Current Practice…Future Profitability – Part 5

Your current dice-influencing practice-sessions are inexorably tied to your future casino profit. 

A player shouldn’t expect to reach a reasonable win-objective without first putting substantial effort into developing a sustainable advantage over the house.

Little input gets little output.

Clear Head, Clear Eyes…Clear Opportunity

Practicing your dice-shooting skills takes time and patience.

Practicing WELL and getting the most out of your at-home sessions also takes concentration and commitment.

Some of the same things that can cause you to have a bad session in the casino will have just as negative an effect on your skills when you practice at home.

• If you are tired, perturbed, distracted or fatigued, it will obviously affect your on-axis efforts at home as much as it would in the casino.
• If you are unfocussed, preoccupied or troubled in any way, then it will also affect your meticulous dice-handling skills too.
• If you think that alcohol can play a negative role in how well you do in the casino, then it will just as likely have a negative effect when you roll the dice at home.
• When you have a clear attentive head with wide-awake and diligent focus; then your practice-sessions will offer up a clearer view of all your current dice-influencing opportunities. 
• If your practice-sessions entail the opposite of that; then obviously your results will likely produce conflicting, negatively-impacted, less-than-deserving results too.

That leads us to our next pivotal point as far as serious dice-influencing advancement is concerned.

If you are really serious about improving your game and especially your profitability…then read on.  If you aren’t…then you’ll probably find the following ideas require a little too much effort for your current level of commitment. 

Chart and Graph Your Progress

There are a couple of great roll-tracking programs out there.   Maddog’s Bonetracker spreadsheet program immediately comes to mind, and of course so does the ubiquitous WinCraps software. 

Each of those can provide some unique dice-influencing insight.   For example, Bonetracker allows instant Transpositional dice-set analysis (which let’s you see what the same toss would have produced if you had used a different set or a same-set but altered-face dice-orientation) which is a HUGE plus in my books.

Many savvy players have taken to using both sets of software since each offers its own unique set of features.

• If you carefully track your dice-influencing progress, these programs open up all kinds of previously-unseen opportunities which can generate revenue-growth and how-best-to-exploit-your-current-skills excellence.

When you look at a stock-market chart, you can see at a glance just where a certain stock has been in the past…where it is now…and where the momentum of its current daily trading-volume is presently trending. 

Likewise, when you use WinCraps to monitor your shooting…you can chart your SRR progress or perhaps your Inside Number repeatability as well as your average-hand length.  These graphically show where you’ve been…where your skills are now…and where they will likely improve to in the near future if you continue with your current practice regimen. 

Where BoneTracker shows its further brilliance is in its ability to manipulate your current roll-stats to determine whether there is latent (as-yet-undiscovered) treasures that are hiding in plain sight.  If for example you were to make a simple right-to-left switch of the dice while using the same set; or by switching to an entirely different set or permutation, this software lets you see your current ability (with those instantly transposed results) in a whole new profit-potential light. 

• Some players are also discovering that certain dice-sets that they had long ago discarded as being inapplicable or counterproductive, or set-permutations that they never would have thought about on their own; have now been legitimized by BoneTracker because their current dice-throwing has matured to the point where that set or that permutation is not only currently valid, but it now holds more profit-potential from exactly the same skill-level than the one(s) they have been using up until now. 
• By keeping track of your progress, you can gauge whether the refinements and fine-tuning that you are currently working on are having the desired effect or whether you have to take your efforts in a slightly different direction. 

Combining the practice-session use of both WinCraps and BoneTracker lets you detect, identify, and quantify profit-making opportunities much easier, much faster, and with much more exploitable (and cost-effective) certainty.

Tossing for Practice Versus Roll-tracking For Opportunity

There is a big difference between practicing to get your on-axis, primary-face toss perfectly calibrated, adjusted and tuned; versus tracking each facial-outcome to determine where and how your carefully refined toss will produce the best casino-wagering results.

Don’t confuse one exercise with the other. 

Tossing for practice and roll-tracking to determine the best profit-opportunities are related, but each holds a specific purpose in terms of elevating your Precision-Shooting money-making talents to the next level…and to the one beyond that as well.

