Card Craps at Pechanga (2015 Edition)

Since no one has posted details about this and since Alan is into craps but not the casino itself, I feel it might be good to post this.

I went by Pechanga this past Saturday to collect a gift (the place was too full to where I regret this decision). I heard they recently changed up their card craps again.

The standard California Card Craps is where many decks of cards of Ace,2,3,4,5,6 is used on 2 separate horns. Each card from the horn will reflect a dice roll.

Pechanga opted with a different approach in 2015

1. No more using the traditional 2 horns
2. Now there is one set of Ace,2,3,4,5,6
3. The pit boss will shuffle the six cards by scrambling the cards face down on the table. (I do not know what that process is called, but casino dealers do it when a new deck of cards have to be used and all 52 cards are scrambled with 2 hands into a big mess form before it is gathered back into a single deck of cards).
4. There are six numbered boxes that are about the size of a playing card
5. The pit boss will fill each boxes face up with a card (This happens before #6)
6. The player now tosses real dice
7. The outcome of the row will map to the box where the card is displayed

e.g. Scenario

#5 Pit boss places at random

1 - Five of Spades
2 - Four of Spades
3 - Two of Spades
4 - Six of Spades
5 - Ace of Spades
6 - Three of Spades

#6 The player rolls the dice

4 on one die and 3 on the other die

#7 The outcome of the row will map to the box where the card is displayed

Since 3 has the Two of Spades
Since 4 has the Six of Spades

The outcome is 8

Other than that

There are no popular Fire Bets and Small/Tall/All Bets.

The laying odds are up to 5x for all 4/5/6/8/9/10 pass/dont pass line bets, not the traditional 3/4/5x odds.

Several other casinos have card craps with throwing dice and I think the idea of throwing dice appeals to players. Frankly, if I am going to throw dice I'd rather do it in Vegas so I play very little card craps in California and always have played little here.

It's also more popular among players to have the cards dealt face up -- and I think these changes at Pechanga will make its game more popular as more players learn about it.

Rincon deals its cards face down which made the game as random as playing roulette.

Pechanga's face up version will at least give players HOPE that throwing the dice could help them win.

I would think all casinos would expect a dice toss outcome to be random, except with 7 appearing the most often, then 6/8, 5/9, 4/10/ 3/11, 2/12. The two craps tables were indeed crowded even at $10 and $15 minimums respectively. I suppose the players really believe that dice influencing can work with this new format. I just think it is only feasible influence the hard 4,6,8,10, though they carry 9-10% house edges.

From the same source of rumors, I heard the Pechanga is one of the rare casinos where slot attendants in the high limit rooms get higher income on tips than the carnival table games dealers.

I'm not surprised about the slot personnel getting more from tips -- as they probably get larger tips and there is a small "pool" of dealers to share those tips.

I asked about this at Caesars in Vegas.

The slot crew has about 40 who share in the tip pool. But the table dealers will share literally among 400 or more dealers.