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Discipline,
Character & Consistency (read Part
I
here or Part
II
here) A
construction worker on the 3rd floor of a building needs a hacksaw. He sees another man on the 1st floor, and yells
down to him, but the other guy can't hear the instruction, so he motions for the man on
the 3rd floor to do sign language. The guy
who needs the saw, points at his eye meaning "I".
He then points at his knee meaning "need", and moves his hand back
and forth in a handsaw-cutting motion. The man on the 1st floor nods his head, pulls down
his pants, and starts masturbating. The man on the 3rd floor gets so angry he runs down to
the 1st floor and says," What the heck is wrong with you? I said, I need a saw!!" The other guy says, "I knew that, I was just
trying to tell you that I'm coming." Understanding
is the first step to improving your game. In most cases, GETTING profit is a
lot easier than KEEPING profit. In Part
Two, we looked at: ü
Hard
work paying off in the future, while laziness rips you off now. ü
Controlling
your anticipation, while you survey the tables. ü How
to apply a disciplined game-plan. ü
Making
real-time decisions with consistency. ü
Reducing
your initial risk, while increasing your discipline. To
move further in that process, lets take a closer look at improving our game. You have to remember that you can have all of the
mechanical things like dice-set, grip, stance, arm-motion, throw, trajectory,
target-area, landing-spot and roll-out all figured out.
However, if you dont apply the required discipline, character and
consistency, you will never be able to get, or hang onto enough profit to sustain your
enjoyment of this game. Character includes self-confidence,
but doesn't include false-confidence. I like arriving in a casino,
walking up to the craps table, and buying in for perhaps $1,000, knowing that 19-out-of-20
times, I will end that session with a decent profit.
Not every session ends with a
profit, and even fewer of them end with a sensational win-fall. Sometimes I am overjoyed when I walk away with a
$20 or $50 profit. Why? Because, having endured a session where everything
just wasnt clicking, I know that I am lucky to have even maintained my buy-in, and
still been able to add a few sheckels of profit. Sometimes, some sessions just go
plain bad! Perhaps I make a bet on what
appears to be a good shooter, only to have my bets wiped out before they can even pay for
themselves. Or maybe my shooting is not up to
par. It does happen. And it happens with frightening
consistency at the wrong time. Hey,
theres never a right time to lose, but it always seems to happen when you are least
expecting it. It usually happens when my
confidence has outpaced my common-sense. Look
at it this way. If you had ten, or fifteen,
or twenty good sessions in a row, your confidence would be high, am I right? Okay, at that point you might start feeling like
you cant lose. You might think that
youve got this Precision-Shooting thing dialed-in perfectly. I used to think that way too. Then Id have a bad session that would bring
me back to reality, and it would calm down my aggressive betting. Once again, Id get on a great un-beaten
streak, and my uncontained exuberance would once again cloud my judgment. I would start thinking like Im superman or
king-of-the-universe again. But reality
would once again use its kryptonite foot to kick me in my over-confident balls. It is at that point when you have
to have your discipline and consistency-of-character dialed-in BETTER than your actual
dice shooting-skills. Why? Its because this is the point when you can
let one losing session outstrip the profits from your ten or fifteen or twenty winning
sessions, thats why! Consistency
beats luck, but recognizing both is essential. Taking advantage of your
consistency is important. If you recognize
that you generate a disproportionate amount of some signature-numbers, you are
in a position to take advantage of that consistency.
I also like being able to
confidently know that I can turn the table around, when it becomes my turn to
shoot the dice. Even if the table has been
cold enough to sink the Titanic, the forecast is pretty good that a tropical
heat-wave of equatorial proportions is coming my way.
Does it happen all the time? No, but
it happens consistently enough that I know that there is a very good chance that it will. How do I control the risk that this
may be a bad roll? I keep my initial bets
pretty small until my payoffs have covered all the bets I have on the table. Once they have paid for themselves, AND I have
locked up a small profit; then I may increase my bets.
Now, lets BRIEFLY talk about
luck. I might be lucky enough to recognize
when another players betting-method has a lot of potential, or when another
Precision-Shooter is about to tear the roof off of the joint, or when a lucky
random-roller is building what could be the roll-of-the-day. First you have to recognize that as a true
opportunity. Then, what is important is to have the discipline to know what to do, and to
have the consistency to apply the right moves, without hesitation. That takes a lot of character. In Part
Four of this series, well look at exactly how to employ a Game Plan that will help
to:
ü Determine
your motivation and help in setting your goals.
ü
Understand
yourself, and how to live with those limitations and opportunities.
ü
Determine
when your discipline, character and consistency need a tune-up. Until
then
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables
and in
Life. The Mad Professor
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