A macho kind of guy married a good-looking lady. After the wedding, he laid down the following rules:
- “I’ll be home when I want, if I want, and at what time I want… and I don’t expect any hassle from you.
- I expect a great dinner to be on the table, unless I tell you otherwise.
- I’ll go hunting, fishing, boozin’, and card-playing with my old buddies and you can’t give me a hard time about it.
- Those are my rules. Any comments?”
His new bride said, “No, that’s fine with me. Just understand that there will be sex here in our bedroom at nine o’clock every night – whether you’re here or not.”
Sometimes we are just TOO EASY of a target!
Well, there are quite a few more e-questions that have made their way to me. Due to the scheduling of other articles, I can’t always answer them here in a timely manner. Hopefully they will be of some help, enlightenment or assistance in improving your game.
| Q: | Do you aspire to be the best player in the U.S. or the world? Are you the best player in the U.S., or is this something you are not interested in? |
| A: | I have never really thought about it in those terms. For me, as long as I’m making some decent money off of this game, I’m okay with that. I try to be the best that I can be, at whatever pursuit that I become involved with. Some of those efforts succeed, while some of them fall short. I think that having the character to deal with both success and failure is the hallmark of maturity. |
There may be players who are MUCH better at Precision-Shooting than I am. The fact that they don’t come out and show themselves is probably for self-preservation purposes. Whether it be to preserve their income from the prying eyes of the tax-man; or to protect what they know is a good thing; or just to save themselves the hassle of having to explain what they do and how they do it.
You have to understand that there are hordes of nay-sayers out there who are just looking, watching, and waiting for someone to say that they can make a profit from this game. They take potshots at those who are actually doing something about it, instead of trying to improve their own game. Lyle Stuart has long said that if you are going to make a good living off of this game, then “do it in the dark!” Simply, he means that a person shouldn’t shout about their success from every roof-top or every web-site for that matter. His advice is sound, and perhaps I should observe it a little more.
| Q: | I think that you and Irishsetter believe that helping others is a necessary outlet for your gambling instincts. Is that true? |
| A: | I can’t speak for Irish, but I can say something for his character. You’ve got to figure that anyone who starts a web-site to help a few of his friends understand craps a bit better, is a pretty decent guy. When that same person goes to tremendous expense, and devotes an incredible amount of time to that same site as it grows; then you’ve got to believe that he is a pretty self-less person. When that narrowly-focused site gets ~40,000 hits in it’s first year, you know that he must be doing a whole lot of things correctly all at the same time. It speaks highly of both his character and his dedication to helping others. He has shared unselfishly and given a lot to others when he didn’t have to, and that says just about the nicest thing that can be said about a person. |
As for me, well, more than 18-months ago, I was invited to contribute an article for Irishsetters new web-site. This site has helped me a lot, and I am sincerely grateful for that. If you have a chance to read my, How YOU Improved MY Game article, you will see exactly what I mean.
| Q: | What is the break-even point for Precision-Shooting? How good does your Sevens-to-Rolls-Ratio have to be before you can start making money? |
| A: | Conventional wisdom would say that anything above an SRR of 6 to 1 would be profitable. Well leave it to the Mad Professor to shun that “conventional thinking”. It really all depends on what you are betting and how those bets relate to what you are throwing. |
For example; if you only bet the Pass Line, and consistently throw a ton of non-point numbers; then a high SRR probably won’t help you out at all. Conversely, if you Place-bet all of the Inside Numbers and then do a double or triple-regression after one hit, you have almost assuredly locked in a profit after as little as two throws of the dice. There are ways to make consistent money on the “do” side of the dice with an SRR as low as 4:1, you just have to know where the opportunities lay.
It was interesting to read on Heavy’s Message Board that Sharpshooter has an SRR of about 8.25:1, while a recent good-‘ole-boy convert to Precision-Shooting is easily eclipsing that with a consistent 10:1 ratio. In either case, both of those players should be finding consistent profitability with their skills, and it should tell you that success is not as elusive as it might sometimes seem.
As a side note to that, keep one thing in mind. Once you are able to keep the dice “on-axis”, it is just a matter of practice until you get those on-axis dice to have the same number of rotations before stopping. THAT is the secret to achieving what some people probably regard as outlandish claims of higher SRR numbers. It’s not impossible folks, it just takes some focused, concerted effort to achieve consistent tosses.
To get consistent SRR’s much beyond the 8:1 range, you have to incorporate that “same-number-of-rotations” approach, or you have to master the “dead-cat-bounce” method of throwing. I’ve been preaching these methods of play for several years now…dating back to Larry Edell’s old casino.com/craps board. Still, the line of unbelievers is long and distinguished, just like my…well…you get the idea.
Thanks again for all the great questions. I hope the answers were helpful.
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
