Part 4: The Puppy’s First Hunt

Have you ever seen that show “COPS”.  You know how it starts out with “This program contains graphic contents.  Viewer discretion advised”.  Then it goes into that well known theme song; “Bad boys, Bad boys, whatcha gonna do…”

Well, that’s your warning for this issue of the Maddog’s Journey.  The contents are not pretty, so viewer discretion is advised.  If you have a weak stomach you may wish to skip this report and go onto the next article.   On the other hand, if you are one of those folks who can’t seem to look away from a train wreak… well, read on.

Here I was with my nice cardboard box practice rig.  I’d gotten the felt wrapped board into the bottom to keep the used casino dice from tearing up the box bottom.  I was practicing when I could.  I’d guess I was practicing one or twice a week.  I’d practice whenever I didn’t have anything else going on.  I’d say I was into the practicing for about 2 months then and I was recording enough difference in the occurrence of the 7 that I felt comfortable with continuing.  Enough difference to say “Hey, maybe this can work.” (I wasn’t practicing enough, but we’ll come to that.)

It seemed like I was tossing consistently.  The four fingered top grip (BTW, why isn’t this just called the 3 fingered grip and assume the thumb?) felt pretty comfortable and it seemed like I was getting pretty good at gripping the dice consistently each time. (I really wasn’t, but we’ll come to that.)

Oh, sure, the toss results were still a bit sporadic.  I still had dice dancing all around my practice box.  Sometimes the dice would hit the back of the box hard enough to roll back out the front.  There were quite a few occurrences of the dice kicking left or right and hitting against the side walls of the box.  Sometimes the dice would get stuck in one of the box corners.  I guess that’s one of the idiosyncrasies of a square cornered practice box.  But, still, I was getting used to tossing into the box and building up some “muscle memory”.  From the simple check-mark tracking I was doing I was gaining confidence. The results were showing that I was getting a slightly different result from the expectations tables. I felt like it was all good. Yeah, making progress. (I actually had a long way to go, but we’ll come to that.)

The things that I was reading on dicesetter.com were making sense to me.  Based on the many posts and articles it looked like I was heading in the right direction with my practice and results.  I’d read somewhere that I needed to read the material “till I puked and then read it some more”. (Famous words from Grits or Golfer?) I’d read several articles and I guess I felt like puking. Least wise everything was starting to sound the same so I figured I’d gotten the gist of what there was to read. (I might have gotten the general picture, but I hadn’t really pulled out the gold nuggets of info yet… oh yea, but we’ll come to that.)

I had moved from the “hardways” set that I had been practicing with based on SS’s book, and had switched to using the 3V (Hard-six Flying V) pre-set.  When you study the available craps bets, you’ll find that the 6 and 8 offer low vig, very similar to a straight Pass Line bet.  And when bet as a pair, they offer 10 ways of hitting (5 ways each for the 6 & 8) vs the 6 ways of hitting the 7, so that seems like a smart bet.  The 3V is supposed to be the best pre-set for hitting sixes and eights and so everything seemed to come together as a sweet little strategy.  The next chance I had to head to the casino; I had a “Plan”.  That plan was to use the 3V and to bet $12 each on six and eight, take one hit and regress, then press every other hit from there.  One hit would pay $14, I’d regress to $6 each on the six and eight for $12 on the table.  One hit and an automatic $2 win, with more to come. The plan was so perfect in its simplicity.  How could I lose?  (There are a lot of assumptions in that paragraph! Right, we’ll come to that in a few seconds.)

Well I finally got a opportunity for a day trip to the casino.  An chance to give this whole Dice Influencing thing a try.  This puppy was pretty excited about the “hunt” and to be honest I was also a bit nervous.  But all in all I was looking forward to a chance to give it a shot.

Took a bankroll of about 600 bucks and figured I’d split it into two sessions.

Well, I said this was going to be an ugly story, but now that I’m here, I don’t really want to relive the horrid details of that outing.  Instead of a blow-by-blow account, how about if I give ya just a couple of highlights (err, lowlights).  See if you’ve experienced any of these…

~ Get to the table and hands a bit shaky.  Can’t seem to get the dice into the sets as fast as I thought I could.  Seems to take forever to fumble the dice into position and it feels like you’re on trial for some crime with the judge and jury staring at your every move.  A couple of times it seemed like the dice had some pips missing, cuz I couldn’t ever find the numbers I was after.  A few times I’d get so frustrated trying to find the set that I’d just picked em up and huck em, too nervous to even toss them correctly.  Every toss was rushed and either tossed so hard the dice come banging off the back wall or over compensating and tossing so soft as to not get the dice to roll out past the pass line. 

~ How can you lose with the simple 6&8 strategy?  Easy, never hit the six or the eight.  Roll a 5 and a 4 and a 5 and a 3 and a 9 and a 7-out.

~ Damn, can’t hit the six or eight; let’s go back to the old betting strategy of $20 outside.  Oh nice, now I need 2 or 3 hits to get covered. Pressing? Ok, now you need 5 or 6 hits to get paid.  Oh look, here comes the sixes and eights.

~ Damn, getting low on ammo.  Let’s re-buy for a couple o’ Benjamin’s.

~ Point – seven. Point – seven. Come on, we can do this! Point – seven. (seems the records stuck). Ok, I’m broke, let’s take a break.

~ Ready to go for the second session.  Can’t buy in on a hundred, where is that ATM machine?

~ More of the same until, “Where did all my money go?”  Gotta give this one more shot and really focus this time, but first, where is that ATM machine?

Melt-down.  Blow-out. Wipe-out.   Bankrupt.  Idiot.  Call it what you like, all the terms fit, and I deserved to hear them all.