The Mad Professor's Shooting Bible
Part VIII

Natural Comfort…Natural Consistency

It's a great feeling when all the elements of our Precision-Shooting efforts come together.   

The more we let our stance, basic grip, arm-motion, release and follow-through feel natural, un-contorted and unaffected; the more consistent we can be as each roll within each hand progresses.

Let me put it another way…

If it feels natural, you are more likely to be able to repeat it throw after throw after throw, and session after session.

If it feels contorted or unnatural, you are more likely to experience inconsistency from throw to throw and session to session.

The less contorted and less tiring our throws are; the more dependable and longer lasting they become.

This isn’t rocket-science folks.

Although on-axis, primary-face reliability IS difficult, it’s not impossible.  The more natural you make it, the easier it is to repeat again and again without defect. 

Let’s be clear about this.

All of my tosses ARE NOT perfect, but I try to keep them within a fairly narrow band of error-tolerance.  The more comfortable I am, and the more natural feeling my throw is; the easier it is to repeat again and again within that narrow band of reliable on-axis, primary-face performance.

The more natural our whole stance, grip, motion, release and follow-through is; the more repeatable, consistent and profitable it becomes. 

Your Grip and Your Body’s Instinctive Tendencies

The nice thing about using a more natural way to grip the dice is that you don't have to change your basic grip AT ALL.

In fact, it is in the basic positioning of your hand (and the dice) BEFORE you pick them up or set them in their launch-position that can show an almost immediate on-axis, primary-face improvement than using the SAME grip, but positioning the dice in the more conventional (facing the far-wall) set-up.  Guys, those aren’t small improvements…those are of the caliber and grade that can make a HUGE difference in your take-home casino income.

When players discover that they've been imparting all kinds of oppositional/off-axis torque and yaw forces to the dice, even though their grip LOOKS perfect, and they start using a more natural grip where their fine-motor muscles are working in cooperation with their large muscle groups (instead of in opposition against them); they unchain themselves from the low SRR/low on-axis/low primary-face anchor that has been weighing down their performance and PROFIT.

The idea of course is to use your body’s natural tendencies in your favor, instead of working in conflict against them. 

To my mind, this is one of the chief causes of hand to hand and session to session inconsistency even though you may be playing on the same table all of the time.  One day you’ll be shooting the lights out and can’t seem to do any wrong, yet the very next day, you couldn’t keep them on-axis to save your life. 

Why does this happen?

Well, from my experience, it can be traced back to the whole natural feel or rather lack of naturalness that your entire grip and throwing motion is composed of. 

The more unnatural it is, the more difficult it is to ingrain it into muscle memory and recall it with any kind of reliability from session to session.    Though these throwing traits can be learned, your body tries to reject them because they feel foreign, and therefore that old inconsistency creeps right back in.

Moreover, abnormal dice-throwing amplifies any minor defects in your toss-mechanics.  That certainly goes a long way to explaining why it is so difficult to maintain relatively flawless performance from throw to throw within the same turn, let alone session to session, or week to week.

If your major-muscle groups are rebelling and fighting against what it is your small fine-motor-control muscles are trying to achieve; then it’s little wonder that most shooters have a hard time bringing any level of repeatability to their game for back-to-back-to-back-to-back outstanding performances.

In Conflict Or In Harmony…It’s Your Choice and It’s Your Money

All of that big-muscles versus small-muscles conflict even affects your breathing, your heart-rate, the sweatiness of your hands, and the blood-flow to and from your brain.

If everything is working AGAINST each other in your body; then based on the signals that your brain is supposed to be sending down to your fingertips; how good and reliable do you think the dice-results are going to be?

If you get everything working IN HARMONY instead of IN CONFLICT, your consistency just naturally becomes …well…MORE CONSISTENT!

When I first discussed this whole subject in Shooting Bible - Part VI and then further elaborated on it in Shooting Bible - Part VII, I was surprised by the amount of I-M's and e-mails I received as far as the astounding results that players were reporting by making just that one little change to their dice-setting grip and pick-up sequence.  When they further integrated the other elements that we discussed in those two articles; their reported results were equally rewarding.

It is gratifying when players are able to successfully integrate some of my winning methods into their own game-plan and get just as good results.

When you boil it down to its most concentrated form, this Shooting Bible series is really about the HOW and the WHY of what it is that I do to make a living in various casinos around the world.

As I share some of the things that have helped me accomplish success with my own Precision-Shooting, you may choose to apply some of them to your own game.  Though you may find that not all of them are pertinent or relevant to your dice-setting aspirations; an open-mind often leads to opportunities hereinbefore unknown and unidentified.

Let’s see if we can add even more consistency to our throwing-mechanics…

A Little Insight About Grip Tightness

Let me start by saying that a light touch in terms of Grip Tightness is USUALLY better than a tighter grip because the release of the dice will by and large be more even. 

A smooth release is based on the relative adhesion (stickiness) and surface tension (the same characteristic that lets you have a slightly heaping teaspoon of water even though logic tells us that it should be perfectly flat) that the dice have to overcome to release themselves from your fingertips.  

That’s why you’ll see a lot of dicesetting pro’s focusing on keeping their hands clean and dry.  Now let me also say that CLEAN and DRY also a VERY GOOD thing, especially when it comes to consistent dice-release.  I advocate washing your hands frequently, not just as a good hygienic practice and a way of washing the insincerities of the world off of you; but also as a far more practical application from a dice-throwing accuracy point of view.

