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Dice Setter Precision Shooter's Newsletter
How
to Run a Pro Craps Team
Let’s
say you follow the advice guys like Dice Coach, Irishsetter and I dole out and
“practice practice practice.” Your
skill advances to the point that you win consistently on your own hands. But no matter what silly betting strategy you
try, you still get whacked on the chicken feeders. You
could work on your discipline or seek out more favorable tables. Or you might decide to join up with a few friends
who are skilled shooters and smooth out some of the bumps on the precision shooter
highway. You might form a team.
There
are several ways to approach team play. One
way is technically not team play at all. It
is what many of us do every time we go to Vegas. A
few like-minded players simply get together and take over a table. Each “team member” brings his own stake
and runs his own bets. There is absolutely no
co-mingling of funds. Some people may win
while others lose. But just about everyone
has fun.
A
second way to play is as a “hired gun” on a team backed by a high roller. In this type of arrangement, the high roller often
runs all of the bets and pays the shooters a pre-determined amount per session plus a
percentage of any wins. Some pro shooters
insist on controlling the bets as well as the dice, and fearlessly lock up huge wins with
no downside risk. On the other hand, from
time to time you’ll run across a down-and-out precision shooter who can control the
dice but not his bankroll. Often these
players will shoot for as little as a $100 table stake.
Last
of all is the true team concept, where four or five players get together and take on the
tables with a shared bankroll. Lets consider
a pro team that ultimately failed – we’ll call them the Mississippi Mechanics -
and talk about what it takes to run a successful team.
Expenses: The first mistake the Mississippi Mechanics
made was funding the group’s expenses out of its shared bankroll. Worse still, a couple of members of the group
contributed the shared bankroll with funds secured from credit card cash advances. When the bills came due and there was no money to
pay them – things got ugly fast.
Believe
it or not, mishandling expenses is the primary reason most pro teams fail. Expenses,
whether they are in the form of travel, accommodations, meals, or
“entertainment,” are a tax on your advantage over the game. Think about it in these terms. Would you step up to a craps table in a casino
where you had to pay $100 up front to get in the door?
Of course not. But when you pay
expenses out of your team’s bankroll, you are already “in-the-hole” when
you step up to the table. You are
relying on the hope that your as-yet-to-be-realized winnings will offset your
already-incurred out-of-pocket expenses. Often
that can be a big chunk of change. Give
yourself every possible advantage – including the psychological advantage of starting
your team session with its bankroll intact.
Record
Keeping: The Mechanics did not do a very good job of
keeping records. This lack of discipline was
also reflected in their personal play. “Bill
the Book,” the groups “banker,” would slip away from time to time for a
private session with the team bankroll. He
never lost big – but he did lose steady.
Designate
one member as the banker and bookkeeper for the team.
The banker records the pooled buy in at each session, every wager and its
results, and the ending bankroll. He accounts
for every dollar that goes on and off the table, supervises the final count, and
supervises the distribution of winnings at the end of each session. All parties must be present at all times during
the final accounting. This may seem extreme
when the team is winning, but it is essential when the dice turn against you. A losing team will quickly collapse under the
weight of its own internal mistrust and suspicion. Keeping
a team together when it is winning is difficult enough.
When the team is losing, it is almost impossible.
Every
team member has a defined job: Each member of the Mechanics thought he was
the greatest shooter in the world, but three of the five were average at best. Since everyone wanted to shoot stick left or stick
right, their best shooters were often out of position.
A
typical pro team will have as few as three members, and may have as many as six. Four to five member teams are the norm. A five-member team might look like this: The two primary shooters who position themselves
at stick right and stick left. The “high
roller” who plays straight out on one end, runs the bulk of the bets, and doubles as
a blocker to keep the shooter’s lane open. The
high roller usually passes the dice. A
distracter, usually an attractive female or a “chatty” male that plays on the
opposite end of the table and doubles as a blocker to keep the shooter’s lane open. The distracter is often a skilled straight-out
shooter. Last of all, the banker or
bookkeeper, who appears to all the world to be a systems player tracking rolls – and
generally passes the dice.