• If you need “practice” to get your toss properly grooved-in and to keep it mechanically fluid; then do it separately from your roll-tracking throws. 
• If you practice before you go to the casino, then fine, throw a few practice tosses…THEN WAIT to begin throwing again to compensate for the time you leave home until you get the dice in your hands at the casino.  That way, your roll-tracking results will more closely reflect and mimic the results you are likely to produce in the casino.  If you cheat yourself at the practice-rig, then the skills-that-you-think-you-have will fool you at the casino. 
• An unrealistically staged roll-tracking session at home will likely produce results that are hard to RELIABLY reproduce in the casino. 
• Likewise, all things being equal, realistically staged roll-tracking sessions can produce results that should more closely reflect your casino potential.
• “Practice” is where you fine-tune and tweak your set, grip, pick-up, swing, release, backspin (or forward spin), targeting, trajectory, rebound and rollout, etc.
• “Roll-tracking” is where you try to establish a baseline of performance.   Your throw should be as consistent as possible.  If you are radically tweaking your throw or still experimenting with various toss-dynamics in the middle of a roll-tracking session; then the results will be skewed as your results reflect the ebb and flow of success and failure with various throw-permutations. 
• If you want to give your roll-tracking data the fairest of evaluations (and to produce the most meaningful of exploitable information); then you’ll want each one of your tosses to be as consistent as possible before you even begin to seriously track them.

Tracking Useful Information, and Ignoring the Superfluous Stuff

When you start tracking your rolls and graphing your Sevens-to-Rolls Ratio or your Inside-Hit frequency or your Box-Numbers-to-Sevens Ratio or your Average Hand-Length or your most dominant Signature-Numbers; you are going to end up with a lot of numbers in front of you.

Your job is to sift and sort through them in an effort to mine some useful nuggets of dice-influencing insight and personal roll-stat wisdom out of all the chaff and non-essential detritus.

• Details about what works, what doesn’t work, and exactly what you did to produce your successful hands is critical for future improvement.

Keep in mind that all of this information is intended for one thing…to help you tailor betting-methods that are custom-made to suit your current dice-influencing skills.

All of the information that you need to know about your current talents are held within your roll-tracking stats.  An aspiring Precision-Shooters job is to put on his miner’s hat…and start digging.

I guess you understand now why I said that you have to be really serious about improving your game and your profitability when we start talking about all this roll-tracking and result-analysis stuff.

Avoid Analysis Paralysis ESPECIALLY When You Are Shooting

I’d like to temper all of those foregoing comments with a short qualifier…

There is a fine line between taking a careful look at what your roll-stats are trying to tell you…and over-analysis, where you get bogged down and paralyzed by the minutia. 

When a players mind is paralyzed, he usually falls back into the same old betting-routines and tired old wagering-methods that got him into trouble in the first place.

Scrutinizing what your roll-results are telling you is not as complicated as trying to unravel the DaVinci Code.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in breaking down, probing and dissecting everything about our roll-tracking statistics, that we lose sight of the most important factor that will get us to our objective.

THE THROW IS THE THING.

Dice-influencing success starts with the dice-throw and it ends with bets that are specifically focused on (and tailored in size) to the actual advantage that your influence produces.  However, having said that; all of our deep info-extraction/exploitation and analysis should be done AFTER our roll-tracking session is finished.

• It’s important for aspiring dice-influencers not to over-think what they are doing especially when the dice are in their hands during roll-tracking rounds.  That is what your practice-tossing and throw-adjustment sessions are for.  
• Any in-depth analysis of your overall roll-stats should be done when the tracking-round is completed.
• Most of your toss-tweaking, throw-dynamic adjustments and fine-tuning should be done during your practice-sessions.
• We reserve our roll-tracking rounds for roll-after-roll-after-roll repeatability trials…and then we use those roll-result outcomes to determine where our current Precision-Shooting strengths, weakness, threats and opportunities are.
• During our roll-tracking exercises, our primary task is to focus on making each throw the best throw that we can make. When that throw is finished, then the next throw becomes the immediately over-riding task.

