Means, Motive, Opportunity…Action
We’ve all seen television police dramas where the detectives nab the guilty criminal by determining who had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the crime.
We can view our own comparative Precision-Shooting chances of having a successful session with the same “means, motive, and opportunity” test.
- Do you have the means to make a consistent profit? Is your bankroll of an adequate size to make the kind of bets, and in a suitable amount, to give you a genuine fighting chance to succeed?
- Do your Precision-Shooting skills give you enough of a measurable edge over the game, and is your motive to make money stronger than your need to gamble?
- Do you accord yourself an adequate number of opportunities to do so? Are you able to practice enough and then get to the casinos often enough to validate and capitalize on your advantage?
- When faced with a profit-opportunity, do you have the willpower to “pull the trigger”; or are you gun-shy at the wrong time and freeze-up at the critical moment of carrying out the deed?
If any one of those elements are missing from your current game; then your chances of getting to anywhere that even remotely resembles a consistent casino-craps profit is quite unlikely.
You need the bankroll, you need the discipline, you need the skills, and you need sufficient opportunities to do it, BEFORE you can expect any kind of reliable casino revenue to flow your way.
Remember, this series looks at the ways to GET the casinos money, and the means to KEEP it.
How Self-Esteem Figures into Your Success
While most casino players would rather be lucky than good, the smart ones allow that in life, as in the casino; luck can only take you so far.
Beyond luck, it takes sweat, commitment, fortitude, dedication and yes, a belief in your own abilities; which enable you to consistently profit from this game. While random-rollers are relying on luck…how far do you think it’s going to take them? And how consistently do you think luck is going to get them there? If you don’t have a healthy belief in yourself and a confidence in your proven ability; then your accomplishments (and especially your failures) will reflect that lack of faith.
Take the luck, but rely on your skill.
Lack of self-esteem is one of the biggest limiting factors that people
suffer from. We’re not talking about having a big ego…we’re talking about a confidence in our abilities to do the things we set out to accomplish, and a self-assured knowledge that we will succeed. No bluster…just fact.
Of course, you and I will both take any good-luck wherever and whenever it comes along, but we also know that hard-work and dedication has a way of bringing its own special brand of steadier occurring luck and good fortune to the table.
The success that dice-shooting pro’s garner with their Precision-Shooting can be sourced back to the constant adjustments, improvements and refinements that they have made to their game along the way.
Random-luck has little to do with consistent success.
Your at-home Practice Sessions pay dividends when you take those hard-earned skills to the casino. The harder you work at them, and the smarter you work at refining and honing each element of your game; you’ll be surprised at how often what others view as “luck”, turns out to be nothing more than the worthy product of all your strenuous efforts.
“When I work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky. The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
–Dr. Armand Hammer
Without Bet-Regressions You Need SUPERIOR Shooting
Even with all the luck in the world, there is still a risk every time that you pick up the dice.
Many people have asked WHY I advocate the use of Steep Bet-Regressions even with my own dicesetting, despite an obvious Precision-Shooting ability and a discernable edge over the house.
It’s a good question.
The answer is that I would rather rack up a VERY EARLY small profit on nearly EVERY hand, and then build on my success from there. A Steep Regression allows me to do that.
If you have a lot of money on the table to begin with, and you don’t initially regress your Place-bets after a win; then your shooting actually has to be even better than someone with the same abilities, but who uses an initial regression.
That is, you’ll need more rolls than the other guy to reach the same break-even mark, because most non-regression Place-bet methods require several more additional Place-bet hits (wins) in order to cover the cost of the wagers that are out on the layout. Only after all of those bets are totally paid for, can you start collecting profit. If you need four or five MORE paying-hits on the same Place-bets as the “regressionist” does, and he only requires one paying hit until he is in the profit zone; then whom do you think will be able to show a net-profit more often? And whom do you think will be able to get to higher levels of profit more frequently?
The answer is, the guy who uses a Steep Initial Regression, and then steadily ramps-up them up from there…THAT’S WHO!
So instead of needing only one paying-hit before you enter the profit-zone, the NON-regression player will often require three or four or even five paying-hits to get to the same point. Now on a mid-to-long roll hand, that’s okay, but on the short ones, well I gotta tell you that needing more rolls just to break-even AIN’T that good of a plan.
A Steep Regression let’s you get to the break-even point that much sooner. From there, you are into the profit-zone, which means you are able to rake in real earnings much faster.
Money that you’ve won only becomes a profit when all your bets are paid for, and it only becomes net-profit AFTER you take those winnings off of the table and set them in your rack. If all your winnings are still out there on the table; then they are just re-invested wins. They only become tangible profit when you take them out of play and put them into your locked-up bankroll.
If you don’t use an initially Steep Regression on your most dominant Signature-Number Place-bets; then your dice-shooting has to be at least three or four or five rolls PER HAND BETTER than someone who uses a regression. That’s something to think about the next time you are on your way to the casino-cashiers cage with your net-winnings or the skeletal remains of your session-bankroll.