Plan your play and play your plan:
The
Mechanics were on the right track in this department, but when the dice went against them
several of the members had a tendency to “freelance” bets. This usually resulted in increased losses at the
table.
A
pro team must have a specific betting strategy established in advance, and no one should
be permitted to vary the strategy. Typically,
the shooter limits himself to a Pass Line bet with maximum Free Odds. The other shooter by-passes the Come Out, then
runs a Come Bet with Odds Progression. The
high roller may run Four and Ten Power Press Progressions, while the distracter runs a
simple Six and Eight progression. Meanwhile,
the banker may be playing a table-minimum Don’t bet while tracking the rest of the
action at the table.
It
is important to have team members who keep their heads in the heat of battle. For that reason, it is vital that you exclude
compulsive gamblers from the team. Such
players are quick to abandon the plan when things are not going their way. Likewise, intuitive players who are quick to
follow their “hunches” generally do not make good team members. While you may not always recognize a potential
problem player in advance, if a team is faced with such a situation it must deal with it
immediately, even if that means kicking someone off the team.
Team
member accountability: The Mechanics were all close friends when they
formed the group. No one took the lead and
addressed the issues the team was struggling with as it started to falter. But when they did fail, everyone played the blame
game and no one took responsibility.
In
true pro teams, every member is accountable for his or her performance during the team
sessions. Team members come into the group
because they perform at a certain level or have talents the group needs to succeed. Enforcing standards required to accomplish the
team’s objectives can be difficult when the team members are also your friends. However, team members must set friendship aside
and focus on the task of winning. If one of
your friends is not putting in enough time at the practice table to play with an edge or
is deviating from the planned system of play, you must draw the line between your
friendship and your bankroll. If you do not,
you will ultimately lose both. With that said
. . .
Lighten
up when you are losing: Everyone has an off day from time to time. If you are doing everything right yet still
losing, deal with it, take a few days off, and
move on. Losses are going to happen. That doesn’t mean you have to chase them.
Is
team play for you? Maybe it is. Learn from the Mississippi Mechanics mistakes and
you could be on your way to building a winning team.
by the Mad Professor
Leaving
Quebec and entering Ontario is physically uneventful.
One sign thanks you for visiting their province and the other one welcomes
you to theirs.
However
there is a psychological eventfulness that does accompany that passage for most
players. I think it’s related to the
fact that you are re-entering the rest of Canada where English is still the primary
spoken language, and leaving behind a province where French dominates.
As
a craps player who has tossed the bones at places as far flung as the Tinian Dynasty Hotel
in the Northern Mariana Islands and the Allure Resort in Myanmar, all the way to the
Hilton Madagascar in Antananarivo and the old Benin Marina Hotel in Cotonou (when both of
those places still had craps); it doesn’t really matter to me what the primary
language of any jurisdiction is as long as I get to shoot the dice my way and
I’m paid correctly when I do. However
I’ve noted a palpable sense of relaxation in other players when they return from
layouts where the game is called in more than one language.
Though an English-only game may have less continental flair to it, most players
seem to take greater comfort in the more prosaic game-calls…and in that vein, I too
was glad to be headed back to a more familiar tongue.
Casino
Rama
About
one hour north of Toronto lays this sprawling resort that is owned by the Ontario
Government…leased to the Mnjikaning
First Nation
tribe of Indians…and operated by Penn National Gaming.
You’ll
know Penn as the company that also operates Casino Magic and Boomtown in Biloxi/Bay St.
Louis; Casino Rouge in Baton Rouge; and of course the three Hollywood Casinos in Tunica,
Shreveport and Aurora.
Of
their seven full-fledged gaming operations, I would put this one pretty much on top of the
heap, although it does have a couple of shortcomings that are more related to convenient
access than to anything related to gaming or resort-operations.
The
casino is well laid out and easy to maneuver around.
