to a lower court for reconsideration.

Borgata would have been forced to return the $124,410 it had already seized from Ivey, and nothing would have been guaranteed going forward. Both sides would have also been on the hook to continue shelling out attorney fees, which have been mounting the entire time in the long-running case.

Furthermore, even if Borgata emerged a winner in court, it's uncertain whether anything but a Pyrrhic victory would have been achieved. A New Jersey search for Ivey's assets only turned up a 'zero-dollar' bank account, and Ivey has been keeping most of his poker-playing activities out of the U.S. and away from Borgata's reach.

NJ Online Gambling also pointed out that ultimately losing the case 'could potentially create a precedent that could harm parent company MGM Resorts International in future cases involving cheating or advantage casino play.'

Given that there appears to have been more downside than upside at this point for Borgata, the settlement seems unlikely to have been very costly for Ivey.

Borgata Craps Record Holder

'Borgata's case has always had serious vulnerabilities and Borgata is certainly justified in getting whatever settlement it can get and not risking those vulnerabilities on a remand,' VerStandig said.

Borgata Craps Table Layout

• Tags

  Phil IveyBorgataPoker and the Law

• Related Players

  Phil Ivey