When you earn your living strictly by playing craps, you have to be pretty sure you not only know what you are doing, but also that what you do will be enough to profitably sustain a fairly nice lifestyle.
So come on in, I’d like to take you on a tour of…
The Mad Professor’s Precision-Shooting Laboratory
My lab, which looks suspiciously like a rather large, overly-garish rec-room (think, Elvis’ jungle room meets Danny Ocean’s playroom meets Dan Tanna’s bungalow; or a rather small pre-80’s casino dice-pit replete with a retro Rat Pack lounge). This is where I cultivate and develop new dice-influencing concepts as well as where I rehash, re-engineer, re-invent, recalibrate and generally overhaul old methods and strategies into a new breed of D-I-centric advantage-play hybrids.
The Table
Everything here in the lab is centered around my 12-foot PaulSon table which was an oh-so-thoughtful early Christmas present from Ms. MP several years back. Most of my toss-dynamic improvements over the last three years or so have been fostered almost entirely on this table and then re-validated and confirmed at the real-world casinos.
A couple of examples of those toss-dynamic improvements include the:
Dead-Cat Bounce
Although I had enjoyed some off and on success with this particular toss as far back as 1995, it never really got to the point of being an on-demand, on-command weapon.
It wasn’t until I spent a lot of time tweaking and practicing the stopped-dead-in-its-tracks-at-the-base-of-the-wall DCB to the point of perfection; that I was able to attain a level of reliability that I wanted.
Without this table, the Dead Cat Bounce would have remained one of those freak outcomes that happens more by random accident than by deliberate intention.
Underhand Forward-Spin Toss
If there was ever any singular element of my own dice-influencing that I was reluctant to pass onto the D-I community as a whole; the Underhand Forward-spin Toss would definitely be in the Top Three.
For me, the palm-up underhand toss can conquer some of the most “unplayable” tables on this planet. More importantly though, it brings an even higher level of primary-face, on-axis reliability to the tables that I’ve traditionally had no problems with (while using a traditional overhand palm-down backspin toss); so I now use the U-H Toss on a wide range of table-types and lengths, in an even wider range of casinos.
Again though, without this table here in my laboratory, I doubt that I’d have developed this toss much beyond the point of being a dice-throwing oddity instead of the solid-gold performer it is today.
Spin Control, Trajectory Variation & Backwall Rebounding
The more you know about what the dice you will do if you throw them a certain way, the better able you are to make tiny on-the-fly adjustments to your basic throw in order to adapt it to the various and sundry tables you’ll encounter.
Now obviously that statement should be self-evident, but that isn’t always the case especially when the question of how much or how little adjustment may be needed to turn a snarling angry-cur of a craps table into a placid little lap-dog.
If you don’t know precisely how a subtle change to one element (like spin-rate) may affect several others (like initial bounce-height and backwall rebound distance); then it becomes a matter of near-random guessing. When your money is on the layout, the real-world casino is the last place you should be guessing.
For me, your at-home practice-rig is the place where you can and should test both the extreme outer limits of each toss-dynamic element (both individually and collectively); but also where you should be determining how the tiniest of adjustments can have a major impact on your outcomes.
In most cases, subtlety is the key to refined and consistent precision-shooting.
By testing and quantifying not only the outermost boundaries of each element, but also gauging and measuring the subtlest of lightly-nuanced adjustments; you can learn all kinds of things about your toss which may be applicable at all kinds tables you’ll run a cross…or maybe it will be applicable at only one. The point is, the more you know about what the dice will do if you throw them a certain way, the better able you are to make the required adjustments no matter where you play.
Most of my own on-axis, primary-face advancement in the last three years or so have come as a direct result of what I’ve developed on this here table.
Though the DCB, the U-H Toss, and all of the Spin Control, Trajectory Variation and Backwall Rebound studies are only three examples out of the hundreds of development projects I could credit this table with (such as Neutral Dice Pick-Up, Facial Control and Double-Pitch Avoidance,
the Inch-by-Inch 100% On-Axis Primary-Face Process, Resolving Large-Muscle/Small-Muscle Conflicts, Grip Pressure Variance, and Release-point Follow-Through to name just a few more); I think it gives you a pretty good idea of how vital this one piece of lab equipment is in terms of furthering the art and the science of what it is I do.
Over here beside the PaulSon craps table are few more pieces of indispensable gear; the most important of which is my array of…
Laser Tools
If you haven’t had a chance to really study HSCIII/Maximus’ Laser Practice…Laser Perfection idea in Part Eight of my Current Practice…Future Profit series http://dicesetter.com/mp/mad138currentg.htm or the follow-up that he, Jeffrey47 and I did in Part Nine of that same series http://dicesetter.com/mp/mad138currenti.htm ; then you are missing out on what I consider to be one of the most important skill-elevation tools ever adapted to the art and science of dice-influencing.
