Stocking Your Tool
Box
By Stephen
heavy Haltom
My
daughter has spent years as a student of the martial arts.
She has her Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and has cross-trained with some of the
worlds greatest martial arts masters. She
attends weekly Black Belt Masters Classes, teaches two beginner classes a week and works
out with both intermediate and advanced students. Yet
with all of this experience, she begins every class with basic kicks, basic blocks, basic
punches and basic self-defense. Why
concentrate on the basic tools of martial arts? Because
while that Jackie Chan stuff looks great on film or at a tournament demo, most of it
wont work in a real fight. Youll
only succeed in amusing the bad guys while they use you for batting practice. Its the basics of martial arts that keep
you alive to fight another day.
No
matter what your line of endeavor, there are certain basic tools you must have to ply your
trade. The same is true with gambling. I call these tools the Super Seven. Lets open the tool box
and take a brief look at them.
1.
Knowledge of the game. One
of the silliest questions I hear people ask at the craps table is How do you play
this game? Standing at the table with
your hard-earned cash at risk is not the time to learn.
Before placing your first bet you should have mastered all of the basic
rules of the game, understand the terminology, have a working knowledge of the correct
odds and pay-off, and be comfortable with both the pass and dont pass sides of the
game.
2.
Sufficient Bankroll. I
like to think of my casino chips as bullets. On
the battlefield, if you run out of bullets youre as good as dead. Thats why it is important to build a
sufficient bankroll before stepping into the casino.
You will always have limited funds to play with when your bankroll is
compared to the casinos. The Pit Boss
can roll out the reserves anytime by calling the cage and having the security boys bring
out a chip refill.
Yet
flukes do occur. I have fond memories of
standing at a $5 table at the Horseshoe one night when a player stepped up and bought in
for $20. He waited patiently for the dice to
come to him, then placed $5 on the line and threw the nine.
He placed $10 in free odds behind the line and played a dollar each on all
of the hardways. Nineteen of his twenty
dollars were on the table. He held the
remaining dollar tightly in his left hand, picked up the dice with his right and started
the roll of a lifetime. He threw the dice for
an hour and twenty minutes before sevening out - without making the nine. The shooter never made his pass, but he had
managed to throw hardway after hardway, parlaying his bets at first, then leveling off at
the $25 level and placing the numbers with his excess payoffs. When the smoke cleared he colored up just over
$3,600. And he still had that single one
dollar chip clutched in his right hand.
Of
course, its a great story. Statistically,
the shooter should have either made his point or sevened out within four rolls of the
dice. Had the seven shown it would have been
all over. Hed have taken his last
dollar and headed to the cage. In this case,
though, his bankroll didnt let him down. He
got lucky. He caught a streak.
There
are lots of ways you can use your bullets against the casino. You can use them like artillary, playing those
long shot bets, or a machine gunner raining chips all over the table. Or, if youre smart, youll launch a
sniper attack, making every shot count. But
to stand any chance at all in these bankroll battles, you must have enough capital to
start. Ill show you some simple
strategies on how to build and maintain a bankroll -- and how to bet accordingly.
3. Conservative
Strategy. My college professor
friend loves to play marathon craps session. Few
things give him more pleasure than an eight-hour session at the tables. But long sessions are not the gamblers
friend. The casinos edge will
invariably grind you down. The only way to
survive these sessions over the long haul is to adopt an extremely conservative betting
philosophy. In my friends case that
consists of a single Dont Pass bet with single odds.
On every win he increases his odds bet by one unit, and continues to
increase his odds bets by one unit until a loss. Then
he begins his progression again with single odds. Thats
it. The whole thing. And while he will never win a huge amount of
money, he will rarely lose a large amount either. He
is patient and plays his strategy flawlessly, and it achieves exactly what he wants.
You
must approach the table with the same type of logically conceived, conservative game plan. That doesnt mean you have to limit yourself
to the pass line or dont pass - or limit yourself to a single bet. It simply means you step up to the table with a
plan. A strategy that allows you to adjust
the size of your bets based on your bankroll, minimize your losses, and maximize your
wins. How?
By positioning yourself to take advantage of the gamblers friend - the
almighty streak.
