Soft Touch Say’s

If I had to stress only one thing to a craps player planning to be successful in and out of the casino, it would be this:

The game is about you and only you!

In working with those I interact with at the table, I get so many questions about how I approach the game and what skills I practice to be able to perform at a level that provides me more winning sessions than losing ones. Most players know that I openly share my personal philosophies emphasizing that what works for me may not necessarily work for them. Still, together, we work toward successfully building confidence and trust in oneself as we find an approach that fits the players’ belief system.

This month’s articles touch upon being open to understanding the game in its entirety.  I like to call it playing the game multi-dimensionally. To me, it is so important for a player to always be aware about what they feel, do, believe and express at the tables, because this energy is directly reflected in the outcome of the game. I hope that your belief system allows you to be open to this idea.
 

Make 2007 about what works for you. For this year, trust yourself and your own perceptions. Stop making this game so difficult and get your hands on anything that works for you.  Be spontaneous and focus on being genuine and authentic with your approach. Throw out whatever you believe to be faulty approaches that you may have learned when you first started playing this game and create ones that work for you.

Know and accept this:  Losing will not be removed from the game. Still, it need not be experienced.  Can you understand that?  How you play this game is for you and only you to decide.  No one else can make the decision about how to play for you. Once you trust this, you are the creator of your experiences at the tables, whatever the outcome, it defines what you are searching for. Sometimes it may not seem like it, yet, experiences that were opposite to what you expected is the way the game is intended to be. That is the polarizing, dualistic nature of the game.  A lot like life, isn’t it?

Whatever and however you define success/winning from playing craps, for this year, intend it.  Expect it. Only you know how to do it.

By the way, my old friend Sharpshooter, author of “Get The Edge at Craps”, will be dropping by for a visit soon. You will not want to miss his article in the February issue of Dice Setter Newsletter!

Happy New Year!
Soft Touch 

Secrets of Life

“When you move into an energy alignment you can never tell what will happen. Watch for signs; use your feelings to help you decide.  And if after that, you’re still not sure, do nothing.  If a direction is right for you, you’ll know it automatically.  If however making up your mind requires you to go through great trials and tribulations, you can be sure that that particular course is not the one for you.  Basically it is well to remember if you have to ponder a decision it is usually a mistake.  When the universal law delivers, you will know.” ~Stuart Wilde Blog ~

PS If you have any suggestions for the new Dice Setter website or newsletter please send them to Ed at Ed@dicesetter.com and I’ll have a look and see how we can incorporate them into our future plans.

From the Editor

Yes, Dice Setter Newsletter is changing. More than just about dice setting, it was decided at the fall corporate meeting to encompass the whole game in the newsletter. If you have followed the articles from the last quarter of the year, you’ve seen how the mathematics support the need for more tools than dice setting alone. Overwhelmingly, new membership and new players subscribing, are demanding a new baseline to move forward.

The Mad Professor along with his supporting articles of dice setting are contained in his recently published book and his articles are archived within the newsletters.

Trouble at the Mill Lassie
In late November a malicious attacker hacked into the administration controls of the Dice Setter forum. At first it was thought to be the pranks of someone that knew how to gain access. However, it grew beyond that and it was felt to be a security issue. Our web master, Dave, made the decision to close the forum until answers to the breach could resolve the problem. Stay tuned.

Ed Jones / Editor

MetaCraps™

By Mike In Hawaii

What is MetaCraps™. Well “Meta” is something bigger, more inclusive, at least as I use the term. You could talk about MetaRoulette or MetaBlackjack etc. In each case I would be trying to say “The entire game and all its relevant environment”

It is clear, and constantly pointed out, that God Math, capital M math, to infinity and beyond!, absolute Math, as many decimal places as you like Math, can easily prove that there is no hope for you winning at Craps. Not in the long run.

It is the basis of what I call the “Dumbo Paradox”. Absolute Mathematical proof that professional gamblers who play banked casino games like Craps cannot exist, any more than elephants can fly. But such professional gamblers do exist. And yet the Math is not wrong. So what is going on? This has been a difficult question to answer.

Only one of two things is going on. Either there are people who are supernaturally lucky, blessed, living outside of any believable laws of Math and physics, or the problem is stated incorrectly. The Math (God Math) is simply solving the wrong problem.

Enter MetaCraps™. Imagine standing at a Craps table looking at the chips, the felt, the betting areas, the stickman, and the dice. You are seeing the game of Craps.