This is also a perfect time to offer a public apology to Maximus. When our friend HSC III changed his internet handle to “Maximus”; I made a change to the accreditation of his Laser Practice…Laser Perfection idea in my newly published Crapshooting Bible to reflect that. Unfortunately however, there was a slip between the cup and the lip, and somehow the accreditation accidentally got dropped. Obviously I take full and complete responsibility for that gaff and I feel absolutely terrible about it. I offer my sincerest apologies to Maximus, and I can assure everyone that the oversight about crediting his absolutely outstanding idea will be corrected in subsequent printings.
Nearby my laser equipment, you’ll also notice a number of computers at my…
Roll-Tracking Station
…which look like they would be more at home in the telemetry shack at the Kwajalein/Wake Island MRTFB Reagan Test Site than in my retro-style dice-pit.
I currently use Maddog’s BoneTracker as my primary roll-tracking program simply because it tracks exactly what I want it to track and it delivers the information that I need, in a format that I want. I have lots of other roll-tracking software around here, but frankly B-T is the one that I currently use almost exclusively. Besides its ease of use and outstanding functionality, BoneTracker also keeps tabs on the five critical Foundation Frequencies that are the backbone of the free online DiceTool program ( http://www.bj21.com/links.shtml ) that is an integral and fundamentally imperative part of my Crapshooting Bible.
Using Bonetracker in combination with the DiceTool is a powerful amalgam that helps you sift and sort through your roll-tracking data in a way that separates the useable information from the merely curious (or as Irishsetter would say, it separates the noise from the static and sharpens the signal-to-noise ratio).
An advantage-play dice-influencer has to know for certain which bets and which sets offer the biggest advantage over the house for his current skills. Your bankroll cannot afford uninformed decision-making or ill-informed guesswork. The B-T/DiceTool combination gives you the critical information that you need.
In terms of my own game, DiceTool has significantly ratcheted up my in-casino earning by forcing me to focus most of my betting-weight on the wagers where I have the biggest edge and convinced me (through clearly obvious edge-per-roll and edge-per-decision values) to discard or scale back on most of the marginal or near-negative ones.
DiceTool is indispensable in terms of you bridge the gap between the validated skills you know you have…and the advantage-play revenues you deserve. As I mentioned previously, for those of you with web-enabled PDA’s like a Blackberry, Treo, or HP’s PocketPC; the full (and completely free) online version of DiceTool is now fully accessible to your PDA without need of downloading any programs.
That means you can instantly access D-T during let’s say a between-shooting-opportunities washroom break, to do an in-casino right-here/right-now which-bet/which-set for this particular table analysis.
Total cycle time (from starting to enter your five Foundation Frequencies to getting a complete what-set/what-bet/what-edge profile) takes no more than 5 seconds!
Without a doubt, this will provide a HUGE benefit for players who have encountered difficulty in bridging the gap between the shooting-skills they know they have…and the amount of dice-influencing profit they actually collect.
I also use two software programs from Steen ( www.cloudcitysoftware.com ). The first is the widely known and highly popular WinCraps™, while the lesser known is his Crapless Craps version called NeverEverCraps™. I use both of those programs primarily at my War-Gaming Station, which I’ll walk you over to shortly.
Voice Recognition Software
As most of you know, I use IBM’s ViaVoic™e voice-recognition software to pen most of my rather lengthy articles (like this one), but what most of you don’t know, is that I also use V-V to automatically enter roll-tracking data instead of having to manually input it. It not only acts as a time-saver, but it also lets me focus and concentrate on each and every practice toss as if it is THE toss.
Since we have the luxury of a fully stocked (to the point of intoxicant bedazzlement) bar here in the lab, let’s pause for a moment to sample some fine libations.
Over here by my own Wall of Fame (which I’ve created with those casino chip-set shadow-boxes you can buy in Las Vegas) to mark some of my more outstanding conquests from the green-felt jungles of the precision-shooting world, you will find my…
War-Gaming Command Center
Though it only appears to be three felt layouts (one Crapless Craps, one normal, and one microfiber), with a couple of customized sets of casino chips, a laptop computer, a calculator, and some random scribbling on a few pads of paper; there’s actually more to it than that.
Well actually, no, that is all there is to this station; but it’s what goes on here that makes the difference.
My war-gaming station is where I cultivate and develop new dice-influencing betting-concepts, as well as where I rehash, re-engineer, re-invent, recalibrate and generally overhaul old betting-methods, money-management processes, and time-worn wagering-strategies into a new breed of D-I-centric advantage-play hybrids.