4. Money Management.
I
can only guess at how many times a player standing next to me at the table has pointed to
a stack of chips on the layout and asked, Is that my money? Ive heard it hundreds of times through
the years. But money management is more than
watching your bets. As I mentioned before,
you have to adjust the size of your bets in relation to the size of your bankroll. But money management goes beyond that, as well. It requires you to set specific win objectives and
loss limits based on your total bankroll. It
means knowing exactly how much you will bet in every conceivable win/loss situation you
encounter. And it means having the
self-discipline to execute those bets flawlessly. In
fact, I believe money management and self-discipline are the heart and lungs of winning.
5. Self Discipline.
Most
gamblers dont have it. Simply put,
self-discipline is how you control your emotions while gambling. A few months back I bought in at a table and -- by
using good money management and discipline -- doubled my money in about forty-five
minutes. At the same time, the player next to
me lost a little over $14,000. He was
drinking heavily and sweating the losses. The
more he lost the more he relied on crazy, scared-money wagers - $100 hop bets on two or
three numbers every roll, and placing the hardways for $500 each. As his losses mounted he became loud and
abusive. Unable to tolerate this behavior any
longer, I colored up a $500 win and moved on. At
the same time, he was signing a marker for another $20,000.
He was pitting his bankroll bullets against the casinos. The house had him out-manned and out-gunned. Everyone at the table could see he was destined to
lose it all -- everyone except him. As the
old saying goes, you gotta know when to walk away -- and know when to run.
6.
The Almighty Streak. Craps
is a game of streaks. Streaks of Point - Seven Out.
Streaks of Point - Pass. And,
most often, choppy streaks where there is no dominant trend. Since craps is a game of independent trials --
what happened on the last roll of the dice has no influence on what happens the next roll. Predicting a trend is impossible. However, you can recognize the current trend by
looking for certain signs along the way.
I
liken it to long range weather forecasting. If
you live in Minneapolis its a safe bet to say it will snow in January. However, if you say its going to snow the
second week of January, the odds of your being wrong just went up. Likewise, if you predict its going to snow
on January 11th, you increase the likelihood that you will be incorrect. And if you forecast that it will start snowing at
3:17 PM on the afternoon of January 11th - and will continue to snow for two
hours and forty-three minutes - well, you get the picture.
Oh
the other hand, if you are standing outside and it starts to snow, you recognize
immediately what is happening. After it snows
for half an hour you may think, Hey, better run to the store and pick up a couple of
things. It looks like its going to
stick. Two hours later, when its
really coming down with no sign of letting up, you say Better get the snow blower
ready in case I need it in the morning. Every
blizzard begins with a little flurry.
While
you cannot predict how long a roll will last based on what went before, every forty-five
minute monster starts out with a dozen tosses of the dice.
It moves on to the five-minute mark, then ten, fifteen, and twenty. At some point virtually every player at the
table recognizes what is happening and the layout fills up with chips. They have spotted the almighty streak. You must train yourself to recognize one as well.
7.
Winning Attitude. Lets
face it. The only one who likes a loser is
the casino. And yet you hear people
reinforcing a losing attitude at every turn. The
science of neuro-linguist-programming - NLP for short - teaches that you can actually
program your mind for success through positive affirmations. Yet so often we program ourselves for failure
instead.
On
a recent Vegas outing I walked into the casino and turned a quick $360 profit at the craps
table. Recognizing that the streak at that
table was over, I colored up and strolled over to the Wheel-of-Fortune carousel to see if
my companion was ready to go to dinner. Just
a minute, she said, shaking her coin cup. I
just want to lose these last few dollars, then we can go.
Think
about that. How many times have you stood in
the casino and heard someone say something similar?
They dont expect to win - so they dont. They just stand there until they throw their
last chip in.
Why
do you gamble? Its not for
entertainment - though often it is entertaining. It's
not so you can tip the dealers and show what a good loser you are. You play to win.
Its not just a goal. Its
the only goal. The rest of it -- the comps,
the excitement, the roller-coaster thrill -- is all secondary. Youre in the casino for one reason. You want their money - and lots of it.
Now
get out there and get your share.
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