Now back up a few steps. Also see the pit boss, the floor supervisor, the casino manager, your fellow players, yourself. That is the realm of MetaCraps™.

I am sure you have seen those Russian wooden nesting dolls. You open up the big one and inside there is a smaller nearly identical one. Open that one and yep, inside is a smaller nearly identical one. Some nested eight dolls deep or more. MetaCraps™ is like that.

The tiniest Craps “doll” is the single die, then a pair of dice, then all the combinations those dice can roll, then all the numbers those combinations can add up to, then all the bets you can make on those sums and the mechanics of betting and playing Craps. Still more layers. There are the mechanism of making bets, working with the dealers and the stickman, shooting the dice when it is your turn. Eventually you work your way out to what most people consider the game of Craps. Standing at the rail holding chips, watching dice and making bets.

At this point all is mechanics. It is at this point that Math (Capital M) can prove you are doomed! You are playing a negative sum game and time is on the side of your opponent.

Fortunately MetaCraps™ does not stop there. But the next few layers are difficult. They are harder to quantify, less mechanical and worst of all, human. Humans are just not very good at certain things. Many Craps players are not even aware that this “outer realm” exists. However, it is these outer layers, the game of Craps played outside the rail, where the player has his or her greatest chance of leaving the table a winner. Consistently.

Does the Casino play MetaCraps™? You bet they do! Just look. They have iron rules for the behavior of all their employees who work at a Craps table. They have extensive protocols for every little movement and constant watchfulness to see that these protocols are followed every second. Then they have people watching the people who are watching the employees. Above all are cameras watching and recording everything.  Why? Because the Casino knows that Craps is more than dice, bets, felt, odds and chips. It is a human game played by humans. Humans stand outside the rail.

And humans suck at discipline! Humans make poor mechanical robots. Humans intrinsically hate rules. Humans cut corners, are lazy and not always honest, especially around money!

But the Casino needs these humans to run their Craps game. They put lots of time, effort and resources into training and supervising these human components of the game of MetaCraps™. Working to regiment them into proper gears and wheels that can be counted upon to function as reliably as a pair of high quality razor edged dice.

What about the players? Most let their grasp of MetaCraps™ stop at the rail. They are undisciplined, unsupervised, not necessarily well trained, and probably knocking back the free booze. The Casino watches them carefully to ensure they are not cheating nor disrupting the game. But otherwise the players are on their own. The Casino wants them focused on playing from the rail inward. They want them to shoot Craps, not play MetaCraps™.

So most players fail to even have an awareness of the additional layers of MetaCraps™. These very parts of the game hold the potential to turn them into winners. They are probably experts at the mechanics of the game of Craps. But they are focused on Craps from the inside out. They are fixated on the dice, the bets, the felt, and the odds, the little mechanical stuff. Sure it is essential stuff and a full grasp of it is important. But inside the rail the Casino is in charge.

You should not play Craps from the inside out! You must play Craps from the outside inward. At least if you want to win. More than that, you cannot play MetaCraps™, the game which you can win, just from the rail inward. You have to take a few steps back and see yourself and the layers which you have to bring to the game. You have to implement your own version of the ingredients, the aspects of MetaCraps™, which every Casino in the world implements every time they open a Craps table.

Discipline, betting routine, money management, supervision, watchfulness and tight control of their human element at all levels.

There are at least three additional human levels in the game of MetaCraps™, levels which exist outside the rail. Levels that only the player can implement for himself or herself.

The first is betting strategy or your pre-established routine for a given situation or set of conditions. You should have already worked out how you are going to bet at a cold table, what you are going to do if a table turns choppy, how you are going to respond to a natural, etc. before you ever get to the table. Let’s hear it for WinCraps!

The second is money management or your disciplined control of loss limits, win limits, and all the things that ensure you will control your losses and quit while you are ahead. Plus all the fiddly details of handling and keeping track of your special gambling money.

The third is situational awareness or your constant observation of the flow, the energy of this particular table. Sometimes this gets downright mystical.

I like to think that if a person applies themselves to being focused on what they are doing and what is going on around them, they can get input from parts of their mind which cannot speak, or use language. Half of our brain is like that and it is perfectly capable of reasoning and “telling” us what to do. But it has to use sensations, feelings, emotions, visions, images, colors, other non-verbal nudges to try to get through to us. It can if we expand our definition of “listen”.

If your Craps game only exists from the rail inward, you are missing the biggest, most important aspects of the game. You must put time, effort and resources into training and supervising YOUR human components of the game. If you want to win.