“They Make MORE Money Off of MY Rolls Than I Do”
Several skilled Precision-Shooters have complained to me about other people at the table making tons of money off the good rolls that they themselves (the Precision-Shooter) are throwing, while they collect a mere pittance in comparison to the other players. Some accomplished rollers actually resent the fact that other players are betting it up, while the shooter himself is barely causing a ripple in the profit-pond.
To a large extant, that’s just the nature of the game, but it’s also indicative that other players may be jumping on your own good shooting before you do. They may have come to realize that your shooting is head and shoulders above the random-rolling crowd, and therefore, they are more likely to start “betting it up” even before you do. In the alternative, they may be recognizing an opportunity, and so they seize it by the throat and squeeze out the profit until it squeals like a pig. In either case, they jump in when the going gets good, regardless of whether or not you, as the shooter, has the faith or the bankroll to do it yourself.
Oft time, so many skilled dicesetters have been burned by their own previous pre-mature or aggressive (non locked-in profit) wagering methods; that when their good rolls do come along, they lag way behind the betting-curve because they are gun-shy and don’t want to get burned like they did in previous forays.
Unfortunately, the reluctance of some very accomplished shooters in holding off their aggressive pressing until it’s too late; often leads to even more frustration and anxiety when their good rolls show up the next time. If they’ve waited too long and frustrated themselves to the point of distraction, especially in light of everyone else but themselves making money off of the roll so far; then when they do finally “bet it up”; they often get a distracted, unfocused, anxiety-riddled 7-Out result.
Subsequently, the very next time the same thing happens, they are even MORE gun-shy than the last time, and the vicious reluctance/frustration circle gets bigger and bigger. When that occurs, the SHOOTING-skills of the player may have demonstrated themselves as being truly outstanding, yet his BETTING-skills are shown to be quite poor by comparison.
As players we have to get our mental game in order before we’re able to take full advantage of our physical skills.
We keep returning to this “match-your-bets-to-reflect-your-current-skills” theme, yet it seems to be one of the most difficult to apply.
How I Deal With That Problem
The simple truth is that there are several times per day when other players make quite a bit more money off of my rolls than I do. Though I have narrowed down that “have and have-not” gap quite a bit over the past eighteen months, my own envy has also been reduced almost as much.
In learning to be a lot more aggressive once I get past the 50% profit-point (based on the total amount of money that I have on the layout versus how much I have locked-in on the rail), I give myself permission to make more money, faster. Obviously this reduces the stress and frustration of seeing other people making more money off of my rolls than I am.
Giving myself “permission” really entails the fact that I use bets that are as closely matched to my current skill-level as much as possible. By doing so, I let the relative advantage that I have over the casino, play itself out. I make the bets, and if my shooting is equal to my “normal” proficiency, then I will make a profit. If it’s below that “normal” mark, then I might still make a bit of money, but more likely I’ll just break-even or perhaps even lose some money on that given hand.
If my shooting performs above-normal, then obviously I should and will make more profit than I usually expect from my standard roll. The first thing that should stand out in this betting-approach, is that it is geared to my “normal-length” hand. In fact, it is geared a little below my true average, just so I can lock up a profit a bit sooner (with a slightly bigger safety margin).
By recognizing that not every hand will be a blow-the-doors-off-the-casino mega-hand, I acknowledge that very few hands will be THAT good, so my betting should honestly reflect that fact. My ego can handle that honesty. To do otherwise would be to short-change myself in the long-run (as well as potentially eroding my bankroll in the long, medium and short-term).
If you bet like every hand will be a mega-hand, and you in fact rarely throw one; then your overall results will reflect that poor betting choice. Equally, if your bets reflect a fear that each and every roll is likely to cause a 7-Out, and you are still betting WITH the dice, then you’ll rarely give yourself a sufficient opportunity to make any substantial profit at all.
Obviously it’s a fine balance that you have to strike in order to squeeze maximum profit from your skills, without exposing your bankroll to undue risk.
Therefore, the idea is to tailor a betting-plan that reflects your continually improving skill-set. If you know where you are in the learning-curve, and you know where the validated advantage is; then you are compelled to make bets that reflect that fact. A by-product of all that knowledge is that you’ll start to eliminate the majority of bets that aren’t contributing anything to the bottom-line.
Less waste equals more net-profit.
The Frustration of Becoming a Precision-Shooter
I’ll be the first to tell anyone who takes the time to ask, that not everyone can become a master Precision-Shooter.
Even once you start to get good at keeping the dice on axis, many players find that they still 7-out faster than a fat girl in a dodge-ball game, while some random-rollers have seriously profitable hands despite the “Horn Hi-Stupid” bets that shouldn’t make anyone any money at all.
