Your current practice determines your future profit, so it’s pretty easy to see how and why the time you spend on your at-home rig today can pay bigger dividends at the casino tomorrow.
Focus On QUALITY As You Build Up QUANTITY
Many players like to accumulate roll-stats for a sizeable number of tosses in order to give their Sevens-to-Rolls Ratio, or on-axis percentages or Box-Numbers Ratio or Average Hand-Length extra credence and validity.
That’s a good thing.
- Obviously if the sampling of rolls is too small then it might lead you to believe you are seeing certain things that just won’t hold up over the long-term.
- The more your roll-stats hold up for a longer period of time over a greater number of tosses; then the more likely those skills will be transferable (and exploitably profitable) when you take your show down to the casino.
However, it is important that you are not mindlessly throwing-by-rote just to accumulate as many rolls as possible before determining their worth.
The better way is to make EACH roll count as the THE roll that is most important. That is the way to really dial-in some useable, ingrained muscle-memory into every fiber of your being instead of just numbly going through the motions of tossing the dice.
Make each roll count, and make each roll the very best it can be.
Let me give you an example of how you can take a slightly different approach (within the same data-collecting parameters you are using now) that might also lead to improved results.
- Let’s say that you are in the middle of completing your goal of 3600 throws while using the X-6 set.
- You are doing this in increments of 72 rolls at a time, and keeping steady track of the results.
All of that is great, and it assumes that you have pretty much finished all of your toss-mechanics experimenting and testing (at least during the roll-recording portion of your practice-sessions).
Now let’s bring a little more casino-world realism into it.
- You are trying to get a solid baseline of performance from the X-6 set to evaluate its usefulness. To do that, you’ll want to ELIMINATE all of your warm-up practice throws (unless of course your local casino lets you throw a few warm-ups before you have to put your money on the line).
- Whether you are at your practice-rig or at the real-world casino tables, I want you to focus on EACH and EVERY throw as if it is a “money” throw.
- Every throw that you are using for “evaluation and roll-recording purposes” should be just as focused as your “in-casino” throw. Otherwise your practice-rig results will likely be WAY different than your in-casino results, and what you think your practice-session tosses are telling you, will be completely different (and obviously much less valid) than what your real-world tosses are saying.
- If you focus one way while you are practicing, and focus in a much more refined and perfected way when you play; then don’t delude yourself into thinking that your practice-sessions are helping you nearly as much as they could…or they should.
- Don’t let the “I’ve got to get a set of 72 throws in before I do something else” state-of-mind settle in at the practice-rig. By that I mean that you don’t want to be thinking, “Five more throws…four more throws…three more throws…” while you are supposed to be focused on delivering a consistent “Every roll is THE roll” type of concerted effort.
- If you are easily distracted about anything other than the two dice that are in your hand and the very next toss that you are about to make; then chances are your casino results will vary GREATLY from your home sessions (and neither of them will ever live up to their greatest potential until you address that attention, concentration, and distracted-too-easily problem).
- In the casino, you never know when your roll is going to end, so every toss should be considered a “money throw” as far as your game-focus is concerned.
- Bringing some of that real-world mental intensity to your at-home session conditions you to make the entire focus-on-every-throw concentration come automatically and without hesitation or equivocation every time the dice are passed to you by the stickman.
In other words, practicing your game-intensity at home makes it more recallable in the casino.
In a phrase, use your at-home session to…
Focus on QUALITY, as you build up QUANTITY.
Where You Are…Where You Are Going…How To Get There
Your powers of observation will be called upon many times during a typical practice-session. In fact, your entire practice-session should be one big powers-of-observation-and-opportunity-awareness exercise.
- The better you get at observing what your current tosses are doing, and the more aware you are to the opportunities that those tosses are offering; then the better you’ll be able to capitalize on them when you see the same throws emanating from your hands in the casino.
The dice-results that your throws are producing…your ability to recognize them as genuine opportunities…and the confidence of knowing WHAT to do and WHEN to do it…determines how much profit you’ll be able to derive from your de-randomized throws.
Here’s an example:
When you take a close look at the double-pitch 7-outs that you’re getting, they can tell you a lot about some of the things that you are ALMOST doing right.
- Determining the throwing-distance or trajectory-height or spin-rate or throwing-force at which your good tosses starts to turn to crap, will tell you a lot about where more control-input is needed or where too much has been applied and now needs to be scaled back.