Rules and Who’s in Charge

When we talk about MetaCraps™, we are talking about not only Craps, the game most people “play”, but also the critically important aspects of the entire experience of gambling at Craps which exist outside the rail.

These outside the rail components are extremely important for two reasons. First these outside the rail aspects give you the very best chance of being a consistent winner.

Second — You get to make the rules!

Suppose you got to make the rules inside the rail. How about “do-overs”. You crap out on your come out. Your new rule says you can yell “DO-OVERS” and shoot again. Or you seven out on your first roll after you set a point. “DO-OVERS!” and you get to shoot again.

BTW, this is a hypothetical. I certainly would not recommend trying it at a real Casino Craps table. Inside the rail is the domain of the Casino where they make the rules and you have to figure out how to live with them as best you can.

But outside the rail is your private domain. Most players just throw away this opportunity to define a winning game for themselves. Probably because they have not done the “step back” exercise and taken in the larger picture which is MetaCraps™.

Outside the rail you have several problems and advantages, all of them human based. Because they are human based, they rely on your personal will and discipline to first make sensible rules and then enforce them on yourself. You can even make rules that are based on more than just mechanical concepts. You can tap into your human nature and special attributes. You can make rules, establish procedures for yourself, which are more religious than physical.

Your rules can be extremely powerful. Just one example illustrates this incredible power. From moment to moment you get to decide how much to bet, how to bet, or even if you are going to bet or not.

This last one is perhaps the ultimate subjective rule. The one that determines whether or not you will even bet. The Casino’s game of MetaCraps™ certainly includes such subjective rules. They also have the ultimate subjective rule. For any reason, at any time, they can ask you to leave and not play any of their games.

Back to business. Let’s start with just one small concept from Money Management. This is one of those outside the rail shells, one of the most important of the nested dolls. You have to define your own rules for Money Management and you have to enforce them yourself. Some of them are simple math rules. Some of the rules can be rather psychological or seem almost mystical.

But all have one thing in common. A literal “Bottom Line”. You create all of these outside the rail rules and personal routines for the same reason you study intensely the inside the rail aspects of Craps, to enhance your chances of winning consistently.  Here is a simple money management concept to start with.

Gambling Money

Before there can be money management, there has to be money. What kind of money? Gambling Money. How do you create this special kind of money? You set it aside for this one exact purpose.

How many people gamble with just any old money? How many players do not have two distinctly different kinds of money with them in the Casino? How many people just reach into their everyday wallet and pull out some of the money in there, hoping they remember to leave enough for the buffet in a few hours?

I guarantee the Casino expects its employees, its human components of the game of MetaCraps™ to have two kinds of money. Their personal money which is in their wallets, with which the employee buys lunch, takes the bus, pays his rent and phone bills etc.

And the Casino’s gambling money, which the Casino regards as something extremely different. To prove this an employee need only pocket a single chip of the Casino’s gambling money improperly. The only exception is a toke given by a player and there are strict rules about how the employee handles that to make it crystal clear this bit of Casino money is a tip and being handled as a tip for all the world, the cameras and the supervisors to see.

You need think about money the same way. You need to have Gambling Money which is different than all your other everyday money, both in the accounting sense and the psychological sense.

 
I have a special metal lock box at home that I use as a piggy bank for my gambling money. As I get a bit of extra cash I can convert, I put that cash in the special metal box, just like foreign exchange, like I was converting it to Yen or Pesos. Money becomes different when it goes into that box.

Just like a good accountant, I never commit the sin of “co-mingling funds”. When the gambling money goes to the Casino it goes in a special second wallet. A really nice super thin front pocket wallet bought just for this one purpose. It could be a simple as a rubber band, or a large paperclip. As long as it is just for keeping your gambling money separate and away from the everyday money in your everyday wallet.

I always have a small notebook to record every buy in for every game I gamble at. How much I bought in for, and how much I cashed out. This may sound fiddly, but it is quite important.

If you do not keep your gambling money separate and accounted for, you have no way of knowing how much you are really winning or losing. Humans have wonderful selective memory. Without some simple bookkeeping you will remember your wins and forget  your losses. It is just human nature. You should always know how much of your gambling money you took on any given trip to a casino, and how much you came back with.

Even more important, if you do not do some simple record keeping, you have no way of being sure that none of your non-gambling money is ending up on the table where it does not belong.

What else is special about gambling money? Here I shudder in horror. A legion of writers will tell you it is money “You can afford to Lose”. Saints preserve us!! No one can afford to lose money. What a horrible karma, what a lousy vib, what a terrible concept.

