You may have been playing craps ever since George Washington was a Colonel in the British Army; but if your game hasn’t evolved since then; then neither will your profit.
If your shooting has improved, but your betting hasn’t; then your profit still won’t keep pace with your progress…but your frustration probably will.
An astute Precision-Shooter is continually discovering fresh new ways to extract more and more money from his ever-evolving talents.
Profit-discovery is invariably tied to self-discovery.
So how do we get from HERE (where your current profit-level and win-rate is right now) to THERE (where you’ll have bigger and more consistent wins with equal or reduced risk) from the same skill-set?
By continuing our sure-footed how-to-get-it-and-how-to-keep-it trek across the often-treacherous terrain of casino-play…
When You Break Your Own Rules…HOPE That Things DON’T Work Out
Yeah, you read it right…
When you break your own discipline rules while you are at the casino…HOPE that things DON’T work out.
Many players find themselves in a quandary over whether it is bad to break their own discipline rules, or bad only if they end up losing?
Many also wonder what rules are for if not for breaking.
Here’s the problem with that philosophy…
- When you break your own rules (that were set to prevent you from blowing your nut in a fit of greed or desperation in the first place, and because you know how much you’ve struggled with it in the past)…and your rule-breaking works out in your favor this time…that often leads to even more bankroll-control issues and an even lower level of willpower, discipline and self-restraint in the future.
When you give up discipline, you give up control of your money.
The casino is a perfect killing-machine when it comes to taking advantage of low-discipline players. They eat you up and shit you out. Many gamblers like the therapeutic feeling of going through the wringer and getting extruded through the ass-end of the casino-grinder.
Me…well, I’m not into that sort of entertainment.
When you give up discipline…you give up power.
When you don’t have enough self-restraint to control your money, then the casino will assume the “pimp-Daddy” role. They’ll slap your bankroll around and treat it like the money-surrendering whore that it is because you let them.
The casino will act like the adult in case you can’t.
On the other hand…
When you decide to break your discipline-rules and you stage a monumental lucky comeback or score a huge fluky win…for the moment, the money is yours.
However, before you enthusiastically toot your triumphant gee-am-I-ever-clever horn, think about this…
- The next time a similar gambling situation presents itself, you will probably abandon your game-plan and ditch your discipline-constraints with much less thought and deliberation than you did just now.
- Further, you’ll likely do it much sooner than you just did. Once you break down that resistance-wall, it’s much easier to pass through it again and again. There’s nothing left to hold you back and there’s nothing left to stop you.
- When an advantage-player willingly gives up discipline, he casts himself back into the hellfire of random outcomes. It makes you wonder why he took up dice-influencing in the first place.
- Each time you abandon your game-plan and it works out in your favor…human-nature dictates that you’ll continue to lower the discipline-bar…until you are once again playing with no discipline at all.
- When a player abandons his discipline…it becomes easier to do it more frequently…not because the outcomes continue to fall in his favor, but because he vainly keeps trying to recapture lightning in a bottle again and again…all in an effort to prove his faulty decision-making process was right. In other words, his ego will endlessly try to “redeem” itself (even though his conscience knows deep down how wrong it was), and even if he has to blow his entire bankroll in a failed attempt to do it.
Like I said, when you break your own rules, HOPE that things DON’T work out.
A small, disciplined low-limit loss that doesn’t get out of control might sting a bit now; but it will save you tons of chronic undisciplined losses later.
Revisit Your WORST Losses and Learn From Them
Though we aren’t going to dwell on our bankroll-wounds from times of yore for too long, I want you to think back to some of your biggest losses.
- If you can’t remember them vividly (and exactly WHY they produced such big deficits) or you don’t have Session-Notes that will permit you to look them up; then the first thing I’m going to predict is that you are VERY likely to repeat those same mistake-laden losses again, and again and AGAIN until the lessons that they should have left with you do sink in.
- Your biggest losses should have a place in your records as well as in your memory (though obviously not in the forefront of your mind). They are there to tell us again what NOT to do. They are the last wall of defense against undisciplined play.
- Their memory should also bring a small twinge of pain as you recall how the events that led to each of those losses unfolded. They act as the alarm that warns us of impending same-pitfall dangers. A child quickly learns not to touch a hot stove, but a fool returns again and again to the same open fire to test whether searing flames still burn his arm like they did the first time…and the second time…and the third time too.