Profit flows from an on-axis throw.

That means that during your roll-tracking session, you have to focus on just one thing…the very next toss of the dice.

If your roll-tracking sessions are focused solely on making your next throw your best throw, then you are mentally and physically preparing yourself to reliably recall and deliver-up that same level of on-axis, primary-face intensity when you pick up the dice in the casino.

“Now That I’ve Got It…What Do I Do With It?”

The larger your edge over the house; the more likely you’ll be able to exploit it on a consistent money-making basis. 

The lower your edge over the house; the riskier and more unreliable your profit-producing capability becomes. 

In other words…

• The more you can count on your Precision-Shooting skills and the more you focus on the higher-frequency opportunities; the more you’ll be able to reliably profit from them. 
• The more you reach for the once-in-a-blue-moon sextuple parlays; the more you’ll have all of that annoying volatility and bankroll-gnawing frustration to deal with.
• The more predictable and repeatable your highest-ranking opportunities are; the more you’ll be able to derive maximum duplicable financial benefit from them.
• The more unpredictable, isolated and elusive your sporadic long-shot successes are; the less you’ll be able to reliably derive sustainable financial benefit from them. 

I know we’ve covered this subject before in excruciating detail in both in the lengthy How To GET It And How To KEEP It series, as well as the numerous How To Get THERE From HERE articles, but its overriding importance to the global success of your efforts demands its repeating.

If you manage to get a dice-influencing advantage over the casino; then you have to determine the best way to exploit it. 

• You have to determine which bets (and at what level) your edge will produce the steadiest or most efficient profit. 
• You also have to understand that your edge will rarely be so big that you can afford to chase every betting-whim and wagering-impulse that your gambling heart desires.

What an advantage-player does with the edge that he’s got, determines whether the casinos money becomes his…or if his money becomes theirs.

Don’t Dilute Your Results or Unwittingly Underestimate Your Current Skills

Some players have kept track of their results from Day-One of their journey on the road to dicesetting success. 

While that is a good way to see just how far you have come ever since you’ve started; the overall numbers pertaining to SRR (Sevens-to-Roll-Ratio), Signature Numbers or any other stats that you keep; can be very deceiving when you use too large of a sampling of rolls that have been accumulated and collected over an extended period of time.

• Ask yourself if your Precision-Shooting is better or worse now than it was just three or four months ago.
• If it is better, but you are still using those ancient rolls in the overall calculation of how much of an edge you have over the house and using them to determine your best betting-opportunities; then you may be severely shortchanging yourself.

If you derive those figures from the entirety of all of the hands you have thrown over all of the months or years since you began; then you are unfairly diluting and concealing your current skill-level.

Don’t dilute your results or unfairly underestimate and unwittingly diminish your current skills.

• By considering your shooting-numbers within too big of an historical range or too large of an improving-skills picture, you may not be able to see the forest for all of the trees.  Or in the alternative, the forest may be blinding and impairing your ability to find the one species of tree that you are presently interested in harvesting. 

Simply stated, your current skills can be unjustly watered-down and adulterated (if not entirely hidden), due to the large size of your roll-tracking sample. 

That is because…

The length of time and the huge number of rolls that your current abilities are being measured against is not allowing your present skill-level to shine brightly enough to shed a properly concentrated light on your CURRENT skill-set.

• You CANNOT use the “huge picture” numbers that you have rolled over the past three or four years (or even the last four or five months) UNLESS YOU HAVEN’T IMPROVED at all in that time-frame. 
• If indeed you have improved, then you may find it more advantageous (and exploitably profitable) to use a sort of sliding-scale snapshot to measure where you are NOW (over the last couple of weeks) compared to where you were last year. 
• Your roll-stats from the last three or four weeks are certainly more indicative of your CURRENT skill-set than some ancient throws that you were making when you first started down this Precision-Shooting trail.
• Your recent roll-stat performance is certainly more relevant to present-day betting-opportunities, and is also more pertinent when it comes to fixing and repairing current shooting flaws and shortcomings.
• Giving more “weight” and relevance to the most recent stats allows your current betting to be more in tune with your current abilities. 
• By using a recent-performance (forward-moving snapshot), many players are surprised to discover just how out-of-step their current wagering-methods are to their current dice-influencing skills.
• If you dilute your current performance with the numbers that you’ve compiled over many months or even years; then it acts to hide and conceal the present measure and full potential of your current skill.

