I hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving and the effects of the tryptophan in the turkey have worn off.  Normally I head to Vegas in early December as there are empty tables galore and unbelievable room rates even in the high-end casinos. 

Unfortunately, duty at home and at work calls, and I’ll have to be satisfied with a quick jaunt to Reno before Santa arrives.

Here’s wishing you a happy and safe holiday season.

This issue of the newsletter is jammed, so, let’s get on with the good stuff.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at Irish Setter.  Thanks for supporting Dice Setter!

History’s Trash Heap

by Heavy Haltom

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of my “discovery” of precision dice shooting. I’d been attempting a controlled toss for years, although like a lot of people, I really didn’t understand what I was doing and why. I was simply emulating other good shooters I’d seen at the tables. However, it wasn’t until 1993 that the light bulb went off and it all finally came together for me

A lot of things have been piled on history’s trash heap over the last ten years.  The Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas burned to the ground 51 days after being stormed by the ATF.   The World Trade Center was bombed, killing six and injuring thousands, foreshadowing the tragic events of 9/11 – just ten years later.    Olympic Skater Tonya Harding and her ex-husband were arrested for the “hired” attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan.  O.J. Simpson was arrested, and later acquitted, in the stabbing deaths of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.   Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath.  The Murrah Building in Oklahoma  City was destroyed in a bomb attack by Timothy McVey.  After a 17-year search, the Unibomber was finally arrested.  In Colorado, a six-year-old beauty queen named Jon Bennet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her parents’ home.  Princess Diana died in a tragic car crash. Scottish researchers cloned Dolly the sheep.  The tiny Mars rover “Sojourner” sent live photos back from the red planet. The world lost a living saint when Mother Theressa passed away. 

In the late 90’s the number of folks surfing the web topped 60 million, with over 5 million web sites up and running.  Out of those 60 million internet junkies, a small group of like-minded craps enthusiasts came together.  We had handles like Irishsetter, Heavy, Mad Professor, Micky D. and Perry B.  We met on craps forums like casino.com, crapspit, allcraps, and John Patrick’s board.  Eventually our ranks grew as more players became interested in dice setting and precision shooting.  We got together for team shoots and started coaching others.   The flamers and pundits took over the unmoderated forums and ruined them for the rest of us.  Dicesetter.com was born, followed by Axis Power Craps.  The rest, as they say, is history. 

By now it’s a fairly well known fact that precision dice shooting combined with the proper betting strategy can give the skilled player a powerful advantage over the casino.  The increased demand for information on dice control has led more and more skilled precision shooters to begin teaching the technique in seminars around the country.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  However, some of these instructors have abandoned discretion and are putting the game we love at risk.  They advertise their seminars on radio, in newspapers, and in casino tabloids.  They flaunt their skills and “hot dog” it at the tables.  They are even conducting their seminars in the casinos themselves.  And when someone complains about their marketing strategy they simply say, “You don’t understand how casinos work.”

Perhaps they are correct.  But over the last twelve months I’ve seen a marked increase in the amount of “heat” precision shooters are getting at the tables.  Sometimes it’s just a bored dealer or stick man amusing himself by trying to distract the shooter.  Often it gets much worse – with the pit and box berating the shooter after every toss, demanding that he throw the dice harder and bounce them off the back wall so hard that the dice roll back to the middle of the table.  And yes, more and more advantage craps players are being told by the casinos that their business is no longer welcome there. 

If we are to protect the viability of precision dice shooting we must, as a group, make a concerted effort to keep a lower profile.  Here are a few of the guidelines I hand out to players attending our Axis Power Craps seminars.  They’re good rules to live by.  Follow them – and perhaps the future of the game we all love will be  little brighter.  Ignore them and the game may end up on history’s trash heap. 

Heavy’s Guidelines for Staying Under the Radar:

1. Never mention dice setting, precision shooting, or use any of the terms we discuss in the class or on the forums on the casino floor. 
2. When taking over a table with a larger group, pair off in twos or threes and avoid letting the casino know you are all together.
3. Use first names only at the tables and try to avoid the use of handles or nicknames that might be recognized by casino personnel.
4. Don’t show off for the table by repeatedly hitting hop and prop bets.  These wagers can be powerful plays, but should be made judiciously.
5. Do not overstay your welcome at the tables.  If you believe you are receiving casino heat then it is time to color up and move on. 
6. Tip the dealers regularly.  It’s a tough job and if they give good service they deserve it.  A tip will go a long way toward getting the dealers on your side.
7. Remember, the eye in the sky is ALWAYS watching you. 

Irish Say Relax

One of our message board participants, kentrg, has created a GREAT tool to assist you with getting into The Zone!  Best of all, he’s made this available for FREE!  He’s created twp “Zone” hypnosis recordings. The first recording uses guided imagery, through hypnosis, to imagine playing the perfect craps game and relaxing at the craps table. The 2nd recording deals with staying focused, relaxing, and getting in your zone through hypnotic suggestions while at the craps table. For best results Glines suggests alternating the recordings. Listen to the first recording then 3 days later listen to the second recording. Alternate the recordings so you listen to each one at least 10 times.