- If you can’t remember how you lost that money in the first place, then you’ll likely keep on losing similar amounts of it again and again, until the message that it is try to send to you finally hits home.
In other words, it’s important to realize HOW you lost that money, and to note the changes that you’ve made (or should be making) to your game-plan so that you don’t keep on making those same decisions and repeating those same dismal money-losing performances again and again.
Revisit your worst losses and learn from them. Your worst discipline problems usually offers the best opportunity for profit-retaining improvement.
Is It A Problem or Is It An Opportunity?
Some guys look at their own rolls and see nothing but trouble.
They’ll track each outcome and compare them to the bets they are making, then shake their head in disgust at the fact that their dice-outcomes consistently manage to dodge nearly every one of their active wagers.
Savvy advantage-players look at the same set of rolls and see nothing but opportunity.
If your outcomes are dodging the bets that you usually make; then you have to look at making bets that will more closely match the outcomes that your current talents are producing.
As your talents improve and evolve, the bets that you make have to transform and advance right along with them.
Listen, I’m definitely not the smartest dice-shootin’ bear here in Jellystone Park, but I do know that your most-dominant dice-outcomes should be the main thrust behind your bets…instead of hoping that your current non-performing wagers will somehow magically match up to your patchwork of dice-results. One approach is a matched-to-skill betting-method, while the other one is a based-on-hope gamble.
You can look at your current dice-results and lament the fact that your current betting-approach doesn’t hit often enough to make it work, or you can look at those SAME results and figure out a wagering-approach that will.
- Be sure that the roll-stats sampling that you are using isn’t too small so that any short-term deviation doesn’t fool you into seeing patterns that won’t hold up reliably in the real-world.
- Equally, be sure your sampling of rolls isn’t too large so that the useable numbers and bettable opportunities that you are looking for aren’t lost in the crowd or diluted over too wide (or too OLD and out-of-date, relative to your development) of a case-study range.
Reviewing your roll-stats is a lot like doing the glass-half-empty/glass-half-full exercise.
You can criticize your current dice-influencing problems and condemn your shortcomings with a glass-half-empty attitude, or you can look at it with a discriminating enough eye to see all kinds of new betting opportunities, hereinbefore unknown prospects, various wagering options that you’ve never considered, and previously unseen earnings-scenarios that were hidden in amongst the same roll-stats that you previously viewed as disordered, unexploitable and steadily unprofitable.
If your eye can’t see them, then running the same stats through one of the roll-analysis software programs (that are available for free on this and other sites); will tell you where your current strengths and betting-opportunities are, as well as indicating exactly where the bulk of your dice-influencing improvement needs to be directed.
Detaching From Fear and Greed Allows For Better Decisions
Detaching your emotions from your bet-decisions permits you to make wagering choices that are not tainted by greed or tinged with fear.
- In the casino, fear and greed are the two emotions that you have to control the most, because they are the chief cause of discipline breakdowns.
- Fear and greed cause you to lose more money when things are going bad, and prevents you from winning more money when things are going good.
- Fear and greed can cloud, taint, corrupt and contaminate all your casino decisions.
On the surface, you’d think that “greed” could be a good thing when it comes to winning, and “fear” would be an enemy. Conversely, you’d think that fear would be your best-friend when it comes to losing and greed would be your enemy.
Unfortunately in both of those cases, fear and greed can make both of those situations worse than they need to be.
- Greed makes you over-reach and over-bet your skills.
- Greed makes you seek unrealistic earnings beyond what your current abilities are capable of reliably sustaining.
- When you overstretch your Precision-Shooting talent; your advantage over the house ceases, and the more dangerous aspect of undisciplined casino gambling comes back into effect.
- In other words, greed makes you stupid.
- In a winning situation, greed keeps more money in play and less winnings in your rack. Greed is the urge that keeps you in action…praying for “one more stack ‘em, never rack ‘em hit”, and then conveniently (and immediately) erases your memory and convinces you to go for one more “All-my-winnings-are-out-on-the-table hit after that. Greed makes you lose perspective and enforces decisions that you wouldn’t normally make if your wife or parents were watching.
- In a losing situation, greed makes you hold out false hope in anticipation that if you can find just one win in amongst all of this losing…you might be able to finally turn things around. Greed keeps putting money on the table long after fear has told you’ll that you’ll likely lose everything.
- Fear makes you under-perform and under-bet your skills.
