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Getting
the Most Out of Your Practice Sessions In
Part
II of this article, we talked about
Warm-Up Exercises, and how to get the most out of your Practice Rig. We discussed the merits of an
“Enlightened” Exercise, and how to
set ideal Practice-to-Play ratios to match your current abilities.
We
still have a number of areas to cover, so that you can get the maximum benefit from your
practice sessions.
Today
they include:
v
Why
Make Session Notes?
v
Casino-Session
Notes
v
Grip
Notes and Mental “Check-Offs”
v
Practice-Session
Notes
v
Using
a Craps-Roll Calculation Program
Why
Makes Session Notes? Near the end
of
Part II,
I mentioned that I have completed a series of articles entitled
Mad Professor's
Shooting Bible, it covers
the various sets, grips, throws, sweet-spots, and targets that I use. I mention that now, because in
Part I of that
article, we take a detailed look at how to make “actionable” session notes that
WILL make a difference to your performance. If you want
to see the amount of detail that I put into those notes, and WHY they are so important for
consistent profitability; I would kindly urge you to take a second look
now.
Casino-Session
Notes When you are
throwing well in the casino, you should be making numerous mental notes about EXACTLY what
you are doing to make this roll so good. When
the roll is over, you can go to the washroom or a nearby slant-top slot machine to cool
down and also make some quick, but detailed notes of WHY it worked. While you may
be in “the zone” during your good-to-great rolls, you want to make this a
regular occurrence, right? To do that, you
have to figure out precisely what you are doing right. If you want consistency, you have to do it,
otherwise, those great rolls will be VERY infrequent and inconsistent.
Your
casino time will also show you all kinds of things that are wrong with
your Precision-Shooting. Your DETAILED session-notes will again point to each one of
them. It’s just as important to figure out what you are doing right, as well as
what you are doing wrong.
In most cases,
when you try to make mid-course corrections in the casino, your bankroll suffers
miserably. While sometimes a small in-casino adjustment, like rotating one of the
dice a quarter-turn forward will help, most of the time, one of our fundamental throwing
elements has taken a holiday because we neglected to do everything EXACTLY the same way
that we do it in our at-home practice sessions.
That
is when you should cut your casino-sessions short, and revert to the practice rig for more
fine-tuning and more ingrained pre-throw “check-offs”. Grip
Notes and Mental “Check-Offs”
What
the heck is a “check-off”? Well, we
are not talking about the Eastern European navigator on-board Star Trek’s Starship
Enterprise. Rather, we are talking about
mental checks or lists that you use before lofting the dice.
You
can call them mental checklists that you review before every throw. You can call them the Horizontal Mambo for all I
care, as long as you use them ALL THE TIME. I
want you to check off or confirm everything about your set, grip, stance
and throw that you know works. The “ALL
THE TIME” part is where your consistency will come from.
You
perfect your grip and your throw on the practice table, so if you aren’t ready for
primetime at the casino; then keep practicing.
How
will you know when you are ready for primetime at the casino?
As
you keep track of your Sevens-to-Rolls ratio, and your Signature Numbers, those two items
will tell you when you are ready to put
So
what is on this check-list, and how do we check it off?
Everything
about the dice-set, your grip, your stance, your target and your throw have to be
near-perfect. You want to throw successfully
and you want to throw consistently. You have to go through your check-list in as
little time as possible.
To
accomplish this, you should have a pre-throw routine that you go through every
time that you pick up the dice. At
first it will take some time to run through everything in your mind. That is why we are practicing this at home.
Once
you go through several hundred or in some cases, several thousand repetitions, the whole
routine will become ingrained in your mind, and the actions and the check-list will become
second nature to you. You should see
improvements in the time that it takes to cover all these “check-offs” quite
quickly.
What are some
of the things that should ABSOLUTELY be on this check-list?
I
would definitely include:
Ø
Alignment
of the dice. They should be perfectly flat
and square on the table, and correctly aligned with the back-wall of the table.
Ø
Finger
placement should be exactly the same.
Ø
Finger
pressure should be exactly the same.
Ø
Body
alignment should be noted.
Ø
Body
stance should be exactly the same for each throw.
Ø
Breathing
patterns should be included on this list.
Ø
Arm,
wrist, hip, torso, leg and foot movement and motion (or lack of it) is very important as
well. EVERYTHING has to be consistent.
That
is just the tip of the iceberg. The list can
be as long or short as necessary. What is
really important is that your pre-throw routine should be the same EVERY time.