A couple of prime exemplars of this process would be the…
Initial Steep Regression
While regression-betting is nothing new (it’s been a hallmark of John Patrick’s work dating back to the late ‘70’s); we have been able to refine it for advantage-play precision-shooters to the point of near-perfection in my ongoing 25-part Regression Avoids Depression series.
Darkside-Shooting
The largely untapped and highly favorable prospect of making the all-powerful 7 work for you during the point-cycle is also nothing new, but from a de-randomizers point of view, it offers a gold-mine that is easily excavated but mostly ignored.
The winning concepts that you’ve been reading about in my ongoing Shooting From The Don’t…
A Journey of Opportunity series were initially assayed, distilled, and filtered right here on my war-game layouts before being refined, re-weighed, re-evaluated and ultimately re-validated on the real-world casino tables.
Still other gaming-approaches like my Game Within A Game…Profiting From Your Come-out Cycle strategies and many of the Iron-Cross betting-methods that we continue to explore in the You Can’t Shine a Cow-Patty…or Can You? series, all came from this bet-scenario command center.
When you add in the amount of profit that many players have already derived from using some of the angles in my Match-Play Coupon Circuit series or the Dodging Bullets As A Darksider (the infamous Choppy-Table/Short-Leash Method (C-T/S-L) series; my time and effort spent in this particular corner of the lab has been definitely worth it.
Ready For Release
As you look around these three layouts, you’ll also notice a few more new or recently re-manufactured advantage-play methods that are pretty much ready for release. The first few include…
D-I Specific Kelly-style Wagering
There’s little doubt that the Kelly Criterion is the best way to grow your bankroll without unduly imperiling it. However the multi-wager opportunities of a craps layout often complicate the situation to a point where most players end up either severely over-betting their bankroll or dramatically under-betting their dice-influencing abilities.
Much of my new material will focus on clarifying and unraveling this optimal-play aspect; so, many of my future articles will be dedicated to helping you link the needlessly-wide skill-advantage/net-profit disconnect.
Hittin’ and Runnin’ Techniques
I make no secret about my precision-shooting doctrine of flying under the casino’s ever-watchful radar. Frankly I think I’ve developed the art of hiding-in-plain-sight into a tenet that can serve other players who are just as interested in preserving and safeguarding their golden-goose-of-D-I’ing equally well.
With that in mind, I’ve developed some incredibly effective Hit ‘n’ Run, shoot-and-scoot betting techniques that get you in and out of the casino with an armful of their cash but without any undue notice or heat. Obviously I am anxious to share as much of that with you as soon as possible. Yes, it is THAT important.
In concert with that, I’ve also developed some high-dollar betting-methods that I’ve been using at the big-buck, high bet-minimum ($50+) tables of the Northeast. The parade of fascinating characters that I’ve met along the way makes for an interesting read, but frankly none of that would even be addressable if I first hadn’t developed and refined my betting-methods right here on the war-game layouts.
The same applies to my…
Crapless Craps Strategies
I previously mentioned using Steen’s WinCraps™ version of Crapless Craps called NeverEverCraps™. I have used it extensively to evolve a number of Crapless betting-methods in preparation for (and subsequent refinement of) the wagering strategies I used during my yet-to-be-posted Crapless Craps Tour Across America series.
Again, if I hadn’t first quantified, analyzed, and properly calibrated all of these concepts on this test-bed; my profit picture couldn’t have progressed so quickly nor would it be quite so rosy.
There is also a ton of new stuff that I am still working on, but frankly all of the New Development stuff is going to have to wait until a little later on the tour.
Let’s continue our exploration of what several visitors to my lab have variously described as Keyser Soze’s safe-house, Lefty Rosenthal’s post-Vegas/pre-Boca think-tank, or Reuben Tishkoff’s retirement shrine to Old Vegas. I prefer to think of it as a slightly indulgent architectural celebration dedicated to a game that most people think is unbeatable.
Come on over here for a minute, I want to show my…
Gaming Library
The first thing that any craps player would notice is the sheer number on NON-gambling books that are part of my craps library.
That’s no accident.
You’d be surprised at the number of advantage-play dice-influencing concepts that are directly applicable to craps even though they were initially developed for fields of endeavor as diverse as Fluid Dynamics and Micro-adaptive Flow Control, Friction-Stir Welding, Hyperspectral Radiography, Aeronautics Propulsion and Telemetry Acquisition, Energetic Surface Processing, Biomimetrics, Compiler/Profiler Logging, Financial Derivatives, and even the over-analogized
Butterfly Effect.
You’ll also notice row upon row of gaming books that do not even discuss the subject of craps.
Again, that’s no accident.