The staff here is unfailingly outstanding, and there are more than a handful
of VERY skilled shooters who call Casino Rama their home base. That potent combination makes their craps tables
an ideal no-hassle place for some high-dollar day-in, day-out withdrawals. I’ll have much more to say on this subject in
a few moments.
The
Tables
While
they only have four tables here, all of them are of the same length and have the same
bounce-characteristics; which means that if you can master one, then you can master them
all.
The
early morning usually sees only one $5 table open, but if a second one is in operation, it
is almost always of the $25 variety.
By
mid-day there is never a lack of players, and additional tables are brought online (of the
$10 or sometimes $15 variety) especially during the summer cottage season which stretches
from mid-May through to late-October and then re-ignites from mid-December through to late
March for the skiing, snowmobiling, ice-fishing and winter-sports crowd.
Though
you won’t always be able to get into your favorite position on the cheap tables, the
$15 and $25 variety offer a decent selection of prime shooting spots a fair percentage of
the time.
For
Darkside shooting, these tables are excellent.
Though
the dice don’t move around the table as quickly as you might like especially on the
crowded $5 tables; the dice roll so smoothly and rebound off the wall so slickly,
that it is very tempting to endure additional dice-cycles around the table just to be able
to shoot another great looking (and good paying) hand.
I
feel perfectly at home while playing on these tables.
They
perform similarly to the 12-footers at Bellagio, Mirage and Venetian. Smooth, sweet and straight dice-travel with silky
on-axis rebound from the backwall result in some dice-reactions that initially unnerve
semi-skilled shooters because these types of tables can make you look incredibly skilled
due to the neutral reaction that they impart. Many
dicesetters aren’t used to that.
Now
that is not to say that it will turn a bad throw into a good one. Rather, it will take your good ones and
turn them into consistently great ones, and to me that makes a huge
difference when it comes to tallying up your profit at the end of a session.
It’s
not magic, it’s just a matter of marrying your throw-dynamics (force, trajectory,
spin, apogee, landing-angle, and rollout energy) with Casino Rama’s somewhat
accommodating (dare I say, forgiving) bounce and straight-tracking
table-characteristics to make your dice-influencing skills coalesce (come together and
work in harmony WITH the table) instead of having to fight against an oppositional (or at
least dynamically-disturbing) layout that drives many players to distraction.
Why
Darkside Shooting Requires LESS Skill to Succeed
For
an accomplished dice-influencer, Darkside-shooting is noticeably less risky than it is for
an equally skilled Rightside shooter.
That
is to say, successful Rightside and Darkside shooting does not require equal skills
to mirror each other in the money-making department.
At
first blush, the house-edge that both sides have to overcome (based on PL vs. DP
house-edge) is pretty much the same. However,
the preponderance of a 7-dominant set (with four
possible “7’s” on-axis), outweigh the Rightsiders strongest 7-avoidance set
that sees a maximum of any particular PL-number maxed out at three on-axis appearances.
For
example, you’ll find three on-axis
6’s or 8’s (while using the V-3 or PARR A-7 set if you are shooting for a
PL-Point repeater of 6 or 8), and a max of two on-axis appearances of
your PL-Point if it is either the 4, 5, 9, or 10 (while using the V-2 or X-6 set).
In
other words, not only are the dice mechanically skewed towards the 7 in a randomly-rolled
game, but in the hands of a skilled dice-influencer it is easier for him to throw an
intentional 7-Out (with four possible on-axis “7’s”) than it
is for him to throw any particular PL-Point winner where there is a maximum of either two
or three on-axis PL-win opportunities.
Now
obviously we’re only looking at the PL and DP in total isolation from all the other
bets on the layout, but I think that it is important for you to understand the basis on
which I made the “Darkside-shooting requires less skill to succeed”
statement.
All
things being equal, it is easier to 7-Out (using an appropriate 7-dominant set)
than it is to repeat your PL-Point (using an appropriate 7-avoidance set).
How
much easier? Ø
Well,
the Darkside-shooter has a 4-in-16 on-axis chance to get a desired 7-Out.
