How To Get It, and How To Keep It
Part XII

For the savvy advantage-player, creating more shooting opportunities is almost as important as maximizing each profit opportunity every time you pick up the dice.

The two go hand in hand. 

The better you get at this dice-influencing craft, the more often you’ll want to shoot the dice, and with each new turn, you’ll want to squeeze out maximum profitability.

When you know that you’ve developed a player-edge over an “unbeatable game” like craps, it’s sometimes difficult not to develop any arrogant feelings of superiority or condescending views toward random-rollers…but it’s important that you don’t. 

The casino table is no place to become a FIGJAM (see the Mad Professor’s Dictionary).

Moreover, arrogance and self-importance can be costly especially when your shooting-skills are still in the formative inconsistent stage of development. An occasional outstanding hand often raises a totally unearned and undeserved bulletproof Superman feeling; while just as often, your one-hand mini-mammoth dominance is promptly crushed and trampled by your very next over-confident/over-bet quick-Out hand.

It’s one thing to be confident and self-assured about your throw…it’s something completely different to be too cocky and arrogant, especially if your shooting-consistency or revenue-generation really doesn’t justify all of the false bravado.

Even a Novice Can Benefit From A Professional Approach

So why am I always promoting the idea of betting MORE during your own hands and LESS (or not at all) when a random-roller has the dice?

Well, it comes down to a couple of compelling money-making abstracts:

Ø       A professional Precision-Shooter only bets when he has an exploitable edge over the house.

Ø       A professional Precision-Shooter DOESN’T bet unless he has a sustainable enough edge over each of the bets that he is contemplating.  

Ø       The professional advantage-player only bets within the confines of his adequately-financed bankroll.

Ø       The professional advantage-player makes efficient wagers that reflect his validated edge (where the size and breadth of his bets mirror or are slightly less than) his verified and volatility-weighted advantage. 

Ø       In other words, the size and spread of a professional Precision-Shooters bets reflect his actual advantage over the casino as well as the depth of his bankroll.

Ø       A professional advantage-player values his time at the tables and respects the money that he has brought to it.  For that reason, he’ll be looking to maximize both the efficiency of his bets and the effectiveness of his efforts.

Ø       He won’t waste his time or money betting on random-rollers and in many cases he’ll seek out situations where he can make a quick strike against the casinos bankroll and be out of there before they have a chance to associate his face with the disappearance of their money.

To control your dice-influenced win-rate; you have to bet into gaming-situations where you have a validated edge, and do it in such a way that even a worst-case-loss-limit scenario leaves your bankroll pretty much intact instead of in shambles.

To control your random-roller betting; it’s often just a matter of controlling your patience, anxiety and frustration as the dice leisurely wend their way around the table.

Random-Snacking versus Advantage-Dining

You may not be a professional craps player and any aspirations to do so may not even appeal to you; however, the logic and motivation behind a pro’s bets are pretty much the same as those for a serious recreational player. 

Both players want to lose less and win more.  

Ø       The pro understands that to do that on a sustainable basis, he has to scale back his non-advantage bets while prudently ratcheting up the advantage ones.

Oh don’t get me wrong, a pro will still be TEMPTED to make lots of non-advantage bets on an on-going basis, just as I am…every single day of the week.  He may even give into that temptation way more often than is healthy for his bankroll, but if he wants to continue playing as a pro and continue making money like a pro; then he has to cut back on his habit of random-bet-snacking and take up a healthier and lower-risk diet of advantage-bets.

Like I said, a professional advantage-player values his time at the table and respects the money that he has brought to it.  For that reason, he’ll be looking to maximize both the efficiency of his bets and the effectiveness of his time and effort.

Random-bets are the junk-food that satisfies your moment-to-moment cravings to gamble, but only advantage-betting can provide healthy, sustainable income-nourishment and long-term bankroll-sustenance.

When you ignore that, you ignore the reality of casino gambling.  