Clean hands usually mean a clean dice-release.

Now, having said all of that…

Sometimes too light of a grip produces excess dice-wobble and unevenness upon their initial release. 

A small initial wobble tends to INCREASE as the dice fly further down the table.  That is, the more time they spend in-flight, the more the wobble will intensify before they finally touch down.  Unfortunately, that practically guarantees an off-axis result for at least one of them.

Any slight unevenness at launch gets magnified (increased) when the dice start to slow down, and therefore it’s no surprise that the subsequent touch-down and roll-out generally produce unsatisfactory results.  In other words, a slight imperfection upon release is exaggerated as they flies through the air, and becomes a MAJOR imperfection by the time they first make contact with the table-surface.

The initial speed of your throwing-motion and release tends to mask minor flaws, but by the time they get to the other end of the table and their forward-speed and kinetic-energy is bled off; that minor-flaw turns into a MAJOR off-axis instigator.

What causes the initial wobble, especially if a light-touch grip is used?

Ahhh well, the likely suspect is an uneven release…one or more of your fingers gave more “influence” to one die over the other, or your finger(s) held on for a nano-second longer on one dice than it did to the other.  

However, in a lot of cases, those reasons may not offer the complete picture, and in many cases it can be traced to something completely different.

 CAUTION: Reading The Following MAY Cause Sudden or Severe Improvements in Your Skill…Player Discretion Is STRONGLY Advised!

What I am going to discuss hereunder flies in the face of conventional dicesetting wisdom.  Therefore you may choose to ignore it completely.  However if that is the case, then PLEASE do not continue to piss and moan about the fact that you can’t seem to get any level of on-axis, primary-face consistency from hand to hand, or session to session, let alone week to week.

Most dice-guru’s suggest that you grip the dice as lightly as possible.  Some go so far as to say that your grip should be SO light that the cubes are barely able to remain in your hand during your entire pre-toss routine.

I don’t subscribe to that particular school-of-thought.

While the idea of using a light touch is an excellent one, and the fact that a light throw is often required to send the dice to the other end of the table with a minimum of forward-energy; the fact is, using an ultra-light grip is not always the best way to keep the dice on-axis and ending up on one of the four primary-faces that you first set them on.

Yes, a light THROW is often required, but it does not necessarily mean that you should grip the dice like they are radioactively-contaminated cubes of unstable explosives that the mere weight of your fingertips or heat from your hand could detonate at any second.

To control the dice to any extent, you first have to impart enough influence on them to make a difference. 

“Influence” in this context means keeping BOTH dice flying on the SAME trajectory, with the SAME amount of backspin and with the SAME amount of forward-momentum to the SAME touchdown area, and have them both have the SAME number of rotations before coming to their final stop. 

To do all of that takes A LOT of control, and TOO LIGHT of a touch (grip) often imparts TOO LITTLE influence and control over all of those things.

Now that’s not to say you have to be heavy-handed or ham-fisted about it; but when I see the fragility in which many unsuccessful wanna-be dice-influencers handle the cubes; it’s a wonder that they’re even able to pick them up, let alone loft them with any degree of control.

It should come as no surprise then, that they have incredible difficulty breaking away from the 44% on-axis random-expectancy and getting past the 50% on-axis performance level that marks a consistently exploitable advantage over the house.

To get far beyond that 50% on-axis threshold requires that you exercise even MORE control over the dice; and that usually means having to make a light THROW, but from a highly controlled and synchronized grip and release. 

An ultra-light grip often leads to insufficient control.

Insufficient Guidance…Diminished Influence

Let me use an inadequate analogy to illustrate:

Ø       If a young child isn’t given enough parental direction and encouraging guidance in their formative years; they often end up as young adults wandering around aimlessly “searching for something”, but never knowing quite what it is they are looking for. 

Ø       They haphazardly let whatever and whomever they bump into provide the impetus and direction for their lives, and their seemingly random peripatetic journeys mostly lead to nowhere. 

Ø       In many cases, they eventually turn out to be fine upstanding citizens leading happy, healthy and prosperous lives.

Ø       Unfortunately for most other disenfranchised and alienated youth, the outcome often isn’t quite as rosy. 

Ø       In other words, when children are given no direction, no guidance and no encouragement; where they end up in life is almost entirely random.

So too with dice that are given insufficient influence from the shooter…

If you don’t give them enough initial on-axis guidance, directional stability and control; then the outcome often turns out to be almost entirely random.

Less guidance often means less influence… 

…in Precision-Shooting, just as with children; that’s not an altogether good thing.

Okay, can we leave behind any more of those pale analogies and agree that an ultra-light touch in not always the right answer because it often gives a nearly random reply?

Dice-control, dice-influencing and Precision-Shooting all require you to exert your intentions over and into the dice.

Ø       Too light of a grip means that you won’t be giving them clear enough instructions about what to do once they leave your hand.

Ø       At that point, it’s not their fault if they fail to do what you wanted them to do. 

Ø       Hesitant and unclear instructions simply means the dice are going to end up doing whatever they were randomly destined to do before your deficient input was added.

Ø       That does not mean that you have to over-power the dice with your manly vigor.  Rather, it means that you have to send clear, concise and succinct directional commands from your brain, through your fingertips, and into those inanimate cubes before they leave your hand.

Ø       That means you can’t be too tentative or too gentle especially when the table-characteristics call for MORE control, not LESS.  

Here’s a few items to keep in mind when you are factoring in just how much input you have to give the dice in order to get the output that you want: