A good boxman at the craps tables has sharper eyes than an eagle, and is ten times more street savvy than a sidewalk peddler in front of Macy's. He is always on the alert for unusual moves by a player, especially the person shooting the dice. More than once I have seen the boxman halt the game and request that the player holding the dice—particularly if he switched them from one hand to the other, or made some other unorthodox movement with the cubes—to drop them back on the table for examination before allowing them to be put back into play.

Any die that flies off the table is returned to the boxman to be checked before the shooter can continue the roll. Dice in play at each table are secretly coded to prevent any loaded dice from being switched into the game. Only once did I see a die fly off the table and get returned directly into play without the boxman examining it. The player who picked up the cube and directly tossed it back into action for the shooter was Dean Martin.

When a die, or both dice, are thrown with such force that they fly off the craps table, great care is taken to find the cube or cubes and return it, or them, to the boxman. Sometimes a game can be halted for several minutes while players, stickmen, and pit personnel scurry around looking for the lost dice.
One time a die whizzed past me and, no matter how hard we all looked, the cube never showed up. Later, at a blackjack table, I reached into my jacket pocket for a Kleenex and came up with the missing die.

I've heard stories of loaded dice being switched into the game. If true, this had to be done with the contrivance of both the box-man and the stickmen, if not the pit boss too. With all the safeguards in place in today's casinos it would be a daring and risky undertaking.

Some boxmen have a sixth sense when it comes to the roll of the dice. Ask me, I know. The simple movement of the index finger of a boxman at the Las Vegas Sands during my wild and foolhardy early days foraying in the casinos cost me thousands of dollars. That one little movement by the boxman's index finger at the Sands cost me $6,500. It also sounded the death-knell for one of my first ill-conceived hotshot, sure-fire "systems."
Even today I wince at my daring, and the ultimate disastrous consequences of that system. Rather than relating the painful details myself, here's how my mentor, Lyle Stuart, told it in his Winning at Casino Gambling:

"[A] postscript about my friend, Arnold. On one occasion he believed he had a sure-fire system. He would stand at a craps table, wait for the shooter to come out with a point and then place bets of $1,000 on the 5 and 9, $1,200 each on the 6 and 8, and he'd buy the 4 and 10 for $1,000 each.

• Tales Of Casino Luck And Folly Part4 (0)