Can You Be At The Top Of Your Game And STILL have Bad Sessions?
Abso-friggin-lutely!
In fact, it’s an immutable truth that even when you are at the top of your Precision-Shooting game, you’ll still have bad sessions and sometimes even bad days.
Even the best of the best have bad days…but it’s what you do and how you handle them that determines whether it turns out to be merely disappointing in terms of profit-production or whether it turns into an ego-bruising blowout where you and your bankroll does a China Syndrome meltdown through the Moho Discontinuity into the molten guys-FORMERLY-known-as-skilled-dicesetters core.
There are countless dicesetters who had the talent, but lacked the discipline.
They were able to keep the dice on-axis like it was nobody’s business, yet they couldn’t control their betting enough to keep the profit that their dice-skills generated.
Do you notice that I’m using the past tense in describing them?
Many extremely skilled shooters are no longer playing the game because they couldn’t control their bets as well as well as they could control the dice.
It’s a sad but true fact that your good shooting results will only bail your bad-betting ass out of trouble so many times before the gradual but steady bankroll erosion overcomes even your best dice-influencing abilities.
If your bets aren’t geared to your current skill, then there’s a high likelihood that your efforts will fail like so many who have come before you…but it doesn’t have to be that way.
You have to control your bets as much as you control the dice. In fact, in my view, you have to control your bets EVEN MORE than you control the dice.
Each element doesn’t operate in exclusion to the other. Rather, you need to control both…to get them working together…in order to garner sustainable success.
It’s no big secret, but it is a substantial task.
It’s what you do when your shooting-skills aren’t up to par that determines whether it ends up being a mild set-back or a total bankroll blowout.
A few too many blow-outs will cause the skilled, but undisciplined dicesetter to bow out of this game completely.
So yeah, you can be at the top of your game yet still endure bad sessions and sometimes even bad days. In fact you can count on that happening, but it’s how you handle those setbacks and how you prevent minor losses from turning into major fatalities; that will ultimately determine just how well you, your ego and your bankroll survives.
Handling Ruts, Droughts and Setbacks
With Precision-Shooting, it’s never a question of “IF”; it’s a matter of when and how frequently you run into shooting ruts, profit droughts and bankroll setbacks.
It’s entirely up to you insofar as how deep they go, how long they last and how expensive they are.
If it’s you controlling the dice and it’s you controlling the bets, then it is also YOU who is controlling your where the profit comes from and where your money goes to.
Whether you like it or not, that means that your definitive profitability or ultimate loss is ENTIRELY up to YOU!
If you haven’t figured that out, or you don’t accept that premise; then I can tell you right now that Precision-Shooting will probably never deliver the results that you are looking for.
When you take responsibility, you take control.
You are responsible for your bets, so you ultimately control your profit.
Yeah, it’s THAT simple, but…
…when you are in a deep drought, it’s hard to remember what the rain felt like, let alone when it last fell.
When your shooting isn’t up to par; then in a fit of frustration, irritation, annoyance and impatience, you are more likely to abandon some of the key elements of your previous success because current failures make past successes feel so far removed.
That feeling can descend upon the best of us after just a couple of bad turns with the dice. It may have taken a long time to build up the faith and trust in our own Precision-Shooting abilities; but many players will let that trust and confidence completely erode with just a couple of not-so-good hands.
Sometimes we are our own toughest critic and have the lowest faith in ourselves when it comes to betting on our own shooting especially after just one rocky outing.
At the first sign of trouble, so many players will try such radical changes like switching from right-hand shooting to using their left-hand, or carefully setting the dice and then intentionally trying to knock them off-axis; there’s little wonder that they don’t give up dicesetting altogether, as a large number of players already have.
Guys, a shooting rut or slump does not mean you have to abandon the fundamental elements that gave you a taste of success in the first place.
In fact, those are the elements you should be concentrating on and focusing the most effort into strengthening, and not following some quack path of becoming an elegant throwing, goofy-footed random-roller again. That is NOT the path where reliable Precision-Shooting profit is going to come from.
When your shooting-skill takes a vacation and your bankroll suffers a setback, you have to take a step back and take a look at the fundamentals (the girl that ya ‘brung to the party).
- What brought you success in the first place?
- What grip gave you the best on-axis consistency?
- What stance gave you the most reliable throwing-motion?
- What trajectory gave you the best results?
- What target-area gave you the steadiest, non-popping, non-hopping, non-splattering landings?
- What throwing-energy gave you the most reliable straight back roll-outs?
- What spin-rate gave you the lowest into-the-wall jumps, skips and bounces?
These are the questions you have to be asking yourself if you want any of the sweetness to return. Instead of throwing out the entire kit-and-caboodle (whatever that is), you have to keep the best and work on the rest.
If you let frustration, anger, impatience and annoyance guide your decisions and you don’t adequately refocus your concentration and basic on-axis throwing efforts; then horrific losing sessions will become more frequent…and your shooting will only get WORSE.
Losing your perspective leads to losing money.
Physical skills and mental fortitude go hand in hand. If they’re on the same path, working together, they lead to profit. If they are on different tracks and not working in harmony; then hope that you accidentally fall into a big pool of luck.
If you can’t rely on or trust random luck to bless you at the right time in the right place with the right amount; then you’ll just have to work with your strengths and re-bolster your weaknesses to build a much firmer foundation upon which your Precision-Shooting skills (both mental as well as physical) can advance.
Hard work, focused efforts and gritty determination DOES have a way of creating its very own unique brand of luck.
Will you still have bad sessions or even bad days once your skills gets to the point where they generates steady and reliable profit?
Hell YEAH!
But that doesn’t mean that you abandon the skills that got you to success in the first place. It doesn’t mean that you start looking for a high ledge to jump off of, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you have to start throwing the dice with your left foot!
It simply means that you have to re-group, re-focus, and regain perspective.
This is not the time to start worrying whether you’ve lost your skill and tearily wondering if you’ll be able to reclaim you it. This is the time to give yourself credit for coming so far along the advantage-play path, and the time to reflect upon the blessing of being able to generate so much positive-expectation money from this negative-expectation game.
This is the time to look at the basics of your grip and throw…the time to review the ENTIRE Getting the Most Out Of Your Practice Sessions series, and the ENTIRE More Gain and Less Pain (More Practice Tips) series.
This is the time to do a temporary withdrawal from the casino battles…to re-arm, retrain and reload for a much more successful and much more sustainable attack on the boxmans stacks.
Yes it’s a lot of reading and it’s a lot of practicing, but if you’ve gotten to the point where losing seems to be easy and winning seems to be tough; then there’s a lot of money that has flown under the bridge, so maybe some no-cost rebuilding and realignment is in order before you redeploy more of your cash into battle.
If you doubt your Precision-Shooting skills…then develop them, improve them and hone them to a point until you don’t.
It takes dedication, commitment, discipline and patience to GET you there…and those are the same characteristics that will KEEP you there.
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
Sincerely,
The Mad Professor
