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Current
Practice
Future Profitability
Part II Your
current practice determines your future profit, so its
pretty easy to see how and why the time you spend on your at-home rig today can pay
bigger dividends at the casino tomorrow. Lets
resolve to start each Practice Session (as well as each casino session) with one of the
most overlooked and easily dismissed consistency-tricks that are used religiously by
pros and smart players alike.
Clean Hands
Revisited Clean
hands and clean fingers provide reliable grip-feel, grip-pressure and grip-consistency. If
youve run into on-axis consistency problems but nothing seems to work consistently;
then starting each session with clean hands will give you a baseline of performance upon
which to build a better grip. Once
you solve your basic finger-alignment, finger-pressure, and dice-release problems,
its probably safe to say that unclean hands are one of the MAIN CUPLRITS for
ongoing off-axis shooting difficulties. The
problem is, that if you start out with dirty hands, then all the grip-tweaking in the
world likely wont solve your session-to-session inconsistency.
Ø
You'll
notice that several of my articles recommend that you wash your hands EVERY TIME that you
go to the washroom, in addition to doing it before and after each session. This not only
makes sense from a health and hygienic standpoint, but it makes sense for your
Precision-Shooting consistency as well.
Ø
Clean
hands provide the best tactile feel of the dice without imparting undue slipping or
sticking. If you start out with not-quite-clean hands, and then apply too many additives
like talc, corn starch, chalk, hairspray and deodorant; you often end up just making grimy
gravy.
Ø
The
more insulation you put between your fingertip nerve-endings and the dice; the
less likely your toss will be consistent from throw to throw let alone session to session.
Ø
Even
if you dont use any of those additives, dirty hands often take away just
enough on-axis control to render your slim dice-influencing margin
VOID.
Ø
Many
times, a player will throw an outstanding hand and then follow it up with a lousy one. Sometimes you can blame it on one thing or
another, but often its just a matter of how clean your hands were when you were
tossing the dice. Sometimes the most
obvious cause of an off-axis throw is the most easily overlooked one.
Ø
Wash
your hands when you first walk into the casino. The contact with your almost-never-cleaned
steering wheel, the "stuff" you picked up from the door handle of the casino and
various other contact points along the way; all contribute to that "sticky
fingers" feeling.
Ø
Even
if they dont feel sticky, youd be amazed at the amount of dirt and oily crud
that your hands come in contact with in everyday life.
Each new layer of mostly-invisible grime that gets deposited on your
fingertips adds one more coat of nerve-numbing insulation and takes away one more degree
of on-axis dice-control.
Ø
When
you wash your hands, always use soap...IT IS FREE in most casino washrooms. Take a look at the color of the crap coming off of
your hands when you wash them well. All that stuff was going to come between you and the
dice. You want to control
the dice, not disconnect from them.
Ø
Warm
water also helps to keep your fingers and joints limbered up and loose.
Ø
If
youve had a chance to read Shooting Bible Part 8, youll understand why
too light of a grip doesnt impart enough control to get the dice to do what
you want them to do. Equally, if the dice
leave your hand without enough input from you, then you can hardly expect them to do what
you want them to do
or at least for them to do it on a steady basis.
Ø
To
have control you have to get control and maintain control. That means you have to put enough input into your
throw in order to get a consistent output. If
your hands arent clean, then your input wont be reliable
and neither will
your dice-outcome.
Ø
While
you are at the craps table, keep your shooting-hand as clean as possible. Don't shuffle
your cheques (chips) or handle your drinks with that hand.
Ø
Keep
a small supply of those free Moist Towelettes that are available from most Slot Attendants
and at Coin Redemption/Casino Cashier booths. If
you can find the premium ones that contain Benzalkonium Chloride in addition to alcohol,
all the better.