Take a look around at how many of our talented dice-influencing pals have disappeared from the casino scene over the past couple of years.  It’s not that they didn’t have the ability to control their shooting…it’s just that they couldn’t suitably control their betting.

The moment a novice-to-intermediate dice-influencer comes to that inspired realization, he automatically elevates his game to the next stage of advanced dice-influencing development.

Retreat From Random and Advance Your Leverage

I can’t stress how important it is for you to keep track of how much money you are either making or losing when you bet on any random-players.  

I’m not just talking about your overall net-loss (or infrequent net-win) figure.  I’m talking about understanding the total amount of money that you actually bet on random-rollers.  Then I want you to consider that amount when compared to the quantity of money that you currently wager on yourself.

The more you understand the financial significance of the dice-influencing edge that you’ve built up over the casino, and the more you value your time at the tables and the more you respect the money that you bring to it; the more you’ll want to maximize both the efficiency of your bets and the effectiveness of your efforts.

When aspiring dicesetters look at the big picture, they are often surprised by the sheer size of the imbalance between how much total money they are betting on random-rollers versus how little they are actually betting on themselves.

For example:

Ø       Let’s say that your average random-roller bet comes to $20 per shooter.

Ø       Let’s also say that for every lap of the table, you selectively bet on just eight random-rollers.

Ø       That means that you’ve wagered a total of $160 of your money on them.

Now take a look at how much you’ve won or lost on them.

Ø       For argument sake, let’s say that you’ve only lost $20 during that one rotation around the table.  That’s a 12.5% loss on the total amount of money you’ve bet on R-R’s during just one average lap.  That seems like it’s too high of a loss in such a low-vig game like craps, but in fact, house-edge and volatility conspire together to become be a silent and deadly bankroll-shrinking combo.

Ø       Let’s also say that you have a clear dice-influencing advantage over the house, so you bet more on your own good shooting.  For argument sake, let’s say that the average bet that you make on yourself is about $40 per turn.

Ø       You bet $40 on yourself, but $160 on random-rollers.  That means you are betting FOUR TIMES more on random-rollers than you are on your own advantage-shooting…in just ONE LAP of the table.

Ø       You are putting more hope onto random-rollers in a negative-expectation game than you are in skill-based commitment into your own validated positive-expectation dice-shooting skills.  How silly is that?!  That is NOT how a smart player ratchets up his earnings…but it is a perfect way to keep crushing them down.

Ø       In this scenario, we’ll say that your $40 self-investment usually spins off an average profit of $20.  That’s a good thing.  You’ve made a 50% return on your dice-influencing investment.

Ø       Unfortunately, the 50% R.O.I. that you routinely manufacture during your own great shooting is not enough to overcome the average $20 loss that you endure on random-rollers while waiting for the dice to come back to you.

Though making a $20 profit on your $40 self-investment is good, the offsetting $20 loss on your $160 random-gamble is clearly self-defeating.

Now some people will look at the numbers and say, “Gee, I’m making a 50% profit on my bets, and only a 12.5% loss when I bet on random-rollers, so why am I only breaking even?”

The simple answer is that although you are betting twice as much on yourself than you are on any one individual R-R, the TOTALITY of the bets you are making on all of the random-rollers is far too high for even your own excellent Precision-Shooting skills to overcome.

Ø       In this scenario, if you had taken even half of the money that you’d normally wager on R-R’s and put it on your own good shooting; then you’d likely have a much healthier net-profit to show for it. 

Ø       Each additional dollar that you wisely wager on yourself should be offset with at least a two-dollar reduction on random-bets…preferably even more.

Ø       In this case, a 50% return on an $80 self-investment would have spun off a $40 profit.  That would have been enough to overcome the $20 you wasted on those random-shooters, and still left you with an overall profit.

Ø       If you take that idea one step further, and perhaps only bet $10 (on average) on those same eight R-R’s as you wait for another shot at the dice; then that $80 overall random-gamble would result in a much more palatable $10 loss.

