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It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature
If Hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned; then Mother Nature is one woman we definitely shouldn't
mess with.
I get invited for coffee by a lot of
fellow craps players. Perhaps I look like I
really NEED a drink, and fearing that I'm recovering from some sort of grain alcohol-based
addiction, they decide that a strong cup of joe
is what I should have instead. On the other hand, I like to think that it's really because
they want to pick my brain. The Java Java
Coffee Hut at the Tropicana in Las Vegas is in my Top 100 favorite choices, and it served
as the backdrop when I met Louie.
I had seen him at the tables of the
Trop, San Remo, Excalibur and Orleans over a period of months. Louie lives in an apartment behind the Tropicana
near the airport, and is a somewhat poor craps player who sometimes wins. He religiously tracks the dice, and says that he's
a "percentage player". His bets
strike a balance between keeping the house edge
small, and if he gets in a hole, he tries to work his way out gradually instead of chasing
his losses with big bets, or at least that's usually his plan. Louie sometimes has a premonition, and tries to
out-guess Mother Nature with huge and risky wagers. He
says that is when he experiences his biggest losses, and to a much smaller extent, his
biggest wins. Overall, I sized him up as a
fairly naive player who understood the game, but lacked discipline.
As it turned out, I was wrong. He not
only didn't grasp the first thing about the math behind the game, what he thought he knew was wrong!
The reason that I sat down with Louie over a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain
in the first place, is because his verbal invitation included the words, "I'd really
like to learn how to improve my game."
Louie relied solely on his charts,
and he wanted my help to glean more useful information out of THEM! He thought that Precision-Shooting was a pile of
neatly organized shit that was no better and no worse than Random-Rolling.
He said
that his fortune lay in those charts if he could only figure out how to extract and decode
the information that they contained.
Using his charts, Louie tallies what
has been rolled so he can tell what hasn't hit ENOUGH and is therefore, DUE. "The game doesn't really work that way
Louie" I started to say. "Yes, the likelihood of getting a particular number to
roll at least once increases with more throws, but it doesn't mean that a particular
number HAS to roll next." He
disagreed. He said if the chart wasn't
showing him anything by the actual numbers on the paper, he would unfocus his eyes and try
to "feel" the number that would be next. He
called it a premonition. I said that it was
likely "gas, heartburn, indigestion, or heat prostration, because it definitely
wasn't Mother Nature" talking to him. I
said "Okay, let's try this. What is your favorite Place number?" He replied that 5 had always been "good"
to him, and so I set out the following example:
The chance of getting a 5 in one roll
is 11.11%.
In ten rolls, it's 69.2%.
In twenty rolls, 90.5%.
But, this doesn't mean after 19th
roll that 5 has a 90.5% probability on the next throw.
The chances are still four out of
thirty-six or 11.11%, if you isolate and look at just one throw. "Ah, I was looking at it all backwards"
he smiled, "But why isn't it due on the 20th roll?" "Because" I said, " you have to
look at a slightly larger picture than one roll at a time. Louie, you don't need to know
what the next number is, you only need to know how all the dice combinations fit together
to form the game. From there it's a matter of
choosing the right method to use at the right time. Looking
at one roll at a time is a little like living one day at a time. That approach may suit recovering alcoholics, and
the severely aged, but I would rather live every day to it's fullest, but also plan ahead
for short, medium and long term possibilities, projects, aspirations and ideals. If you eat all of your seed-corn today, there will
be nothing to harvest tomorrow."
Louie said that he learned everything
that he knew from experience, and he did not subscribe to the superstitions that many
players want random numbers and charting to prove. I'm
not sure what he thought his premonitions were, if not superstitions. Still with all of that experience, he honestly
didn't know why some bets offered greater long-term profit potential than others, or why
higher payoffs on Proposition bets were outweighed by the greater risks. I gave him a very rudimentary lesson that he
absorbed very quickly.
Despite the lack of complete
knowledge up until that point, Louie had been able
to gain the intuition to gamble like a winner, but then had guessed wrong at some critical
decision-junctions and paid a hefty price. He
had always abandoned logic at the wrong time, and taken to having his premonitions to
guide him down a path of losses. He showed me
his charts, which we could partially cover to reveal one roll at a time. With each new hand of dice, I would ask him what
his bet would be. He wrote his bet down and I
did likewise. At the end of each hand as
shown on his chart, we would then compare notes. Invariably
my method showed about an 10% profit advantage over his on a warm or choppy series of
hands. When the dice on his Roll Chart went
cold, my variations far outstripped his game by a wide margin. On the hotter sections, they did the same thing. I showed him a couple of variations that he could
add to his already good approach. We also
discussed some highly risky moves that he selected which made his bankroll decline
seriously. I said that it was a good thing
that it was only a paper loss. He retorted
that the losses had been real enough when they actually occurred to him at the tables when
he originally marked the chart. After about fifty minutes, and a second cup of that black nectar, he said, "I already use math to memorize payoffs. But YOUR math gives me the KNOWLEDGE that there are legitimate reasons behind winning and losing strategies."
I couldn't have said it better
myself.
When I next saw Louie, he was beyond
happy. He was ecstatic because the game was
now a joy to him again. He said that my one
coffee-session with him renewed his confidence. He
said that he was now able to look at his charts to
determine what to do
next, as opposed to trying to figure out what number was supposed to be
next. He said that in adding confidence
to his game, it kept him from getting nervous and making foolish, senseless bets so often
at the tables.
He stated that he had always assumed that only dumb luck separated
the winners from the losers, and that his premonitions were more reliable than the laws
Mother Nature laid down to govern the entire universe.
He now understood that instead of fighting those laws, and trying to
outguess Mother Nature, he could walk with her and her random numbers, hand in hand.
I replied that it's not nice to try
and fool Mother Nature. More often than not,
she will turn around and make a fool out of YOU! Louie
was happy, and I needed a DRINK!
Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables
and in Life.
By: The Mad Professor |
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