- Fear makes you set your goals too low in relation to what your current abilities are capable of reliably sustaining.
- When you under-bet your Precision-Shooting abilities, your advantage over the house diminishes, and the maximum potential of your skills are never realized.
- In a winning situation, fear fills you with worry that you might lose out if you turn your bets off, but equally clouds your decisions about the amount of money that you should keep in action versus the amount you should lock up.
- The fear of losing money is in a constant tug-of-war with the fear of missing out on an opportunity.
- Fear slows down your responses and leads to hesitation and indecision. Fear paralyses your thought-process and poisons your rationality.
- In a winning situation, fear breeds guilt and sometimes even feelings of unworthiness (as though you aren’t entitled to the profit, and therefore many players feel “cleaner” after they’ve lost their winnings back to the house).
- Fear can sabotage your best-laid betting-plans simply by making you second-guess your decisions and letting any low-esteem that inhabits your subconscious, lead you into making foolish bankroll-diminishing bets.
- If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “That guy bets like he has a death-wish for his bankroll”; then you know that fear and greed have conspired together to take over his entire bet-decision process.
The idea behind Precision-Shooting advantage-play is to engineer more of the risk OUT of the casino experience and put more earnings predictability INTO it.
If you let fear or greed rule your decisions, then the advantage that you’ve worked so hard to gain…will be quickly surrendered back to the casino…along with an ungodly portion of your bankroll.
One of the keys to consistent dice-influencing profitability is to make bet-decisions that are as objective as possible.
- To do that, you have to remove the emotion, the sentiment, the greed, the hope and the fear out of your bet-decisions.
- In their place we use the knowledge that we’ve gained from our diligent roll-tracking, and convert that dice-influencing intel into wagers that have a validated and actionable-edge over the house.
- That means we make bets that are most likely to hit…while we stay away from the ones that we HOPE and WISH that we could hit.
The successful Precision-Shooter has to put aside his worry and anxiety as well as his avarice and self-indulgence; and only make the bets where he knows he has a significant advantage over the house…because he knows intuitively that everything else is merely gambling.
When you take fear and greed out of your bet-making decisions and you disconnect the emotion from the money that you are wagering; then you are left with bets that give you the most reasonable chance of winning, and none of the wagers that are based on hope, panic, desire, longing, prayer or dread.
Let’s take that idea to the next level…
Your Attitude As Well As Your Skill Determines Who Gets To Keep Your Money…You or Them?
It’s ironically cruel to note this, but I find it rather funny that most skilled players aren’t satisfied with a twenty or thirty dollar win, yet they’re happy when their loss-limits keep them under the $200 deficit mark.
If we’re satisfied with a $200 LOSS, but not a $20 WIN; then doesn’t that say something immoral and slightly depraved about the way we look at money?
Let me put it this way…
If we think that it’s okay to lose $200, but not satisfactory to keep a $20 win; then there’s very little likelihood that any retainable profit will stay within our grasp for very long.
Your attitude towards money determines how you treat it in the casino.
- If you respect yourself and the effort that went into making it or earning your bankroll in the first place; then you are more likely to treat it as something you are willing to responsibly invest in order to make more of it.
- If you don’t respect it (or you don’t respect yourself or the way you’ve made it); then it won’t likely stay yours for very long.
- The casinos are the perfect bankroll killing-machine. They are purpose-built for one thing…to separate you from your money.
You can call it your entertainment…they call it their business.
Your attitude as well as your skill determines who makes the money and who loses it.
Your task as a Precision-Shooter is to retain what is yours…and also take a little bit of what is theirs.
Remember that…
- Profit-discovery is invariably tied to self-discovery.
- When you break your own discipline rules while you are at the casino tables…hope that things DON’T work out.
- When you give up discipline, you give up control of your money.
- Revisit your worst losses and learn from them.
- When you look at your roll-stats, you can isolate the problems that require further improvement, but don’t be so overwrought that you are blind to the latent opportunities that are often hidden in amongst those troubles.
- Detaching from fear and greed allows you to make bets that are most likely to hit (and of a value that reflects their volatility-weighted advantage over the house), while concurrently keeping you away from the ones that you hope and wish you could hit.
- Your attitude as well as your skill determines who makes the money and who loses it.
Your task as an advantage-player is to KEEP more of yours…and GET more of theirs.
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
Sincerely,
The Mad Professor
