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The River of Consistency Leads to Lake Profit Okay, the analogy
is lame, but the concept is sound and proven! Consistency
does lead to profit. Not too long ago I
met up with some friends at Sunset Station in Las Vegas.
Joey T. is a long-time gambler who has played craps for most of his
life. A little over a year ago, he converted
from being a simple dice-setter with an inconsistent throw to a Precision-Shooter with a
plan. What convinced him to change, was
seeing my girlfriend and I literally clean-out the boxmans chip stacks at the
Barbary Coast Casino in late 1999. In the ensuing
year, Joey T. actually rented table time at a downtown Las Vegas dealers school and
honed his skill. He figures he spent about
$3,000 on those and other related expenses to learn his craft, and he figures that it was
money very well spent. There was only one
problem with Joeys progress. His
rolling was not consistent. When we got
together at Sunset Station in south Las Vegas (Henderson), he showed me his problem, where
we got on a table with a couple of other players. Over a period of
three hours, we each got to shoot the dice quite a few times. Some of his hands were outstanding, where
hed roll at least 20 times. His other
shooting excursions were dismal. Hed
establish a Point, and then roll one or two more times and immediately seven-out. Some hands would begin with long strings of seven
or eight Come-Out winners, while other hands would be prefaced with five or six craps
interspersed with offsetting Yos. You could see the
frustration on his face. Even when he started
to get on a good streak, he was hesitant to jump in all the way for fear of the
doom-and-gloom 7-out showing its truly ugly and hideous head. Some hands would
end with wild applause and cheering after hitting multiple inside numbers time
and time again. While other hands would end
to the sound of those loud and painful groans usually only heard in an elephant
killing-field. Here we have a grown man almost reduced to tears because of
his anger at defeat, his disappointment at the failed effort, and his still eager yearning
to improve; all wrapped into one very unhappy, frustrated and baffled soul. His ego and confidence had been battered to the
point where others at the table would be making tons of money off of his great
shooting, and hed still be in mourning and lamenting the humiliation and huge losses
from his previous prematurely shortened roll. We
joined some friends for an excellent seafood dinner at Costa Del Sol and he asked what
could be done to improve. I told him that his
betting methods needed more improvement than his actual dice-throwing. Part of the allure
of craps, is the variety of ways a player can spread money around the table. Everyone knows what
they should have done after a roll is over. While
hindsight is 20/20, the viewer actually has to open his eyes without looking through
rose-colored glasses, or at the patina of a
woulda,
shoulda, coulda negative picture. For random-rollers, its anyones
guess what might be thrown on the next roll. With
Precision-Shooters, it moves from guess-work to the field of scientific deduction and
revised probabilities. It takes a little of
the detective work of Sherlock Holmes, combined with the inquisitiveness and reasoning of
Dr. Watson. Joey always started
each hand the same way. He would bet $10 on
the Pass Line, back it up with double odds, and Place bet the all remaining numbers for
$25 and $30 each. With an average exposure on
$160 per hand, it would sometimes take just one bad roll to wipe out several previous
hands profit. I took Joey
T.s betting methods and turned them upside down, much to his shock, amazement and
disbelief. I showed him that some of the
most dreaded, highest vig and hated bets at the craps table, while not everyones
friend, could be his BEST friend at the table. In
doing so, I helped him set strategies that would best balance his objective for winning, against his stomach for losing. The trade-off, as
always involves probabilities and amounts. No matter how money is allocated with this type
of play, all the chips on all the Place numbers go down when the seven appears. Joey bet $10 on the
Pass Line with $20 odds, when the Point is six or eight, so the likelihood he'll win $34
on any throw is 13.9 percent. The first thing
I had him do was to reduce his Pass Line flat bet; then bet some high-edge Props on his
Come-Out roll not so much to hedge his flat bet, but more for their profit potential. I also had him
increase his Odds bets to the maximum allowable, which was 10x at Sunset Station. The fourth thing that I had him do was to wait for
three rolls after the Point was established before Place betting any numbers. He fought me on this one, but I convinced him that
if he was on a hot roll, the Place opportunity would still be there on subsequent throws,
and if he quickly sevened-out, he was saving a ton of money. The fifth
improvement was the only change that had anything to do with his actual Precision-Throwing
technique. Joey felt that he
needed to throw the dice at a spot where the Pass Line curved around at the
hook of the table. Unfortunately,
players chips were usually in that target area, and even if the dice didnt hit
the chips, Joey was altering his throw to avoid them when they were nearby. This was throwing off his consistency in a big
way. To help him out, I showed him a new
stance that gave him a new target without having to alter his actual throwing
technique. The new target was not in a
busy table area, and Joeys same fluid throw was no longer handicapped by
obstructions. When we returned to
the tables, Joey T. and the rest of the players were rewarded with nine great hands from
him that ranged from 19 throws on his first attempt to 34 throws on his last opportunity. There wasnt a bad hand that issued from Joey
for the rest of the night. While I was away
trekking through the rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, I received an e-mail from him. He reported that since our outing at Sunset
Station, he has had his share of bad rolls, but by altering his betting methods and
shooting stance like I suggested, he has brought the consistency of his game to a much
higher level. He wrote to thank me on behalf of his wife, because he has just bought her a
new Audi All-Road station-wagon with the profits that consistency has awarded.
The river of consistency really does leads to a lake
of profit. Good Luck & Good
Skill at the Tables
and in Life. By: The Mad Professor
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