Ø
When
the dice are about two or three shooters away from you, a quick hand wipe with one of
those towelettes will wash away quite a few insincerities of the soiled and grimy craps
world, and give your fingertips just the right amount of unadulterated grip and release
contact. Guys,
this isnt overly complicated
clean hands give you more consistency. The reason why I included in into this Practice
Tips series is because its a good idea to get into the habit of washing your hands
on a regular basis. If
its not in your nature, or your upbringing or your social mores to wash your hands
every time you go to the washroom; then accept the fact that youre needlessly giving
up a portion of your on-axis consistency
not to mention the fact that you are about
to pick up the dice from the guy who was just standing at the urinal next to you who also
didnt wash his hands either. If that thought appeals to you
then why not skip
the middle-man and just stick your shooting-hand directly down his pants? Clean-hands
clean
contact
clean on-axis results. Tuning
Your Rig and Tuning Your Session
We
first talked about doing this in Shooting Bible Part Nine, but it bears a
little further examination. Many
players have a local casino that they call home. That is, its not only near and convenient,
but its also one where theyve adapted their throwing because of the constant
play that they get on those tables. In
that case, it makes tremendous sense to tune your Practice Rig to reflect
the bounce-characteristics of the tables that you encounter most frequently in the
real world; then youll be better prepared to take full advantage of them as soon as
you step up to buy in. The
less acclimation, familiarization and adaptation you have to do when you play at your
local haunt; the faster you can get to the actual task of making money.
Ø
If your local casinos have soft, spongy,
trampoline-like tables, yet your at-home rig is hard as rock; then how is that helping
your game?
Ø
If your practice-rig has ¾-inch sized
alligator backwall bumps, yet your local joint uses the smaller ½-inch or bigger 7/8th
diamond backwall material; then how is that helping your game?
Ø
If your local casino has micro-fiber layouts on
their tables, yet your rig is set up with all-wool felt, then is that contributing to your
profitable adaptation of local conditions?
Ø
If youve been practicing all kinds of new
throwing techniques at home, then youll have to re-adapt them to match your favorite
local table. Doing so takes quite a bit of
time and quite a bit more money. If your Practice-rig is tuned to match the type of casino
table that you regularly play at; then the transition from at-home play to casino-play
will be much more efficient.
Ø
If your local casino changes out the dice at
each shift-change; then why are you still using crappy old played-out year-old dice that
were purchased used from a casino gift-shop? The
idea behind our practice sessions is to build our on-axis consistency one step at a time to a point where it generates profit
consistency one session at a time. That often means tailoring your practice sessions,
your Practice Rig, your throwing distance, your throwing-stance, and as many other
throwing-dynamics and table-conditions as possible to replicate what you encounter most
often at your local gaming joint. Just
as it is a good idea to tune your practice-rig to mimic the table- conditions at your
most-frequently-visited casino; so too does it make sense to replicate the table-stance
and shooting-conditions as well. Mull
this over: Ø
The
next time you are standing at the casino table
ask yourself if this is how you stand
at home when you are practicing. Ø
Do
you anchor yourself against the table-padding the same way you do at home? Ø
Do
you heavily lean over the table when you are shooting for real, yet cant duplicate
that at home? Do you think that influences
the effectiveness of your at-home sessions? Ø
If
youve been slumped against the rail for the last 45-minutes while youve been
waiting for the dice to cycle back around to you in the casino; then ask yourself how that
is going to affect your posture compared to how you normally stand at home? Ø
If
your in-casino shooting sees all of your weight pressed against the rail when you release
the dice; then how well does your at-home shooting-station let you replicate that
situation? Do
you think any of that might have a bearing on how well you are able to keep the dice
on-axis when the dice finally come around to you in the casino? If
you are doing things differently in the casino than how you are doing them at home; then
dont expect your real-world results to accurately reflect your at-home practice
sessions
and vice versa. Tuning
Your Practice-Rig to Match Problem Tables
You
can take that rig-tuning idea even further if you know of a type of table that gives you
the most trouble. Many players avoid certain
types of tables because that is where they run into their biggest on-axis consistency
troubles. You could continue to completely avoid them, or you could tune your practice-table to mimic the bounce characteristics of the layouts that are causing you the most off-axis strife. Lets
say your chief nemesis is a bouncy, trampoline-like table.
You
could temporarily convert your home practice-rig to match those bounce specifications and
then fine-tune your shooting to correspond with it. The
idea is to become experienced on as many different layouts as possible WITHOUT
killing your bankroll in the process. Many
savvy players craft a couple of different at-home landing-surfaces to mimic hard/bouncy,
soft/bouncy, hard/lifeless, soft/absorbent and medium/neutral tables. Now obviously you dont have to go that far
especially if you only run into one or two different kinds of tables where you play. In
any event, if you properly tune your rig, you can use your at-home sessions to figure out
what works best on the most troublesome layouts, and then use your in-casino time to
profit from them. Lets
take a look at how one player does it: Jeffrey47s
Table-Tweaker Astute
dice-influencers agree that at-home practice-rigs, especially the self-designed ones, can
be tweaked, tuned, modified and tailored to match the bounce-and-roll landing-area
characteristics of their favorite or most-dreaded casino tables. Heres
how Jeffrey47 does it:
Ø
Various
layers of felt, underlay and padding can be added or subtracted to give you the
landing-zone characteristics that you want. Thicker or thinner felts made of cotton, wool,
polyester/wool blends and micro-fiber can be tried, as well as thin layers of neoprene
rubber, foam rubber, newspaper, sizing/lining and terrycloth underlay.
