I hate losing as much as I love winning.    

I realize that no matter how talented I get as a dice-influencer, winning and losing will always remain a part of this game. 

I also realize that I have to take some risk in order to make money while playing it. 

What the savvy Precision-Shooter comes to realize, hopefully sooner than later, is that the higher your talents climb and the more money you devote exclusively to your specific advantage(s); the less risk your bankroll is subject to…and obviously, the more net-profit you will be able to make.

That formula meshes perfectly with my hate to lose, love to win philosophy. 

Please notice that making consistent money from this game does not involve taking undue (disproportionate or unjustified) risk. 

• The advantage-player actually endures much less risk with each wager that he makes (when compared to the exposure and liability taken by a random-roller) even though he might have hundreds or even thousands of dollars more in play than the indiscriminate-shooter does. 
• It’s also important to understand that if you are an advantage-player but you are betting on wagers where you have no edge; then you are still simply gambling just like everybody else.
• For the advantage-player; lower risk, higher returns, and better profit holds the appeal. 
• The giddy and mostly immature thrill of letting it all hang out and needlessly risking money to random-chance simply does not hold nearly as much charm, allure or temptation as making consistent profit does.  That’s the significant difference between an advantage-player and a gambler.

The gambler does it for the thrill, excitement and entertainment.

The advantage-player does it for the profit-achievement and the sense of accomplishment that comes from beating an “unbeatable” game. 

In other words, he’s in it to WIN and he does it for the money.

Gambling for the thrill instead of using our advantage-play skills for the profit is often what prevents otherwise sober, diligent and conscientious players from every reaching their easy-to-achieve Precision-Shooting goals.

Your Route Determines Your Destination

The lower risk…higher return…and better profit advantage-play path is fairly easy to chart; however the execution and disciplined maintenance of that plan is never easy. 

Staying exclusively on the advantage-play road is made all the more difficult if you have always struggled with discipline, as I have.

My own route to consistent dice-influencing profit is:

• Continually develop your dice-influencing in tandem with your tailored-to-skill betting-methods.
• Strictly bet when and where you have the advantage.
• Reinvest a reasonable portion of your profit to fuel more and/or larger advantage-play wagers.

There are probably other ways to get there, but frankly, I’m not aware of any of them.  Success comes from balancing your skill against your bankroll and interlacing it with your tolerance for risk. 

• It does you absolutely no good if you have a high tolerance for risk, but your dice-shooting sucks. 
• Likewise, it does you absolutely no good if you have a discernable advantage over certain wagers, but you put more of your money on NON-advantage plays which quickly erode the player-edge that you’ve worked so hard to build up against the casino.
• It doesn’t take very many non-effective (non-advantage) wagers to eat away at your prevalent margin…no matter how good you are.  You’d be amazed at the number of incredibly skilled players with whom that message is completely lost on.

The path to consistent dice-influencing profit may be easy to characterize, but like I said, the actual journey is always much, much more difficult to travel and survive…

• Sustainable success comes from balancing the inherent risk of putting your money into play…against the prospects of turning your dice-influencing skills into actual retained profit. 
• Too much risk without a sufficient validated edge against the bets you are making, too often rewards you with a loss instead of a rightfully earned profit.
• Likewise, the use of too little wagering-capital on bets where you do have the advantage means you’ll get too little return (net-profit) for the amount of effort that you’ve put into building your talents.  Invariably that results in frustration and irritation over the apparent disconnect between your strong shooting-talents and your weak wagering-earnings.

For the advantage-player, the equilibrium between balancing his skills and his bankroll against the risk and volatility of the game (and particularly against the bets that he is making) is often a frustrating equation.

Let’s look at a few ways to better manage that journey and make it a little less frustrating…

Matching Betting-Methods to Your CURRENT Skill-Level

I keep coming back to this subject like the swallows returning to Capistrano.  I’m drawn to it because it simply makes so much sense, yet it’s one of those things that many exceptionally talented shooters fail to do.  As a result, they and their bankrolls continue to suffer needlessly.  In fact, if you look deep enough, I think you’ll find that is the principal reason behind the disappearance of so many skilled-shooters who WEREN’T skilled bettors. 

It doesn’t have to be that way.

In simple terms, consistent dice-influencing profit comes down to HOW to bet, WHEN to bet, and WHAT to bet on.

My upcoming 6-Sigma Betting Approach and Bankroll Strategy series takes what we know about currently thought-to-be-optimal Betting-Methods and ties them directly into what your current bankroll indicates it CAN afford, and what your CURRENT Precision-Shooting skill-set indicates your bets SHOULD warrant.

