"Fun-To-Know: Craps Made Simple!"

An okay tutorial DVD on one of the most popular casino games to play.

Having talked about and reviewed Poker Made Simple!, I extended my learning of casino games going with this DVD. Popular with casual gamers especially, Craps is the game where you have the highest possible edge in winning. Being a game featured on countless movies and TV shows, I decided to take a chance and see what all the fun is about.

Robert Hood teaches this amazing game, having been working for the casino industry since 1979. He did a great job explaining the staff members standing by the Craps table and their role(s) to the patron/gamer. The presentation then carries on to the spaces players can place bets on, what they mean and how much the bet wins. Most likely, the player will be looking at the PASS and DON'T PASS areas, and on occasion will look at the COME bets. You also learn about the Horn Bets and the World Bets, including the odds the shooter will face in which the occurrences of the number(s) the dice will land on. Yeah, you'll find it's one of the busiest games to ever be played but also giving opportunities to rapidly increase your profits.

Not really a bad presentation, but personally, my attention drifted off as soon as Hood went through the Odds and the PASS Line tutorial. All due respect to his knowledge of the game, but I found it to be too slow and unclear at times. Hood was gracious enough to spell everything out and repeat himself about some of the betting lines and the talking of odds, but perhaps the wonky editing, inconsistent audio levels and the slower-than-a-classroom-professor explanation didn't win me over. Don't think that's a harsh critique, as I've stayed up and watched this entire lecture by Professor Leonard Susskind's Introduction to Quantum Entanglements from Stanford University. It's fair to say that it was the teaching style and the mediocre video editing that threw my concentration off.



That brings to the DVD information. The video is in full screen (4:3) format—interlaced—with an MPEG-2 (mpgv) compression (the frame rate at 29.97). The audio is compressed via A52 Audio (ac3) over a 48000 Hz sample rate with 32 bits.

I felt the presentation could've been better, as there were subtle distractions in the background when showing the shot of the Craps table. The lackluster editing made the lesson from Hood seemed hard to listen all the way through. While Hood did a good job, he could've picked up the pace a little bit (repeating his points in the lecture wasn't all bothersome, however). Not sure if it was being comfortable in front of the camera, or not getting ahead of himself, but it was quite messy.

Some folks who have watched and reviewed this DVD got the basics and followed through the tutorial just fine. It is not the case with me. Since I found that the Fun-To-Know website has been shut down for a while now, it is unlikely that suggesting to re-produce this would ever be considered. Nevertheless, you did alright, Mr. Hood and thank you.

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he managed a personal blog made back in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming (software development) and video production, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, playing old video/DOS games, digital video archiving, and listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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