There are a ton of advantage-play ideas that can be gleaned from books that are focused on other casino games like Baccarat, Pai Gow, Video Poker, and obviously A-P blackjack; as well as books directed towards casino management and surveillance.
Now to be fair though, I do have a pretty substantial collection of craps-related books; but frankly very few of them hold much worth in terms of making a net-contribution to the collective knowledge-base of the dice-influencing community, but obviously a few do.
You’ll also notice a smaller collection of videotapes and DVD’s. My favorite among those is the complete four-volume set of Steve Forte’s Gambling Protection series and its companion printed to me of the same name.
Next to my gaming library is my…
Trip Planning Area
Okay I’ll admit this part of my lab does look like the Lady Luck Lounge at the old Desert Inn during Robert Urich’s rein as “Dan Tanna”, and first-time visitors do half-expect to find Huggy Bear slouching over his fourth round of gin martinis; but this is actually where I plan my casino trips, as evidenced by the stack of comp offers, food and show vouchers, match-plays, and Any Room…
Any Weekday postcard offers semi-neatly organized by gaming-region and country.
To show that it is in fact a legitimate trip planning area and not just a throwback-to-a-60’s-era lounge, you’ll see a larger-than-life wall-map of the world that has colored push-pins in all of the casino destinations where I’ve played, as well as pins of a different color to demark the few places that offer craps but where I haven’t yet had the pleasure of playing.
A little earlier in our walk around the lab I mentioned that I had a few…
Projects Still In Development
They include:
~Jeffrey47’s new PerfectionDensity concept that we’ve been discussing over on the “Accordion” thread at dicesetter.com’s M-board.
In a nutshell, the PerfectionDensity concept helps us track the quality of each throw in relation to its actual outcome in a way that we can accurately predict how likely we are to encounter clusters or clumps of certain outcomes within a fairly tight time-frame (as measured by point-cycle rolls).
Though it is still in the conceptual stage; the idea of taking the quantity of influenced throws a skilled shooter is likely to produce during a given point-cycle (as we’ve already done in the Regression Avoids Depression series), and merging it with a predictive-model where the quality of each toss and the recurrence-interval (or frequency) of each clump of “good throws” is measured and weighed against the actual outcome; makes for a very compelling, bet-focusing venture.
~I am also continuing to work on my shooting from pretty much every player-position at both sides of the table. As I mentioned previously, I have set up the SL-end table-surface as medium- firm/neutral and the SR-end as medium-soft/bouncy. That way, I can practice on two different often- encountered but completely contrasting surfaces; and then move around the table, shooting from each of the player-positions while practicing on both types of surfaces.
That coincides with my strong recommendation that you set up your practice rig to closely mimic the table-surface you encounter most often at the casinos you normally play at most frequently.
~In concert with that, I am also working on improving my pitch-control and facial-correlation like never before.
Avoiding double-pitches has always been of utmost importance to me, but I am finding it even more relevant in terms of how much it can improve my in-casino profitability at an accelerated pace. In other words, for every additional percentage-point that I can improve my facial-correlation and pitch-control (especially in avoiding double-pitches); my profit improves at a much higher rate simply because most bets payoff at better than 1:1 even-money, and therefore the payback for any improvement in pitch-control or facial correlation is disproportionately rewarded when compared to the improvement itself.
As a result, small incremental improvements to pitch-control and facial-correlation has allowed me to make huge advances in the amount of money I can rake off of the tables, despite the fact that the been actual improvement itself has not really that significant. Obviously I’m pursuing that particular project with noteworthy gusto.
~I have also started to work on some function-expansions for DiceTool as well as a couple of add-on features. To help the serious recreational dice-influencer make more profit from the current skills they have right now, I am also working on some advanced bet-calibration, bet-spread, and bet-sizing features for DiceTool that will take all of the guesswork and fear out of your wagering decisions. Watch for more details on this development very soon.
~Needless to say, I am still improving and refining my Game Within A Game come-out cycle betting-strategies for both Rightside and Darkside bettors. As well, I am also composing some incredibly efficient variants of the Iron Cross wager that you’ll be reading about in my ongoing You Can’t Shine A Cow-Patty…or Can You? series.
~Along those same lines, my War-Gaming Station has seen me putting in a fair amount of effort into some fascinating counter-intuitive approaches to the Field-bet while using variants of the S-6 dice-set on low-population, high-buck tables. I’m debating how long I can hold off on expressing my overwhelming enthusiasm for this sometimes shorter-lived, but much-more-profitable point-cycle betting approach.
Well folks, that’s the five-cent tour of my precision-shooting laboratory, so let’s mosey on over to the table and see what our toss looks like.
Good Luck & Good Skill at the tables…and in Life.
Sincerely,
The Mad Professor
Copyright © 2006