Kent Glines is a clinical hypnotherapist residing in the central Florida area. He customizes hypnosis programs for individuals according to their needs. He’s always looking for new ways to use his skills in the practice of hypnotherapy and after reading several posts on the dicesetter.com forums regarding people getting in their zone, he decided that hypnotherapy could also help in this area.

Can We Talk?

It’s official, the next online chat has been scheduled. Mark December 3rd at 10 PM Eastern (9PM Central, 7 PM Pacific) on your calendars!  Heavy’s Axis Power Craps Message Board is hosting this chat.  On the evening of the chat, you may visit his board or my message board for instructions and the link you’ll need to join us as we talk craps, casino heat, swap tips and much, much more!  The last chat was incredibly successful, with a large contingent of players logging in to join Heavy, myself, the Mad Professor, roadrunner, Site, Dix and several others.  Who’ll be chatting this time?  Log in and see!

Heavy and Irish Leap Into Reno

Start the New Year off right!  Join Heavy and Irish Setter in Reno, when Axis Power craps comes to the “Biggest Little City In The West,”  February 27-29.  For details about the class, click the banner above, or here.   Register early and save!  If you’re not familiar with the Reno market, it’s ideal for advantage players.  For craps players, there are over a dozen casinos to choose from with low limits and great playing conditions.  For blackjack players, Boomtown (just outside of Reno), has been voted the best Blackjack in Nevada.  To read some trip reports from the recent Axis Power Craps seminar in Las Vegas, click here.

A Little Help From Amazon.com Users

If you plan to purchase books or other merchandise from amazon.com this holiday season, you can ALSO support dicesetter.com!   How?  Whether you’re buying gambling related books or not, by accessing amazon.com via the link below (or the one located on the Playbooks page of the site), a few pennies of the purchase price is credited to my site.  Every penny really helps to defray the cost of hosting the site.  Thanks in advance for supporting the site!

Mad Professor’s Mini-Table Craps Tour with the Vegas Ghost- Part XV

(Read Part I , Part II, Part III or Part IV or Part V or Part VI or Part VII or Part VIII or Part IX or Part X or Part XI or Part XII or Part XIV)  

Spending some quality dice-time profitably playing an early morning session on the Colorado River at the Edgewater Hotel seemed like an excellent way to start our final day on the Mini-Tub Craps Tour of Southern Nevada.

We were in the presence of a ribald group of “Laughlin millionaires” (that’s someone from Laughlin or Bullhead City with more than $100 in their pocket).  I had met these guys the night before, and they were still at the same table, in their same spots, when I returned to it nearly ten hours later.  They had been up all night playing 25-cent craps and drinking their share of free booze.  

In actual fact, they appeared to have been drinking the state of Arizona, California and New Mexico’s fair share of free booze, and the waitress continued to re-supply the troops every fifteen minutes or so.  Mel and I each tossed one final redeeming hand before tossing our luggage into the trunk, then dropping the roof of the car, and heading back to the center of the craps playing universe otherwise known as Las Vegas. 

We had one more casino to visit before wrapping up this tour.   I was looking forward to settling down at a very beatable sit-down Crapshooter table at:

Silverton Hotel-Casino

Some of you may remember this 300-room hotel as the old Boomtown Casino at the extreme southern edge of the LV hotel-strip.  Although it hasn’t completely shed its old mining-town motif, at least it no longer resembles the long-abandoned ghost-town theme that it once did.  As the suburbs around Vegas grow, once remote places like the Silverton become local neighborhood casinos that see more frequent visits from nearby residents.

To say that this casino is “just off the Strip” is a bit of a stretch.  Well actually, it’s a BIG stretch.  Although it’s only about two blocks away from Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip); in actual fact, few tourists have ever even heard of this place, let alone being able to tell you where it is.

Where Is It?

It is on Blue Diamond Road, located between Interstate-15 off-ramp and LV Boulevard.  That places it roughly five miles away from all the mega-resorts, which pretty much guarantees that your chances of being run over by a demonically steered baby-stroller is low enough to let your “Is this Sinland or Disneyland” guard down.  On the other hand, there is a disproportionate number of electric wheelchairs, power-driven scooters and wheeled oxygen tanks, that you have to be sure you don’t get tripped up on your way to the easy-to-find table-games pit.

They also have a free shuttle (10 am to 10 pm) that rumbles between the Tropicana Hotel, Callaway Golf Center, and Belz Factory-Outlet Mall, before finally disgorging its cargo of human flotsam and jetsam at The Silverton. 

I’ve never actually stayed in one of their 300 rooms, so I can’t pass judgment on them.  However, I haven’t read of any more people getting killed here (recently), so I suppose it’s an okay place to rest your head and dream of sugar-plum craps fairies who throw those mythical never-ending hands.

Although the 30,000 square foot casino is small by Strip standards, it will soon be undergoing a major expansion along with the addition of further restaurants, amenities and a significantly larger hotel tower.

The Dealers, the Table, and the Game

The dealers here are universally good.  Although some of them haven’t been in the business for very long, they are good-natured, and definitely appreciate any toke-action directed their way. I hope I don’t have to remind you that small casinos like this are not used to hosting big bettors.  With that in mind, you may want to restrict your buy-in to no more than $100 during the day, and a max of $200 during the busier evenings.

– mini table tour continued here

If you have any comments or ideas for future issues, feel free to email me at ed@dicesetter.com

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Good Luck!