Never let your mind set pre-defeat you. Psychological concept #1 has to be:

Never Go to a Casino to Lose Money

Gambling Money is “Money you can afford to Risk“. The very fact you can separate it out into a special place like my metal gambling money box and leave it in there, helps prove that it is money you do not need for essential day to day expenses.

Thus it is not “Scared Money”. You do not cringe when you drop it on a craps table and ask for chips. You do not start out with your mind preoccupied with the specter of defeat as you would if you played with everyday money you could not actually afford to lose. Non-gambling money you should never be risking in the first place. Your everyday money literally has no business being out and about in a Casino’s gaming area.

When you put gambling money on the table to convert to chips, your mind is able to focus on the coming contest. This is why that particular money exists. This is its defined purpose in life. Your gambling money has been waiting for this moment to take its chances, sally forth and bring back some of the Casino’s gambling money as prisoners.

Aloha!

Maintain an Even Strain

“I once proved I could move a loaded railroad boxcar by myself. I released the brakes and started to push. It was like pushing a brick wall. I pushed on it as hard as I could for about a minute. Then I became aware that there was a give. And then a clear motion that built. And be in low hold, It was rolling. Very very slowly. But it went several feet before it stopped. It was about 40,000 pounds. Maintain an even strain.”

Mike In Hawaii

The Unseen Dimension

“Personal perception verses personal projection, energy is always true.”

Copyright ©2003 Michael Vernon

There is an invisible yet perceivable dimension, and subtle information may be found there. Somewhat like sitting in a movie theater watching previews of coming attractions, subliminal messaging provides a glimpse of events about to happen. Perceiving the energy present can show you the hidden truths as you experience events in the present moment. Perception of energy also provides you with lessons of events after the fact, as you look back and relate the metaphysical information acknowledged and ignored. “I should have listened to myself” kind of lessons.

Most everyone has had that experience of saying, “I knew that was going to happen, why didn’t I listen to myself?” I do not suggest or even hint of using intuition to guess or finesse events during a dice game. My point is for the reader to acknowledge and simply to relate to having had the experience of knowing about something before it manifested in reality. This is an ability everyone has and with practice, you can strengthen the ability providing an addition powerful edge to your game.

A way of explaining energy is to think of it as a vibration. It is a known fact of science that everything organic and inorganic is vibrating at the atomic level. Metaphysical energy is not measured in terms of “good” and “bad”. Instead, think of energy in terms of “high” or “low”. A football game expressing high energy is exciting and fun to watch. A game expressing low energy is boring and uninteresting. Energy expresses information in every situation. It is possible for you sense the vibrations and glean information.

The next time that you decide to watch a televised sports event try this experiment. Turn the sound down so you cannot hear the score announced. Pay no attention if the score appears on screen. The experiment is to simply watch and look for the team with the BIGGER energy. Silently ask which team has the upper hand, who has the lead and which team is going to win. During your observation, your answer will come to you as a feeling. The feeling is a perception of what is going on and what is about to happen. Now, turn up the sound and check your read of the energy. At the end of the game your read of the energy will be confirmed one way or the other. Everyone has the ability to perceive energy vibrations and discern information from other dimensions. Perception is confirmed in real time, right or wrong. When your are right, then you can feel and know that you are “dialed in”.

It is possible for a dice player to benefit, and have an edge, using this information in casino games. Does the table have a winning or a losing feel to it, or does it come back with a ‘don’t know’. This is a tool to use before and during your session. The dice can turn in the blink of an eye. Your perception allows you to follow the energy and can give you an early warning system.

Okay, this sensory receiver is your sixth sense. The sixth sense is a sensory preceptor that perceives information from energy present. This sixth sense goes by several names, among the more common are, intuition, inner voice, higher self, divine knowledge and “I knew that was going to happen” voice. The sixth sense perceives metaphysical information and translates it in such a way that it makes sense in the physical plane. What you do with the information, can make the difference in an outcome.

The translation takes place on a feeling, experiential level, rather than on an intellectual or emotional level. This is an essential point and may be the more difficult aspect to get the mind to free itself and trust feelings, not intellect. It has nothing to do with what you think is going to happen or your emotional yearning. It is all about how your perceptions of a situation affect you on a feeling level, you sensory perception. Do you feel safe and secure or do you have feelings of insecurity and doubt, for example.