So
how does that 1-in-4 (25%) appearance-rate compare to the Rightsider who is trying to roll
a PL-winner?
Let’s
have a look: Ø
A
Rightsider trying to repeat his PL-Point of 6 or 8 has a 3-in-16 on-axis chance (while
using a prime 7-avoidance set like the V-3). While
still turning in a strong 18.75% appearance-rate, it doesn’t quite offer the same
attraction as the Darksiders 25% per-roll win-opportunity.
How
about if the Rightsider’s PL-Point is a 4, 5, 9, or 10? Ø
While
using the appropriate 7-avoidance set (like the V-2 or X-6), the Rightsider has a 2-in-16
on-axis chance of delivering a 4, 5, 9, or 10 PL-winner.
That equates to a 12.5% appearance-rate which only offers one-half
of the Darksiders 25% per-roll win-opportunity.
Now
don’t get me wrong…I still shoot from the Rightside, and in fact the lions share
of my profit still comes from Do-side shooting, but I wanted to illustrate again just how
much easier it is to obtain a win for a Darksider than it is for an EQUALLY SKILLED
Rightside-shooter.
It’s
definitely something to think about when you are considering your current skill-set,
weighing various win-objectives and considering a range of betting-options. Since this series is all about shooting from the
Darkside, a clear-eyed look at what it takes to succeed on it obviously has to figure into
your deliberations. click here for the rest of the article! Maddog's Journeyby Maddog Part 7: Not a Puppy Anymore, the Hunt Gets Serious (part 1 was in the Feb/March Newsletter, part 2 was in the April Newsletter and part 3 was in the May/June Newsletter and part 4 was in the July/August Newsletter and part 5 was in the September Newsletter and part 6 was in the October Newsletter)
Yeah,
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was still taken off guard by the new layouts. The last time I’d been here the table had
been a tame light blue color and was still easy enough to look at. Although not quite as pleasing to my old fashioned
preference for traditional-green-felt, the light blue field still showed up the results of
a pair of bright red dice clearly enough. This
new stuff was really making my eyes bleed.
We’d
planned this “hit-n-run” trip to get us to the casino early in the morning. All the boards have posts that recommend trying to
hit the tables when there are the fewest number of players and therefore the greatest
number of shooting opportunities. It seemed a
logical course of action to follow all this experienced advice, at least until I thought
that I had a better plan. So my buddy and I
had gotten up early this Tuesday morning to make the two and half hour drive to our
favorite little border town.
Oh
now, my buddy, he isn’t a Dice Influencer. He
doesn’t even believe in this stuff. Thinks
it’s a bunch of hooey. But he does love
to play craps and was ready and willing to head out across the desert for an early morning
session. You might wonder why a non-DI guy
would be willing to get up early on a weekday, play hooky from work, and head out to the
casino. Particularly if he isn’t worried
about how casino conditions will affect his dice influencing activities. Thing is, he does care about the table conditions,
just for a slightly different reason. He is
one of those guys that believe the dice get into a rhythm.
The way to develop a rhythm is to get the dice quickly and toss them
quickly. Keep everything moving. That’s the way to develop a winning trend in
his book. Not a bad approach for someone who
doesn’t believe in this DI stuff and not far off from our concept of getting into the
zone and trying to stay there by getting the dice back quickly.
So,
although we had different reasons for wanting to be there early, we were on the same page
as to the plan of action. On this particular
morning our plan actually worked out too well. Since
it was the middle of the slow season and a week-day to boot, the first two casinos we
stopped at didn’t even have their tables open yet.
The TGS told us they would open up in about an hour. OK, instead of checking
the last two casinos we decided it was .99 cent breakfast time.
So
about an hour later, here we were, squinting over this garish new table layout, ready for
our first rounds with the dice. When we
arrived the table was already open and two other gents were set up and playing. Not the empty table we were hoping for, but just
about the next best thing. One guy was setup
near the hook off SR and the other was next to him at the Straight Out position. I slipped into my favorite spot at SL and my buddy
went into the straight out on the SL side of the table.