Ø       When subtracted from the now-tastier $40 self-made profit that your own good shooting spun off; you’d have a net-profit of $30 from that same one-lap around the table.

The money you spend on random-rollers has to be viewed in the overall perspective of the total money that you are wagering on random-rollers versus the total amount you are investing in your own advantage-shooting.

Ø       Keep track of how much you win or lose on your own shooting, and keep track of how much money you actually invest in yourself. 

Ø       Then compare it to how much all those other seemingly small random-roller wagers end up costing you when viewed in their totality (when you multiply your average R-R bet by the number of R-R’s that you actually bet on during one lap of the table).

When you start looking at how many rotations around the table you’ll endure during an average session, and how MUCH money you actually wager on R-R’s when compared to how LITTLE you are investing in yourself; many players are shocked to see how much hope and faith they are placing on the shoulders of R-R’s and how miserly they are treating their own good, validated and verified dice-influencing talents.

Makes you go “Hmmm” doesn’t it!?

Keep track of how much you are gambling during all the times when the dice aren’t in your hands and compare it to how much or how little you are actually venturing on yourself when the dice are in your hands.

The Precision-Shooting advantage-player puts their money where their advantage is.

Ø       One of the first ways you can make more money off of your current talents is to shift some of the money that you’d normally bet on everyone else, and wager it on yourself.

Let me put it another way.

In order to afford lots of bets on lots of random-rollers…you have to be one hell of a GREAT shooter.

If you’re not that great of a shooter yet, but the total amount of the money that you bet on random-rollers (in total) is greater than or equal to the amount that you bet on yourself; then your chances of making sustainable and consistent profit from this game is slim to nil.

A savvy player puts his money where his advantage is, and excludes it from wagers where he doesn’t.

In a Few Words…

Ø       Create additional shooting opportunities for yourself and maximize the profit from each one.

Ø       Control any feelings of arrogance or superiority. 

Ø       Even a novice can benefit from a professional approach.

Ø       A professional Precision-Shooter bets when he has an exploitable edge over the house, and only bets within the confines of his adequately-financed bankroll.

Ø       The pro makes efficient wagers that reflect his validated volatility-weighted edge, and controls his random-betting by controlling his patience, anxiety and frustration.

Ø       Random-bets are the empty-hope junk-food that momentarily satisfies your gambling hunger, but only advantage-betting provides healthy, sustainable income-nourishment and long-term bankroll-sustenance. 

Ø       Random-junk betting causes chronic and often fatal bankroll illnesses, while continuing to destroy the aspirations for many of our skilled friends and former dicesetting associates.

Ø       Keep track of how much money you make or lose on random-rollers.

Ø       Look at the imbalance between the total amount of money that you bet on random-rollers versus how little you bet on yourself.

Ø       Each additional dollar that you wisely wager on yourself should be offset with at least a two-dollar reduction on random-bets.

Ø       A savvy player puts his money where his advantage is, and excludes it from wagers where he doesn’t.

You don’t have to be a professional to play like one.   As a skilled player, you can do this too.   Your skilled shooting gives you the means to get the profit; you just have to be shrewd enough to keep it.

Ø       You have the knowledge of what it takes to win.

Ø       You have the skill to de-randomize the dice.

Ø       You know which bets are good for you and which ones aren’t.

Now it’s up to you to decide whether you want to seek out additional shooting opportunities and keep more of the profit that your own good shooting produces, or whether you are satisfied with the status quo of your current level of profit and loss.

What you decide determines where your profit will come from or where your hard-earned money will go to.

With Precision-Shooting…control is entirely up to you.

In Part Fourteen of this series we’ll be looking at a couple of techniques the pro’s use to grow their casino wealth while still protecting their bankroll assets.  As well, we’ll be exploring several ways to climb up to the next level of Precision-Shooting profit…and several steps beyond that too.

Until then,

Good Luck & Good Skill at the tables…and in Life.

The Mad Professor

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