Rolling the dice is a gesture so commonplace, you’d be forgiven if you forgot just how fundamental it is, and has been, to board games. Without it, pieces on boards sit unmoved, the number of things collected within a board game goes uncounted and Michael Jordan goes without his halftime gambling fix. But, as simple as this gesture may be, actually doing it is as complicated and stylish as you would like. Here are a few premium rolling techniques to try, and how they just may turn your luck around…

The Shake-and-Bake

You’ve seen it before, and you’ll see it again: This technique involves cupping the dice within your hands, shaking them around and tossing them onto the board. Sounds pretty straightforward, yes? Yet as ubiquitous as this method may be, it involves a surprising amount of coordination. See, once your hands start shaking, your nervous system finds itself jostled against the skin, which causes an intense level of heat to build at the tips of your various appendages (yep, that one, too) until a simple touch can ignite household objects with white-hot fury. Best to have multiple unbaked mince meat pies at the ready to channel that kinetic inferno into heating a tasty treat. Stay hydrated.

The Stop-and-Drop

A favorite among dirty rotten cheaters, this method of rolling the dice involves very little rolling. Simply grab a handful of dice, hover your hand over a board and open it. Ideally (for you), the dice will drop in a perfectly vertical manner and land precisely as they were in your hand, opening up the door for sleight-of-hand manipulation. Unfortunately, it also opens the door to passersby who would love to punch you in your face, but so is the price of your dirty, rotten, cheating soul.

The Flick-and-Lick

No need to even pick up the dice for this one: Place them on the table and flick them as hard as possible to cause some momentum and, ideally, high rolls. Your fingernails will rot, blacken and fall off, but fingernails are weird anyway, right? Do your poor fingie-wingies really need a candy coating? (Actually, that would be ideal considering how many times we devour our nails due to fear of getting a bad dice roll.) Now that you’ve given those dice a lickin’—as in beating them up—give them a lickin’—as in with your tongue—and enjoy the sweetness of victory with a surprisingly meringue-like aftertaste. Note, this may not be the best option for making friends at the table….

The Mime-and-Dime

Dice are just a construct created by our minds to ascribe meaning to a series of nonsensical inverse-Braille symbols. Thus, you would be wise to ditch them altogether and focus instead on the mind’s eye. The MIME’s eye, if you will (and you should). Visualize the color, weight and shape of a handful of dice as you shake up a fistful of air and open your hands, letting these mimed dice tumble across the table with not a sound to be heard. Use whatever result you desire. Oh, and ask your friends for 10 cents each; you do claim to make a living as an artist, after all.

The Random Number Generator

Think of a number between one and six, and use that as a result. Dice are expensive—and in THIS economy?!