1) how much can a pro make?

2) if a person can cheat on dice will he win most of the time?

1) I don't know but unless you are very very strong you won't make money (tourneys feature too many advanced players and internet is full of bot cheaters)
2) Yes absolutely (until the scam gets discovered). There is a nice feature (from what I remember)in XG which display the correlation between dice estimated luck ant game results and it is an important factor.

In the real world, actual dice cheaters are incredibly rare and are quickly caught. The last confirmed incident that I'm aware of took place nearly 20 years ago.

Compared to card games like poker and gin, live backgammon is remarkably free of cheats. (Online is a different story and I always advise people not to play online for money.)

Another example of a dice mechanic being caught was a little more recent (2008): http://www.gammonlife.com/news/dice_cheater_caught.htm

Only one book I know of has ever really dealt with cheating in Backgammon, and it does it incredibly well. It is "The Amazing Book of Backgammon" by Jon Tremaine. You can get it second hand cheaply at www.AbeBooks.com As a former ameater Magician myself I can really recommend this book.

When I play for money (and there is not much backgammon money action where I live, I use what I call the 2 dice rule. Simply we copy what they do in tournaments which is only use a total of 2 dice. A player indicates the end of his turn by tapping the edge of the board. This guards against dice being switched in and out as the dice are there for you to use. If a player plays 55 instead of the 53 he rolled then the evidence of what he rolled is there. No premature rolling can occur. A meyer dice tube is slightly better as it speeds up the game even more (no endless shaking of the dice and fewer invalid rolls).

But read Tremaine's book, as I have seen a lot of the things he reveals in the book actually done in tournaments. It is a very good introduction to backgammon - no diagrams but every board example (and there are many) are colour photos of the board.

Living in Vegas for many years I did meet a few card cheats, and in a couple cases they showed me how they did what they did. I never witnessed any "real life" cheating.

I know of one guy who was a dice cheater at the craps table, but I never seen what exactly he was doing, I was told he was sliding a die-I think it was BS.


the card cheats were real, however.


This is only a guess but it seems to me cheating at cards would be much easier and more profitable than cheating dice.


I knew a few slot cheats many years ago before they put bill validators on the slots, they fished coins.

Cheating aint my bag, I seen very little of it considering the years I been around pool rooms, casino's and Vegas. I dont gamble in casino's cause that aint gambling, however I been around and cheating is rare. Now days with HD surveillance cameras its probably next to impossible to cheat in a casino. I'm not living in Vegas much so thats a guess too.