Ø
A
board with different characteristics can be placed on top of the existing surface (if you
don't have the option of dismantling the rig and substituting different wood). Some base-materials mentioned previously include
linoleum-tile inserts, drywall, masonite, arborite, melamine, marble and of course varying
thicknesses of plywood (from as thin as 1/2 all the way up to the industry standard
of 6/4). Some players go so far as to
fine-tune the wood by using a tar-like automotive undercoating for resonance control.
Ø
Jeffrey47
has also experimented with placing heavy weights around the corners of the rig which also
changes the resonant frequency of the surface (much like damping a speaker or other hi-fi
gear). As a result you can deaden or
liven the bounce to best reflect the real-world table-characteristics that you
are trying to replicate.
Ø
Jeffrey
also placed small "risers" underneath the rig, creating a void between the
wood/felt surface and the base of the table that it sits on. Doing so re-created the lively high-rebound
effect that frustrates many skilled dice-influencers to no end.
Make the
Comparison for Yourself
Once you tune your
practice-rig to reflect the characteristics of the tables you want it to imitate; then
its a matter of closely tracking your practice-session casino-simulation
rolls to determine where your best profit-prospects lay. When aspiring
shooters do that, they are often surprised to see the math-verification of their actual
advantage over the house on certain wagers
along with some eye-popping
discoveries about previously unbeknownst-to-them reliable-revenue
betting-opportunities. A careful review
of your ever-evolving roll-stats often reveals hidden profit-potential that
you never would have discovered otherwise. Often times
youll hear a dice-influencers say something like, Gee, I never knew I had
such a strong advantage over the 5 and 9. or Wow, Ive been
avoiding the Horn-bet because I didnt realize that I had such a big edge over it!
or Had I known THAT, I would have been betting a lot differently than I have been
up until now! On the other hand,
youd be surprised at the number of semi-skilled dicesetters among us who are
reluctant to keep track of their practice-session rolls simply because in doing so, they
would have to confront their own Precision-Shooting shortcomings
and then be forced
to either take adequate measures as far as doing something about it
or to admit to
themselves that they (or at least their betting) hasnt been nearly as good or
as tuned-in as they thought it was.
Ø
As a Precision-Shooter, your on-axis progress
and development (along with your betting-opportunity awareness) will mostly be slow
and gradual.
Ø
Because of that, you may not fully appreciate
your existing dice-influencing capabilities or the current combined potential of your
Precision-Shooting and Precision-Betting to where it was just a few short
months or even a couple of weeks ago. Thats
a pretty compelling reason to vigilantly and thoroughly track your progress to determine which
bets and at what level they are best suited to properly match your current
skills. Your
accurately-tracked at-home practice sessions will supply a large amount of that
information. It is up to you to
sift and sort through all of it in order to determine whether or not using some of the
thirty or so additional dice-shooting opportunity methods that were discussing in my
five-part Creating
More Shooting Opportunities series are worth your while. Moreover,
your up-to-date roll-stat information helps you determine what is right for YOU and for
YOUR bankroll
under your CURRENT skill-conditions.
Ø
When the dice are in your hand, that is where
the lions share of your money can be lost or found, and that is where the bulk of
your advantage-play profit will come from.
Ø
It is up to YOU to find out where YOUR
best wagering-opportunities are, and then to use them to your benefit
instead of letting any of your current non-productive betting-methods be to your
detriment. Your
current practice determines your future profit, so its pretty easy to see how and
why the time you spend on your at-home rig today can pay bigger dividends at the casino
tomorrow. In
the next installment of this series, were going to jump right into those roll-stat
numbers to figure out what they are trying so hard to tell us
and well explore
how to make better sense out of what they are saying. Until
then
Good
Luck & Good Skill at the Tables
and in Life. Sincerely, The
Mad Professor
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