Dice Setter Precision Shooter’s Newsletter: June – July 2009

One Thing You Don’t Need

There are a lot of things a player needs in order to be successful with this game. Drive, commitment, patience, discipline, confidence, follow-through and money are among the many requirements on an endless list of items a craps player needs to build a positive outcome at the tables.

One thing that a craps player does not need on his list of success building tools is blame. Poor performance and bad outcomes are simply the result of our choice to play under less than optimal conditions.

I know I like to talk about how the game of craps has so many dimensions and can be played on so many different levels. In this game, a player can experience playing a game within a game. Playing the Do Pass/Don’t Pass line, placing box number wagers and utilizing dice sets and throws all have their place in facilitating winning opportunities.

The table is too bouncy, the boxman is giving me heat, I was out of position, etc., are common complaints that are voiced to me by players for not winning. The list can go on. Players find something they can blame for not having a successful outcome or desired result.

Here is what I believe many players do not realize: by placing blame on something outside themselves, they give up their power to create winning opportunities.

Everything we do at the tables involves making choices that will lead us down a path to winning, or not. The decision to play originates with us. So, the outcome is our responsibility and ours alone. Let’s not blame another player who has just as much right to play at the same table as you do for our inability to create a win.

Last week, the Dice Coach and I decided to play a craps session at Treasure Island. The table we selected had friendly and recognizable dealers and it was not full of players. So position, table surface, and the dealer support were all there inviting us to play. As our session progressed, the table filled with players as Dice Coach and I proceeded to put together quite a few good money making rolls.

Now, as the table “heat’s” up, other players buy in wishing to capitalize on our rolls. There are players placing their bets in areas that happen to be directly on my landing spot. Who’s at fault when my dice land on their chips resulting in a seven out? It is mine and mine alone. Knowing that I can continue to toss the dice in an area that has the potential to change my outcome may cause a change in results and is part of the game.

In this case, I knew the player had no idea how important it was to me to have a clear landing spot. So, I respectfully and very politely walked to the opposite end of the table and asked him if he wished to keep winning on his pass line bets. The obvious answer was yes.

“Could you move your chips just a few inches toward the stick man, please” was my request. This player at the opposite end of the table obliged me and we all continued to get a few more of our bets paid. Winning was important to him.

A very different scenario could have played out. The player could have simply refused to move his chips for whatever reason. I make the choice to continue to use that landing spot and I seven out.

I don’t blame the player for my outcome of a seven out. I respect and honor him as he has every right to play as he sees fit, just as do I. I blame myself for the outcome. By refusing to recognize that my optimal conditions for shooting were changing, I left myself open to loss. I needed to make a change in my direction to create the win.

Let me digress for a second here.

In this game, as in life, often the players who most annoy or antagonize us are the ones we need most at the table to teach us what we wish to learn. When we see something with a player we do not like, we need to be careful. Sometimes, these players can be mirrors of ourselves. What we dislike about them can be likely a behavior of our own that we are not aware of. When we are alert to this, it is quite easy to do something that can change your own gaming reality.

It is interesting how players accept full responsibility for winning, yet, when it comes to losing, they will find everything and anything other than themselves to blame for losing. Still, as successful players, it is important to take just as much responsibility for losing because we have the power to create that outcome.

As long as a player blames something or someone outside of himself or herself, they are effectively robbing themselves of their own gaming empowerment. I feel a craps player has to look at their session outcomes in a different light.

After all, if the thought process is that “it is not my fault for sevening-out because my dice kept hitting other players’ chips during my turn at the craps table”, then there is nothing I can do about changing and improving my future performance.

If I take responsibility in knowing that there is the potential for my dice to react unfavorably when hitting player’s chips positioned in my usual landing spot, I can choose to continue to play and accept the consequences at the risk of losing my turn by sevening-out. I still had the power to not play. I still had the choice to shoot or pass the dice. I could even find a different landing spot.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have lost a few times at the tables through out my last ten years of serious craps play. While the losses when compared against my winnings are relatively minimal, I have had my struggles and my share of losing craps and poker sessions even when I did what I perceived to be correct.

I learned early on, that if I truly wished to be a winning player I had to be responsible and embrace all outcomes of this game. As I continued to add more and more success building tools in my dice playing toolbox, placing “blame” inside my toolbox would effectively diminish any money building opportunities in my future.

You see, when you get on with taking responsibility for everything that happens in your game, your game improves. When that happens, you lose any and all desire to be a player who blames.

Take responsibility for everything in your game. Blame is one tool you don’t need in your gaming toolbox.

Have fun out there.
Soft Touch

Missing Ingredient

While in Las Vegas last month, I met with a student who asked me for private instruction. Specifically, he asked me about the metaphysical elements of playing and how it applied to the dice game. One of the components I spoke of was right time, right place, and right action.

The student confided to me about his belief in affirmations. He said he was confused about the way affirmations worked, however, more specifically, he asked me why affirmations did not work. He gave me an example of a past experience, when he had attended a program designed to help grow wealth. He went on to say that the program was all about the use of affirmations. He told me of how he wrote down affirmations, how he placed them around his home and work place as visible reminders, and how he often mentally repeated the phases. In the end, he told me that the process did not work. I asked him to explain the process that he had learned at the seminar for growing wealth. He told me that the seminar presenters represented that by using affirmations, checks would come in the mail and money would appear to him. I asked him what he had done in order to cause someone to want to send him a check in the mail. After a long pause, he replied with, “nothing”.

Affirmations support the reprogramming of the subconscious mind to a new way of thinking. Without concerted action, on the part of the affirmer, little to nothing is likely to happen. It has to do with a willingness on the part of the person doing the affirmations to do something that allows the affirmations to work. Stuart Wilde covered this in his book, “Life Was Never Meant To Be A Struggle”. You do not necessarily have to work hard for success, but you do have to do something to work toward the end goal. Money is an expression of energy. If you put out little to no energy, it probably explains why you have little to no money. Somewhere along the line action supported by appropriate energy is required.

This is a fairly simple concept, but easily missed by most people. It is abused by scores of others, playing on the emotions of individuals while selling them hope in get rich quick scams. Changing a life style to feel abundant is an on going process, once you set out upon the path. It is not something that has an ending, unlike the example above. “I did all these affirmations and I then waited for something to happen.”

If a person’s life and beliefs are rooted in scarcity and lack, it is nearly impossible to have any support from affirmations about abundance. A thought form of limitation holds back prosperity the same way as a lack of action. Once engaged in the practice of feeling abundance and wealth, a different life style is set in place. Sometimes that feeling can even exist without a lot of money. Think of it like a spring pouring from the side of a hill. Would you want to try to stop the spring once you had quenched your thirst? No! You would want the spring to continue to flow and support your needs for water. Think of it as a continuation of events in your life always coming at you abundantly. There is always more. You can always feel when you are in the “flow”.

The person that you take to the game is the same person that you take into life. Your strengths and weakness fears and confidence will be exposed during the course of the game. The quickest way to change the game is to change your beliefs about life. You might as well believe in something that empowers you and the actions that you take.

Right place, right time and right action are not just motivating phrases. It has to do with a commitment to a belief system. It is taking on a belief that supports limitless possibilities. Contrast that, for example, to how most of society especially now, subscribes to a belief in lack, scarcity and the fear of not having enough. Having an abundant life means to take ownership of a belief of limitlessness, like the spring always gushing water. It is a life style and a way of living that takes responsibility for life experiences. Life does not just happen to you, it is an expression of your energy, your thought forms and your actions. It is a combination of an expanded belief system, affirmations, and action. In a game of chance, you affirm your intention of being at the right game at the right time and possessing the skill and knowledge to take the right action. If you leave any door open to doubt, it is pretty much an expression of lack and a leak in your game.

Sure, the process of change involves overcoming old ways. It will take some time and practice to make the decision to release a belief that is based in restriction and opt in favor of empowering yourself with a belief of limitlessness, abundance, and opportunity. That is when the missing ingredient can kick in… powerful, abundant action!

The Professor

Copyright © 2009 – Michael Vernon 

Today’s Wisdom:

The basic physical aspects of abundance are your actions in the marketplace of life. The Universal Law cannot mail you a check from the clouds. At some point you will have to get into the marketplace, find other humans, satisfy their needs in some way and have them transfer  a little symbology to your bank account. That’s the recognized way.

Stuart Wilde – The Trick To Money Is Having Some