In a nutshell, the simplest way to do that is to weave YOUR risk-tolerance, YOUR skill-level, YOUR bankroll, and YOUR win-objectives together into an advantage-play matrix that matches each of those elements into an ideal betting strategy that is right (and tailor-made) for YOU.

How does a moderately talented dice-influencer even begin to tackle that skill-based, money-based, risk-based, and goal-based template?

• We first have to look at the advantage (if any) that you have over the house, and on what particular bets each different dice-set indicates that it will produce the steadiest or most productive return-on-investment for you.
• We then look at how consistently you can produce that advantage.  The more reliable your skill is, the more money you can confidently wager on it. 
• We also have to look at the risk/reward ratio as well.  If you have a consistent but low-edge advantage over some of the more conventional wagers like the Inside-Numbers; and a higher, but more volatile advantage over a few of the enhanced payout wagers like the Horn, World or other specific bets like the Hardways; then we can accurately measure how much of a given bankroll (based on your risk-tolerance and your win-objectives and your current outcome-volatility) should be dedicated to the reliable but lower-edge Inside-bets (or to your most dominant Signature-Numbers) versus how much money you can safely stake on those less-dependable but higher-payout Prop-bets.
• We then look at ways to use various betting-methods and wagering strategies to extract faster profit, but with a lower associated risk (again, based on what your CURRENT skills indicate).
• Enhanced profit-extraction means that we not only look merely at our dice-influencing edge over a specific number or group of equally-occurring numbers and the base-amount of money we should be betting on them.  Rather, we also have to fully consider various ways and means to ramp-up and expand the revenue-mining and throw-to-throw retained-earnings that we are actually able to extract from that advantage on nearly every hand. 

What does that really mean?

• Superior (and reliably steady) profit-extraction might mean the use of Steeper (or more rapidly triggered) Regressions; it might mean using variable percentages and staged-ratios of bet-Progressions and stepped Power-Presses, and it might also mean the use of assorted bet-plateaus and on-going income-removal (revenue-mining and throw-to-throw earnings-extraction)methods.  In fact, your skill-based, money-based, risk-based, and goal-based objectives might demand the use of each one of those elements during different stages of your hand.
• For example, your current skills may demand that you treat your Come-Out rolls not only as a separate game-within-a-game profit-source, but also as a pre-validator (qualifier) that helps determine how you handle the first couple of rolls and your associated initial bets after you establish the PL-Point…all based on how successful you were during the C-O sequence.
• Further to that, you may find that using different bet-decision trigger-points (that are derived from your skill-based, bankroll-based, risk-based, and goal-based objectives) as each successive throw unfolds; gives you more roll-to-roll control over your retained-winnings as well as helping to maintain the every-roll-is-a-money-roll freshness that fosters sharper mental and physical acuity and dare I say…more dice-influencing precision.
• As savvy dice-influencers, we also has to look at how to avoid over-estimating our skills and over-betting our bankroll, as well as how to avoid under-rating our skills and under-betting our wagers.  Like I mentioned a moment ago; consistent profit comes from carefully balancing all of your needs and wants against your current skills and bankroll capabilities.
• Successful Precision-Shooters have to tie all of their throwing-talents together with suitable betting-methods and appropriate wagering-levels that are matched to their own particular bankroll, risk-tolerance and win-objectives.

As our skills improve and evolve, and as our bankrolls increase through ability-based wagering, and our risk-tolerance changes based on the confidence that those validated skills inspire; then our betting-methods including regression/progression trigger-points, ramped bet-plateau positioning, and profit-extraction/bet-pressing ratios, etc. (but not necessarily the strategies behind them) have tochange right along with them.

• If you first isolate the specific numbers over which certain dice-sets produce a reliable enough advantage for you; then you have the makings of a consistent money-generator. 
• You have to do your homework to determine how big your advantage is, how consistent it is, and whether it is authentic enough to actually bet on it.

Listen, I’m not trying to get the children of your village to sing my name in praise…but making consistent money off of this game  is really THAT SIMPLE!

I’ll readily admit that it does sound complicated, but it’s really not.

Once you know where your advantage lays; then your duty is to bet it in a way that reflects both the ratio and volatility of that advantage, as well as reflecting your bankroll limitations, your risk-tolerance and your win-objectives.

Your job is to determine that proper mix.  Skilled dice-influencers who fail to do so are doomed to complete and abject failure.

Fairly Judge Your Own Capabilities

How often do YOU throw decent length hands? 