After
getting my chips aligned into the rack according to my liking, greens in the back rack
left side, reds in the front rack left side, whites in the front rack right side, I
started watching the dice. That’s when I
noticed they had switched out the nice red dice to some ugly purple ones. I guess they
figured these went with the rest of the disgusting table color scheme. In fact something about these dice looked kinda
funny. It wasn’t just that they were
purple, they just didn’t look right. You
wouldn’t think that 1/16 of an inch would be all that big of a difference but when
they subtract a 1/16 from each side of the die, you end up with a cube that looks and
feels like it would fit in much better on a monopoly board then on a regulation craps
table. The dice were too small. That is what was bugging me about them and why I
thought they looked a bit queer.
In
the past I had never even considered the color or size of the dice on the table. Just pick ‘em up and toss ‘em, no big
deal. Today I was acutely conscious of those
little blocks. After spending the past several months practicing and carefully tracking
the effect of various grip adjustments, toss heights and dice rotation, such a little
things as dice size was now a feature of the battle field to be evaluated and incorporated
into the plan of attack.
My
first thought was to wonder how these smaller dice would affect the grip and delivery. Would they be more difficult to pick up? Perhaps stick to the fingers more or the opposite,
and slip out of the fingers easier? Should
they be gripped deeper? Should I plan more
backspin? Ugg, I hadn’t practiced for
this situation. Perhaps I should have tried
to move on to the next casino. But, this was
one of my buddy’s favorite places to play, we were bought in, and the dice were
coming to me next. “Come on guy”,
I thought, “Take a deep breath, relax, focus and go with the flow”.
I
was ready to suck it up and get into this next serious attempt at DI. The last few attempts had been encouraging in
that I had had a winning session and the losing sessions had been small,
“controlled” losses. I knew that
part of becoming a DI was learning to deal with these slight table variations. Don’t panic, all the practice I had put in
meant that the toss was under control and it was just a matter of fine adjustments to get
in tune with this table.
And
apparently all the hours of practice that I was putting in was paying off. Compared to that first attempt at the dice
influencing, this session was going much smoother. I
was feeling less conspicuous in what I was doing. You
know that feeling that everyone is looking at you. Like,
maybe you’re doing something just a little bit naughty and you’re going to get
caught or something. Well I was past those early session jitters. No sweaty palms this time. Setting the dice was
getting easier and more natural, which meant it was happening faster, which meant I felt
less conspicuous. Yeah it’s all a cycle. One thing leads to the next and it all starts with
practice, practice, practice.
Still,
it’s funny how a little worry can focus ones attention and those little dice were
giving me some worry. The first time I got
the dice I bet a minimum pass line bet and a buck for the dealers and nothing else. I focused completely on the mechanics of tossing
the dice. All the things we work on in
practice such as the grip, the starting position of my hand on the table, a smooth toss
with a clean follow through, keeping the wrist flat and square to the table, picking a
landing spot and hitting it. Forget about
betting for now and focus on what these little dice were going to do and what I had to do
to adjust to them.
The
first hand wasn’t so good. The dice were
splaying out on touch down. One die bouncing
out left and the other veering to the right. It
only took about four tosses before the old seven showed and I lost my PL bet. But the good news was that the grip felt fine and
the toss distance was good and hitting the landing zone wasn’t a problem. I just needed to control that thumb and wrist and
maybe reduce the height of the throw.
The
next time the dice came around to me I was feeling more confidence. I set up a minimum PL bet and a buck for the
dealers again and again focused on toss mechanics and tried to lower the overall toss
height. All this focusing and concentrating
was working. The dice were beginning to land
much smoother with less right or left bounce out. Not
perfect, no not by a long shot. There
wasn’t any of this “land in unison, one hop to the back wall and gently roll
back” stuff. But they were landing
together and coming to a stop within a hand-span of each other (about half the time
anyway, heh heh heh) and that was a good indicator.