- It is vitally important to observe what the dice are doing when they go off-axis or when they double-pitch (even if it doesn’t produce a 7-Out).
- Is one die rolling straight, while the other takes a sharp turn?Are both dice hitting the backwall at the same time, but is one die immediately popping outward in a single off-axis flop?Is one die hitting and clicking off the other as soon as they touch down?
- Does one die fly perfectly through the air while the other one wobbles like a wounded bird?
Observation of what the dice are doing AFTER they leave your hand will tell you a lot about what you were doing slightly wrong BEFORE they left your hand.
Your input determines their outcome.
- If you get one of your friends to observe throw-after-throw-after-throw from the opposite end of the table; they will probably be able to see things from a perspective than you are unable to.
A pitcher sees one thing…a catcher sees it from a completely different perspective.
As a quick aside, you might also try using the phantom throws into a full-length mirror idea that we discussed in Shooting-Bible – Part 8.
Let me tell you why I am a strong proponent of this:
Often times, what you think is a square-to-the-backwall and square-to-the-base-of-the-table throw, will in fact be so off-kilter as to make you doubt every throw that you’ve tossed up until that point. Take a look at your throw in front of a large mirror and put your sense-of-squareness to the test.
Your powers-of-observation during practice-sessions is directly related to your opportunity-awareness skills in the casino. That in turn precisely mirrors your ability to turn opportunities that you observe at the tables straight into real-world profit.
In other words, your current practice directly affects your future profitability in more ways that one. Your ability to recognize and then capitalize on a revenue-producing prospect in the casino is directly tied to how keenly observant and aware you are during each one of your practice-sessions.
A Nice Win Today Is Good…Locking-In MANY Wins For Tomorrow Is Even Better
I’ve been telling you for some time now that I STRONGLY recommend that you practice AFTER you play a real-world casino session.
We first talked about this in More Gain, Less Pain – Part Four, and the better we get at dice-influencing; then the more value that that practice-AFTER-playing advice will have.
It’s value increases not only because of the way you can lock-in certain elements of your on-axis toss after having had a particularly successful and PROFITABLE casino session; but also because a few practice-tosses after a successful casino-session can give you all sorts of additional insight into how to make your next session even more successful than the one you just completed.
By further locking-in both the mental aspects as well as the physical ones of exactly HOW you managed to have such a stellar hand or an outstandingly consistent casino-session; then the better you are able to clearly define and delineate EXACTLY what works and why it works so well, and how you can continue to replicate the same on-axis, primary-face outcomes during the next session (and the one after that…and the one after that…and the one after that too).
Simply stated:
A short, but tightly focused practice-session right after a winning casino-session is the most effective way to deliver even more near-perfect throws during your next real-world encounter.
- It gives you an opportunity to lock-in what was working when it is freshest in your memory.
- Equally, it gives you the chance to work on any elements that didn’t quite live up to the high standard of the rest of your performance.
The world’s best golfers and baseball players do it, so it’s no wonder that a number of successful Precision-Shooters are catching on to those benefits as well.
A good win today is nice, but locking-in many wins for all of your tomorrows is even better.
When Your Real-World Session Doesn’t Go So Well
Knowing when to walk away from a losing session…and knowing when to RUN is an important ability for even the most accomplished dice-influencers.
But what do you do after you’ve walked away or run away from that bad session?
That is an equally good time to get right back to the Practice Rig…just as climbing right back onto a horse after you’ve fallen off is the best thing to do.
It accomplishes the same thing that we discussed above…only in reverse.
- A post-casino session will help you find out WHAT went wrong and more importantly, WHY it went wrong.
- A quick and timely postmortem will often reveal latent defects that you couldn’t readily see during the heat of casino-battle.
- When the failed session is fresh in your mind, it is the best time to figure out HOW the dice did what they were doing instead of doing what you wanted them to do.
- Although it won’t directly address any betting mistakes you made, it can certainly address your dice-throwing shortcomings and possibly even point up the fact that there was absolutely nothing wrong with your shooting and many things wrong with your betting.
In either case, an after-session practice can be an eye-opening (and bankroll-saving) experience.
I hope you’ll join me for the next six installments in this series as we continue to convert our current practice-session efforts into future casino-profit.
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
Sincerely,
The Mad Professor