A savvy dice-influencer can answer that question instantly and accurately if they make actionable notes soon after finishing each casino session as well as tracking useable information like that during each one of their at-home casino-simulation sessions.

Critical information such as knowing how often you throw decent-length hands, provide the essential insight and knowledge that a successful dice-influencer needs to know in order to convert his current right-here, right-now skills into steady geared-to-ability-bankroll-and-risk-tolerance earnings.

For example…

• If you know how often you can hit at least one Horn-number during your Come-Out roll…that information is valuable.
• If you know how often you hit back-to-back Horn-numbers during your Come-Out roll…that information is valuable as well.
• If you know how often you throw Point-then-7-Out hands…that information is obviously valuable.
• If you know how often you hit at least ONE Inside-Number during any given hand…then you’d have to agree that that information could be quite valuable too.
• If you know the average length of your hand (especially when you take out the diluting effect of the rare mega-roll hands)…then that information also has to hold some value in terms of crafting a useful betting-method that will work almost every time you use it.

Your session-notes (from both your at-home practices as well as your real-world casino encounters) will help you keep track of the good, the bad and the truly ugly.

More importantly, those notes provide the “what-are-my-current-skills-telling-me” information that enables you to become a better and more profitable player.  Those session-notes often illustrate where your strongest, most reliable geared-to-skill betting-opportunities are, as well as highlighting some of your current wagers where NONE your money should be bet.

Of course, knowing where your bets should and shouldn’t be placed presumes that you’ll actually take the appropriate action the next time you are in a casino.  Otherwise all of your efforts are for naught, and it will probably add even more exasperation to your currently frustrating skill-to-profit disconnect.

• Fairly judging your own capabilities means that you are measuring how much better your own shooting is when compared against the random-standard.  This in turn will clearly show you where your current dice-influencing strengths are and where your most compelling and most potent money-making opportunities will be found. 
• For the responsible Precision-Shooter, that information underscores the value of his own talented shooting as opposed to the indiscriminate risk that is associated with any arbitrary betting on random-tossers.
• That gives the well-balanced player a better understanding of how his money is both won and lost.  It also gives him a fresher appreciation and awareness of how he can convert his current dice-skills into right-here, right-now tangible and consistent profit without adding one additional grain of risk.

In other words, you have to fairly judge your current capabilities and then transfer that information into a workable betting-plan that suits your specific dice-influencing advantage (all the while being mindful of the considerable volatility that accompanies many wagers even though you have a significant player-edge over them), as well as reflecting your bankroll limitations, your risk-tolerance and your win-objectives. 

The self-discovery that accompanies that sort of persuasive session-notes information often convinces a tiny number of mature players to radically scale back most or all of their NON-advantage-play wagering as they shrug off the yoke of a negative-expectation game, and in its place they opt to concentrate more of their wagering-weight onto the bets where they actually have an honest-to-goodness edge over the house. 

Unfortunately the number of players who actually make and stick to that decision (of strictly playing craps as a positive-expectation game and betting exclusively on advantage-play wagers) is pitifully small.  As a result, the population of sustainably successful Precision-Shooters will probably remain equally small.

Shallow Valleys, Higher Peaks

Most gamblers have a hard time handling small wins, but to my mind, securing and maintaining the profit that small wins generate, are a major first-step in the process of taking your current dice-influencing earnings from where they are right now, to where you want them to be. 

In many cases, a small win is never big enough to satisfy the gambling instinct that hides deep inside most of us; so we often hang around the tables trying to turn a matchstick into a lumberyard.  Unfortunately, instead of having a small win to show for all of our efforts; we end up burning through that small win plus our entire bankroll with that “gotta-get-a-bigger-prize” mentality.

• Small wins can cause anxiety in the budding advantage-player simply because they know they have the advantage, yet a small win (to them) is insufficient evidence that their edge over the house is working properly. 
• The fact is that most intermediately skilled Precision-Shooters only have a small edge over the house…so a small win should provide gratifying proof that their dice-influencing skills ARE working.
• A small edge over the house, and a small win extracted from the casino, means that you are on your way.  It also means that you have very little latitude to screw around with it.  Anything you do that runs counter to the tiny advantage that you have developed, will quickly diminish and eliminate it.  Small edge…small wins…small margin of error.
• Most players need the ego-boost that a big win offers in order to maintain the faith in their own Precision-Shooting skills…and to justify all the time they’ve invested in developing their proficiency in the first place.  That rush-to-get-to-the-Promised-Land-of-BIG-wins mind-set often makes any tangible improvement all that much harder.  There are NO shortcuts to reliable Precision-Shooting profit-consistency that I’m aware of.  I’m waiting for even ONE person to prove me wrong…or to even offer an alternative and shorter route.