That thought hurts most accomplished dicesetters in so many places, that they don’t even want to talk about it. Instead, they start doing what every other random-roller does…and that is that they end up making bets in situations where they have no advantage over the house, and they hope against hope, just like every other gambler, that they will catch a good streak. Sometimes they do, and most times they don’t. All the effort that they’ve put into Precision-Shooting advantage-play gets tossed aside simply because they can’t handle the frustration that comes with this game.
The best way to deal with this, is to look at your throwing in total isolation from what happens during everyone else’s roll at the table.
- Are your throws generating a net-profit, a net-loss, or are you breaking-even solely on your own shooting?
- Are your wagers on all the other random-rollers producing a net-profit or a net-loss? I’m not talking about the one time back in 1962 when you hit a quintuple parlay on the Horn-Hi Aces. I’m talking day-in, day-out, session after session NET-profit. Is the sum of all your random-roller bets producing net-wins or net-losses? And if so, how much?
- When you compare those random-roller bet-results to your own dice-throwing income, how much better is YOUR shooting compared to the money you make or lose on THEIR shooting?
- If your shooting produces a net-profit and your random-roller wagering produces a net-loss; then you have to be brutally honest with yourself in terms of where your true opportunities lay, and where the black-hole of incalculable risk is at.
To take your game to the next level of profitability, you have to continually evaluate where your wagering-losses are going to, and where any of your net gaming-profits are coming from. At that point, you can re-adjust the distribution of your bets to more realistically reflect the need for profit versus your desire to gamble.
That is just one more critical step in how you GET IT, and how to KEEP IT.
Isolating Your Advantage
Precision-Shooting does not work in total isolation to all the other things that factor into the game at a craps table, but…you have to VIEW your own Precision-Shooting in the isolation that we just talked about. You have to keep it separate from most of those other non Precision-Shooting factors, and you have to make your wagering decisions with the same isolationist view.
Here’s why:
As a Precision-Shooter, you pretty much control a higher-percentage of your craps destiny than a random-roller does. When you have validated your skill, you use it to make a profit. While random-rollers are HOPING for profit, you are, in a sense, BANKING on profit based on your skill-set. Of course your bets have to mirror your skills, otherwise by trying to combine Precision-Shooting with what is in fact RANDOM-betting, you’ll often get wildly fluctuating results from session to session.
In that case, it’s not your shooting that is at fault; it is your betting that is the culprit.
If you generally make money off of your skills, but give back some of it while betting on random-rollers; then you are re-activating and increasing the house-edge against yourself. That is the same house-edge that you’ve worked so hard and spent so much time trying to overcome.
Giving back the edge that you have gained, makes little sense if you want to KEEP any of the earnings that you have worked so hard to GET.
YOUR Hot-shooting DOES NOT Mean The TABLE is Hot
It’s important to understand that if YOU throw a hot hand, it does NOT mean that the table will remain hot when the next random-rolling player picks up the dice.
Yes, you can look at trends, and they can certainly factor into your game-plan, however you have to remember that dicesetting is an anomaly with the stream of random dice-results, and therefore can usually be disregarded, or at least discounted when you look at the impact of your good hand on the prevailing trend at the table. That is, if the random-trend has been choppy, and you happen to throw a scorching-hot hand, there is little likelihood that it will continue to be just as hot as soon as the next random-roller picks up the dice; so your bets probably shouldn’t reflect the fact that you HOPE the hot-streak will continue.
Again your own hands (rolls) have to be viewed in relative isolation when you look at the overall random-trend at the table. While it may not always hold true, random-occurrence versus your de-randomized results tells us that it likely should. Therefore, any trend-indicators should probably EXCLUDE any contributions that your dicesetting skill have made to the random-trend.
Again, your good hands (long rolls) are best secluded from your table-trending, random-outcome bet decisions. Unless there are other skilled dicesetters at your table who are throwing equal or better hands than you’ve been throwing; then the random-roller trend (how you view it and especially how you bet it), has to be handled with healthy skepticism and caution. Otherwise, you are just as much of a gambler as every other bettor at the table.
Precision-Shooting seeks to REDUCE “the gamble” in this game, and replaces it with a skill-based advantage. If you bet with the trend-of-one (starting with the one good hand that you’ve just thrown) you’ll often find that the subsequent hoped-for random-roller win-trend is VERY short-lived.
A Not-So-Profound Thought…
As we cover the various ways to GET the profit and then manage to KEEP IT; I am struck by the fact that common sense in gambling has just as much merit as using common sense in everyday life.
While none of the how-to-get-it-and-how-to-keep-it elements that we’ve covered so far could be considered earth-shattering in their concept, I think the overall thrust of maintaining a level head and using common sense while you’re at the table, takes on greater value with each passing day.
And with that additional not-so-profound thought, let me wish you continued…
Good Luck & Good Skill at the tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