Practice-Session
Notes
When
you are relaxing in the peace, quiet and solitude with your practice table at home, you
can refer to the notes that you made immediately following all of your casino sessions. Your notes will remark upon the areas that gave
you the most concern. If you wrote about
fatigue or distractions, you can deal with ways to overcome them. If the notes addressed on-axis 7-outs; then you
can also deal with that on your at-home rig. Your notes
have to be complete enough and insightful enough to shed light on what the actual problems
are. They should also highlight the positive
aspects of your casino session. Those notes
are used to decode what is wrong with your game, and they should
provide some clues on how to fix them. At the
same time, you want to be sure to include all of the aspects that were good about your
dice-tossing and make them a permanent part of your routine. If you
determine that you have a throwing problem; then figure out a grip, or stance or release
or targeting solution. If it's a money-management problem; then use Monopoly money
to track your usual betting moves to determine where the weakness lies. If it's a
chip-handling and bet-preparation problem; then buy some poker chips to practice with. If
it is a fatigue problem; then start working-out to build stamina.
Whatever
the problem(s) are, they are simply profitability-obstacles that have to be overcome. You
have to deal with each one, and you have to deal with all the new ones that are uncovered
once you solve and overcome the first set. That is the nature of consistent
success in Precision-Shooting. It is
frustrating, but it is rewarding. Like I said
before,
you perfect your grip and throw on the practice table.
If it isn’t quite ready for primetime at the casino; then keep
practicing. As you keep track of your
Sevens-to-Rolls ratio, and your Signature Numbers, your Practice Table results will tell
you when you are ready to put s-m-a-l-l money down on the real casino tables to
test your skills.
So,
how do we know when our Practice Table results are telling us that we are ready to put s-m-a-l-l
money down on the real casino tables? Ah, my friend, we use a…
Craps
Roll-Calculation Program
A while back,
two different guys came up with two different complex spreadsheet programs for doing some
roll-frequency calculations. These were
specifically designed for precision-Shooters. Both
pieces of software are GREAT, and I would heartily recommend either one of them for your
use.
Both of these
programs are very effective, and any Precision-Shooter can do some quick
and easy reckoning of how their own throwing is, compared to the regular expected random
outcomes of the dice. By using either
program, the computer does all of the computations for you, so that you can concentrate on
your actual shooting. That way, your progress
is much easier to assess, and problem areas, such as off-axis throwing or double-pitching,
are easier to pinpoint and contend with.
Those two
excellent programs are: Ø Pablo’s Toss Tracker which is available on-line directly from his site here.
Ø
Porkchop’s
Craps Tracker C-RAT program, which is currently in the beta-test phase of
its development.
Toss
Tracker
is a sophisticated program developed by Pablo, which is slick and very easy to use. It looks great and is superbly functional. The fact that it has an on-line demo and some
pre-loaded roll statistics makes it intuitively straight-forward, effortless and
undemanding. I like it a lot! If you haven’t tried it, I would strongly
recommend that you do so.
Craps
Tracker C-RAT
is a program developed by Porkchop, that is MS-Excel based.
This Craps Roll Analysis and Tracking
program also has some pre-loaded roll statistics, and lets you specify different dice sets
and individual dice-outcomes just like Pablo’s Toss Tracker. While I had to do a lot more reading of the
instructions before I felt comfortable with it, I became totally at ease as soon as I made
my first few dice-roll entries. The bonus
part of this program is that you can hook it up to any commonly available
voice-recognition software program, such as:
Ø
Dragon
Naturally-Speaking Preferred v6.0, or,
Ø
IBM
Via-Voice Pro Enterprise v9.1
When
you hook Porkchops Craps Tracker C-RAT up with a voice-recognition program, it’s
strength and performance really shines through. If
your computer is nowhere near your practice layout…no problem…just use one of
those mini digital tape recorders that are VR-compatible.
After your practice session, just play the tape for your VR-program, and all
the data is entered and calculated automatically for you…no fuss, no muss, no bother.
Both
Pablo’s Toss Tracker and Porkchop’s Craps Tracker C-RAT
program are well thought out and enjoyable to use.
Moreover, they are important tools to add to your practice arsenal.
Whichever
Roll-Calculation Program you select doesn’t matter to me. What really counts is that they make easy work of
figuring out EXACTLY where your strengths lay as far as Signature Numbers
are concerned. At the same time, both of
these programs calculate your SRR and on-axis throwing percentages and much, much more.
In addition,
these programs will help you tailor betting strategies that focus in on your current
Precision-Shooting strengths. As your skill
evolves, these programs graphically show you where new profit opportunities may be found. That, my friends, is how real consistent
profit is achieved.
Remember,
the practice rig is where you fine-tune and align your game; the casino is where you make
your money.
In
Part Four of this series, I’m going show you how using ONE grip,
but SLIGHTLY varying your finger placement and pressure will GREATLY alter results. We’ll also look at how you can troubleshoot
your own set, grip and toss.
Until the then,
Good Luck & Good Skill at the tables…and in Life!
Written
by:
The
Mad Professor
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