Though I tend to agree that you can’t get rich off of small wins, they do play an integral (and extremely critical) part in a dice-influencers growth-and-development.  We talked about this subject extensively in the two-part How Good Is YOUR Precision-Shooting series.

As a recap, the Phases of Precision-Shooting include:

• The “Open-Minded Random-Roller” Phase
• The “Inquisitive Beginner” Phase
• The “Unpredictable/Unreliable” Phase
• The “Lower-Losses” Phase  
• The “Break-Even” Phase
• The “Inconsistency & Frustration” Phase
• The “Redemption and Confirmation” Phase
• The “Decision” Phase
• The “Professional Player” Phase

It’s almost impossible to successfully (and permanently) bypass one of those stages and jump a step or two ahead unless you are prepared to encounter a seemingly endless and exasperating parade of self-imposed setbacks and impediments along the way that will make you wish you didn’t try to short-circuit (and short change) your learning process in the first place.

It’s critical to understand that even though you find it so frustrating to be garnering small wins NOW, it is a vital and necessary step in order for you to get to the bigger, steadier and more reliable wins in the near-term.  These are the walk-before-you-run steps that will secure and protect all of your sure-footed steady wins in the future. 

Don’t short-change yourself and don’t let your impatience or frustration conspire to delay or impede your progress.  Crawl before you walk and walk before you run.  Your bankroll and ego will thank you.

Small wins can also really help your game in the psychology of subsequent (down-the-road) victories over the casino.  That is, they help to set up a proper mind-set, a better attitude and a positively-framed Precision-Shooters outlook. 

If you confidently EXPECT to win (based on your history of small, steady wins); then you’ll likely continue to do so…only now the value of those wins will be bigger (based on your more-closely-matched-to-current-skill wagering and your gradually expanded bankroll).

Let me put it this way:

• If you keep the depth of your losses shallow, then a portion of your current small wins can be used to offset those tiny losses.
• When the good, medium-length hands occur; then those earnings can contribute more to your overall retained-income…instead of being used to offset and bail-out your previous deeper losses.
• Multiple small wins also tend to boost a players confidence, and enables them to ratchet-up their game-plan betting-level to the next snack-bracket quite a bit sooner than sporadic larger wins do.

An erratic win-loss record (strictly based on YOUR shooting and YOUR betting) tends to make many players gun-shy about ratcheting up their wins even though their advantage over the house is growing by leaps and bounds (and even if it is manifesting itself with longer-duration rolls). 

Further to that, small but steady wins have the effect of boosting a dice-influencers confidence before they boost their bets…and frequent small wins will provide a lot more self-assurance and impetus than a string of large repetitious losses that are punctuated by a rare big win will.

If you keep the loss-valleys as shallow as possible; then you won’t have as far to climb just to reach the break-even point of sea-level.  That way, more of your skill-based energy can be used to conquer ever-higher profit-peaks instead of using those same earnings to merely offset larger losses.

Your Skill…Your Attitude…Your Success

As a dice-influencer develops his skill, so too does he have to keep tabs on how he feels towards the game and especially towards his Precision-Shooting efforts.   Feelings of desperation, anxiety, anger, frustration, apprehension or worry, can keep even the best of us from reaching or maintaining our true potential.

A players outlook, attitude and mind-set are often times the major impediment that keeps him from accomplishing his goals or maximizing his fullest capabilities. 

• The distraction of an unsettled mind is often more than enough to negate any physical dice-influencing edge that you have developed over this game. 
• When you add in the stress of a casino environment and factor in your monetary risk; it is often too large of an obstacle for many aspiring dicesetters to constantly overcome.

Conversely, a positive attitude can often make all the difference in confidently executing a steady stream of on-axis, primary face outcomes roll after roll after roll.  

Equally, a good attitude and outlook will often speed the ascent from the frustrating break-even-and-small-wins phase…into the confidence-building redemption-through-bigger-and-more-consistent-wins stage of Precision-Shooting.

In other words, how you THINK has a direct and dramatic effect on how you SHOOT. 

We’ll be exploring this topic in quite a bit more detail in the very near future. 

In the meantime, Heavy has dedicated quite a bit of time and effort in chronicling this “crap-between-your-ears” X-factor of success, and I would urge you to take a close and studied look at his ongoing efforts.   It makes for excellent reading, as well as a providing a fine basis for self-improvement and dice-influencing mastery.

Until next time,

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

Sincerely,

The Mad Professor