Dice Setter Precision Shooter's Newsletter      

Welcome to the January/February double issue of the Precision Shooter Newsletter!  For those of you who weren't around when the site was launched, you may not have noticed but Dice Setter recently celebrated it's two year anniversary!  That's right, two years ago, in February 2001, I launched a little site on geocities where a scant few dice influencing enthusiasts could congregate and share information and tips.  Of course now, interest in dice influencing has exploded and accomplished and hopeful precision shooters flock to the site daily.   To give you some idea of how much the site has grown, it took five months to log the first 10,000 visitors to the site (on July 4, 2001).  Compare that to the recent November, December and January time frame where more than 10,000 visitors EACH MONTH stopped by.  In a very short period of time, dice influencing has become a viable, and much more accepted method for taking a good shot at the casinos.  It's a very exciting time in our community, the journeymen shooters get better with time, and newcomers to dice influencing add a fresh perspective to our art-form.   However, the popularity of precision shooting has caused a new set of detractors to appear on various web sites and forums.  The questions they ask are the same tired old queries, but their bitterness has reached a new level.  The detractors (trolls) cross post to all the message forums, with a singular message, "It (dice influencing) can't be!"    Those of us who have been doing this awhile know however, it can be. 

Having a popular web site is very satisfying, but I DO wrestle, on a daily basis, with the idea that precision shooting may be becoming too mainstream.  In the coming months, I believe we'll have to address this issue as a community.

So, we'll put our best foot forward in 2003.  Thanks again for supporting Dice Setter .  Remember, prudence and good judgment at the tables will go a long way towards enabling us to use our dice influencing skills in casinos for many years to come.  If you'd like to comment on the future of precision shooting, feel free to post it on the  message board.

Getting Lucky
by Heavy Haltom

Have you ever noticed that lucky people always seem to meet their perfect partners, achieve their lifelong ambitions, find fulfilling careers, and live happy and meaningful lives. They aren't successful because they work especially hard. They aren't amazingly talented or exceptionally intelligent. Instead, they simply appear to have an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time and enjoy more than their fair share of lucky breaks.

Dr. Richard Wiseman, a well known British psychologist, founded The Luck Project to scientifically explore psychological differences between people who considered themselves exceptionally lucky and unlucky.

The results of this work reveal that people are not born lucky. Instead, lucky people are, without realizing it, using four basic principles to create good fortune in their lives.

Principle One: Maximize Chance Opportunities. Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, including networking, adopting a relaxed attitude to life and by being open to new experiences.

Principle Two: Listening to Lucky Hunches. Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. In addition, they take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities by, for example, meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.

Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune. Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune. These expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by helping lucky people persist in the face of failure, and shape their interactions with others in a positive way.

Principle Four: Turn Bad Luck to Good. Lucky people employ various psychological techniques to cope with, and often even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, do not dwell on the ill fortune, and take control of the situation.

Dr. Wiseman's new book - The Luck Factor - will be released in the United States in April. I'm thinking I'll be checking it out.

2002's Top Five Books

The numbers are in!  The most sought after books (via Dice Setter) for 2002.

For these books and others, visit the Books on Craps area of the site!

Mad Professor's Mini-Table Craps Tour with the Vegas Ghost- Part V

(Read Part I , Part II, Part III or Part IV)

As we were leaving the Wild Wild West Gambling Hall parking lot, there was one car in front of us.  The bumper-sticker read:

How do you get an 82-year old Grandma to say, “F#%k?

Have somebody else yell “BINGO!”

As we I wheeled onto Tropicana Boulevard, I momentarily looked back at the Orleans Hotel-Casino, and immediately thought about Jerry Lewis who had signed a ten-year performance-deal to appear at the Orleans Showroom.  I asked Mel “the Vegas Ghost”, if he had any Jerry Lewis “stories” that were publishable.

He gave out a slight “hrrumph” and scrunched his face up with the reluctance of someone who doesn’t want to talk about unpleasant stories.

He started, “First let me say that I really love Jerry.   That being said; let me also add that he can be a huge pain in the ass.  Jerry is a great entertainer, but he is also sometimes very difficult to handle.”

I asked Mel to explain, because I had a different view of the man due of his charitable work with Muscular Dystrophy through his long-famous Labor Day Telethons.  I had had the pleasure of being in a Telethon audience when they were originally held in Vegas at The Sahara, so I had a bit of a soft-spot for him.  Mel nodded and replied, “Listen, Jerry on stage is the consummate gentleman and a hard-working entertainer, but on the casino-floor he was always difficult to handle during those years.  However, in the showroom he was and is a phenomenal entertainer, and he puts on one great show.  He was a lot like Sammy (Davis Jr.), in that he did whatever it took to get to them.  At The Sands, if we had a show going “long”, we knew Jerry was either just having such a great time and didn't want to get off, or he hadn't got the audience to a peak and was going to pull out all stops until he did.”