I
had found a groove and this hand came along much better then the first. When the seven finally showed, I had made my
point 5 times. My buddy was ecstatic. He likes to bet the outside and by his nature he
bets pretty aggressively. My primary set is
the mini-v so it worked well with his betting style.
He had pressed and pulled his bets into a big win. I, on the other hand, had focused on the tossing
and didn’t bet anything but the PL until the second point, and even then I did a lot
of same-bet type betting. I had a win sure
enough, but it wasn’t as big as it should have been, and I have to admit to being a
bit envious of how my friend had profited off my hand.
Oh well, he went for it and I didn’t, good for him.
That
turned out to be the best hand of the day for me. Aye,
there is nothing like a great hand to make a guy feel a little invincible. On subsequent hands I felt like I had this table
licked and began to let go of the concentration a bit.
Started thinking more about how I should bet to make some money. What should my next press move be, should I do a
regression move, etc. Some old bad habits
started creeping back into my game.
I’m
convinced that the quickest way for a DI to lose control of his toss mechanics is to start
thinking about his bets. I don’t know if
it’s a left-brain, right-brain thing or what, but if your about to toss the dice and
you are thinking about whether you are going to parley that hit on the Hard eight, or
power press the six, you are not going to have a very successful toss.
Pre-toss
preparation is very important. I’ve seen
it with Irishsetter. I’ve seen it with
Heavy. I’ve seen it with the Dice Coach. I’ve seen it with every successful DI that
I’ve ever watched. You’ll see it
also if you watch them while they are shooting. After
their roll, they get their bets taken care of immediately and quickly, and then settle
into a quiet “zone” while they wait for the rest of the table to be paid and the
dice to come back. (well, Heavy isn’t always that quiet, but he is much more quiet
then when others have the dice, hehehe). It
is paramount to have your betting strategies planned and prepared long before you hit the
table. When you are tossing, your mind must
be clear and focused and not cluttered with stray thoughts of
“damn-should-I-have-regressed-before-this-toss” or
“should-I-press-in-pairs-on-the-next-hit-or-just-the-number-that-hits”. These spurious thoughts are extremely disruptive. They take you away from the trance-like state that
is so conducive for physical excellence and move you toward the analytical thought
processes that seem to sap the carefully prepared muscle memory. Isn’t it ironic, that the main goal of what
we do as a DI, the money, is also a major hindrance to our achieving that goal?
Well,
overall the day went up and down. No more
hands as nice as that early morning hand, but fortunately not to many point-seven hands
either. Overall the day ended in the red by a
few dollars. Another “controlled”
loss.
Even
with this loss, I knew I was getting better. I
was convinced that I was betting “smarter” then ever before (not perfect, but
smarter then the hunch and chase betting that I used to do). I felt strongly that there had to be something to
this Dice Influencing thing. My practice data
showed it. My in casino experiences were
mirroring the effect. But, dang-it, it
wasn’t automatic and my skills were still evolving too slowly. I seemed to be stuck
at a plateau. What more could I do?
I
think that now, maybe, I was ready for a class. I
probably had some flaws in my toss techniques. After
all, I’d never seen a DI before and only got to where I was by reading and practice. If I could watch a couple of other folks actually
doing this, then perhaps I could figure out what the short-coming was. It just might provide the break through I needed. Besides, I had a burning curiosity to meet these
folks I’d been corresponding with on the chat boards. Yeah, a chance to meet these
guys and have a “pro” take a look at what I might be doing wrong, that’s
the ticket.
Next
stop, we’ll take an inside look at a Dice Influencing class.
Until
next time, keep your toss straight and your rack full. Crapsfest 2005 Announced! It's not too early to start planning for
CrapsFest 2005! Join Heavy, Soft Touch, Dice Coach, Michael Vernon and friends in
fabulous Las Vegas, May 20 - 22, 2005. "The
best time ever! I WILL be back."
And as always, we are looking for contributors with a fresh perspective.
Know someone who
would be interested in receiving future editions of
Dice
Setter
Precision Shooter's Newsletter, Good Luck!
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