The five physical senses cooperate with the sixth sense to enhance the perception of one’s ability to read energy. Take the examples of; “this does not look right, this does not sound right, this does not smell right, this does not taste right, this does not feel right”. The “this does not feel right” is the leader of the pack. In these examples, the senses provide a kind of knowing that something is amiss. Perceiving the energy existing in a situation is a cue to pay attention. You will experience a perception of energy as a feeling and whatever it is that you are feeling, you are doing so because there is reason for it.

At the craps table, you may want to buy in and play right away. The difference in success or failure can be a matter of the prevailing energy, not the desire of playing. This is the difference between Sir Intellect and Captain Ego, like charging bulls in a china shop. By stepping away from those two characters, it allows the essence of the game,  provided by energy, to come forward without influence from intellect and ego. Does the energy present support a positive feeling for playing? It is within the perception of the energy that you will glean the metaphysical information. This does not infer “seeing the future”, necessarily. It is more like reconnaissance, providing you with information before entering a battle. If “outnumbered”, the feeling may be scary and uncertain. The prudent move would be no move or no play. On the other hand, perceiving no “danger – green light”, proceeding onward may prove to be correct.

Reading energy, feeling and perceiving the information at hand, provides an invaluable edge when playing craps. Learning to push out with your feelings is to reach out into a field of energy and touching on information before the manifestation in reality. This is how you are able to read energy. You push out with your feelings. It is an exercise in expanding self awareness.

You do this all the time and probably do not recognize or acknowledge doing it. Let’s say that you have an important business client and you are going to entertain them for lunch. In your mind’s eye you visualized the best restaurant for the occasion and you also glimpse the scene. You finalize  your decision because of how it makes you feel, confident, impressive, and most importantly, like a winner. You certainly are not going to the Downtown Diner when your destiny is at the Top of the Mark. You push out with your feelings and what comes back is “first class elegance”, take the client first class! You can feel the experience before having the experience. It is all a simple matter of perceiving the metaphysical energy.

Engaging a craps game is not any different. When you allow yourself to look around for the subliminal signs, feelings from the energy, you provide yourself an edge. The edge is valid for entry into a game and most important for the advance notice that the wind has gone from the sail and it is time to color up and get out of a game. I emphasize the power of advance knowledge feeling that a game is breaking down and getting out way ahead of the crowd that soon is clamoring to color up after four quick outs in a row. Instead of suffering through the losing hands, you get the “wink and a nod” on an energy level that the game is over. You keep additional profit because you knew what was about to happen. Think of it as having insider’s information when making a stock trade. If you intend to win, you have to consider every possible tool that provides you with an edge.

Michael writes and publishes Playing 4 Keeps®  A Gaming Newsletter for Winners.

Tools for Setting up Your Landing Station

Several tools help a lot in positioning your landing station for dice practice. Your shooting point needs to be the right distance away. Also the surface should be level.
 

 Really handy is an extra wide retractable tape measure. In retractable tape measures the width of the  blade is very important. It determines how far out the blade can be unrolled before it makes a funny sound  and collapses under its own weight. The fatter and more deeply curved the blade is, the further it can be  extended before it collapses.

Anything less than 1/2 inch wide has very little reach. You can usually find tapes with a blade 3/4 inch wide, or even one inch. I found one super fat tape measure that has a blade 1 1/8 inch wide. It is quite a piece of work and very handy.

The Stanley FatMax tape. Its one downside is its weight. It feels like picking up a brick. It has a belt clip, but you would need a major belt to keep your pants up with this thing clipped on. Even though it is 25 feet long, that is not the important part. What is important is its extra wide blade.

It will extend eight feet without collapsing if you are careful. Resting one end on the landing station, and a bit of support from your free hand, it is easy to measure back 10 feet or more with this tape without help from a second person. A 3/4 inch blade will hardly make 4 feet without collapsing.

To get the surface level you can’t beat a circular bubble level. These are about 1 inch in diameter and show out of level in all directions at once. They are not expensive and quite sensitive. They are more than accurate enough and much faster than going back and forth with a small torpedo level since they show immediately which corner or side is too low. 

Today’s Wisdom:

On Life’s Reflection

What you are looking at as you peer out through your eyes is a refection of you. It is constantly you. There is nothing that you see that isn’t you. If the cab driver slows down to pick you up and sees you standing there in the rain and he gives you the “up yours” sign and accelerates, that’s your neat little energy that’s pissed him off. He’s felt your energy and voted no. As you watch the outside you’re constantly watching a reflection of the inside. It is constantly teaching you about yourself.

Stuart Wilde Blog