Your “snapshots” or time-frames of progress-measurement should be of a sufficient length to ensure that you aren’t just having a few lucky or aberrant sessions; but short enough to fairly and reasonably measure your on-going where-are-my-skills-RIGHT-NOW progress.

You can keep all of the roll-stats that you have compiled since day-one, but you should definitely view them only in their proper perspective with a forward-moving average (where you take the last, let’s say 360, 720, 1080 or 2160 rolls), and use those most-recently-influenced rolls as the chief indicator of your CURRENT capabilities and competence. 

By using a sliding-average, you’ll still be able to chart your overall progress, but your right-here/right-now wagering possibilities won’t be as hidden (and watered-down) due to the vastness and enormity of your overall roll-tracking sample.

While we’re on this subject…

• Many savvy advantage-players find it incredibly useful to break each element of their game down to specific components like Come-Out rolls, Point-Shooting, Signature-Numbers, Point-cycle duration and average roll-length, while using those same “sliding-average snapshots” to see just how far they have progressed (as well as making sure that each element of their game contributes to instead of diminishing from their overall profitability).

The more accurately you are able evaluate the relative merits of what your current Precision-Shooting efforts are producing; the more you’ll be able to rationally determine where the clearest and most deserving legitimate betting opportunities are RIGHT NOW.

Applicability and Practicality

So how does your current practice tie into your future casino profit?

• A clear head, a clear goal, and a clear plan pilots your practice regimen success.
• When you take that same winning-resolve into the casino, then on-demand roll-after-roll-after-roll on-axis, primary-face repeatability is more easily accessible and recallable.
• Graphing and charting your progress with WinCraps and BoneTracker provides unique insight into previously-unseen revenue-growth and how-best-to-exploit-your-current-skill prospects.
• Dice-influencing success starts with the dice-throw and it ends with bets that are specifically focused on and tailored-in-size to the actual advantage that your influence produces.
• Most of your toss-tweaking, throw-dynamic adjustments and fine-tuning should be done during your practice-sessions, while your roll-tracking rounds are generally reserved for reliability trials and bet-analysis as well as in-the-moment trend-recognition and exploitation.
• During your roll-tracking exercises, your primary task is to focus on making each throw the best throw that you can make. When the current throw is finished, then the next throw becomes the immediately compelling task.
• The larger your edge over the house; the more likely you’ll be able to exploit it on a consistent money-making basis.  The more you can count on your Precision-Shooting skills and the more you focus on the higher-frequency opportunities; the more you’ll be able to reliably profit from them.  The more predictable and repeatable your highest-ranking opportunities are; the more you’ll be able to derive maximum financial benefit from them. 
• The lower your edge over the house is; the riskier and more unreliable your profit-producing capability becomes.  The more you reach for the once-in-a-blue-moon sextuple parlays; the more you’ll have to deal with all that annoying volatility and bankroll-gnawing frustration.   The more unpredictable, isolated and elusive your sporadic long-shot successes are; the less you’ll be able to reliably derive sustainable financial benefit from this game. 
• By using a sliding-average roll-tracking snapshot to judge your current abilities, you’ll still be able to chart your overall progress, but your right-here/right-now wagering possibilities won’t be as hidden or unintentionally diluted because of the vastness and enormity of your roll-tracking sample.
• Breaking your game down to specific components like Come-Out rolls, Point-Shooting, Signature-Numbers, Point-cycle duration and average roll-length; ensures that each and every betting-element of your game contributes to your overall profitability.

Your current practice-sessions are so inexorably tied to your future casino profit, that you can’t reasonably expect to reliably reach your objectives if you don’t put the necessary efforts into properly developing them.

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

Sincerely,

The Mad Professor