Transition Moves
By
Stephen heavy Haltom
The transition move is
one of the most powerful weapons in the crapshooters arsenal. It is also one of the most difficult to master. Simply put, a transition move is your pre-planned
strategy to ease your bets from one side of the line to the other, allowing you to
capitalize on the tables ever-shifting trend. It
can also be a dangerous move. Read the table
correctly and you are positioned to win. Read
it wrong and you are chasing your losses.
Most popular craps strategists advocate approaching the table with a pre-determined
method of play; playing the pass line with odds plus placing the six and eight, for
example. If this were your plan, then you
would begin by charting for a table where shooters were making points and throwing sixes
and eights, then play that table until you hit your win objective or lost a pre-determined
number of bets say three consecutive seven-outs.
While this style of play can be a strong money-management strategy, it can also
lead to table-hopping and endless hours of charting with minimal opportunity for play. The transitional player, however, sees opportunity
in a shifting trend. Instead of changing
tables, he simply changes his strategy and follows the dice to the other side of the line.
Using the above example, lets assume there have been two consecutive
seven-outs. When the next shooter gets the
dice the transitional player by-passes the come out roll.
Lets say a point of five is established.
The player then places the six and eight for $12 each, and lays $31 against the
five. At this point the player has ten ways
to win on the six and eight compared to four ways to lose on the five. Thanks to the hedging effect of his bets, exposure
to the seven is limited to $4 plus the $1 vig on the lay.
Its a very strong move.
Suppose were in that magical place I call the Ideal Casino and
the six shows next. The player wins two
things a $14 payoff and a regression opportunity.
After the bet is paid he simply tells the dealer to Make my six and eight
look like $6 each. At that point
he has a profit locked up for that shooter and the seven can no longer hurt him. He also has a world of options open to
him.
Lets assume the player decides to keep the place action on the six and eight
up and working at $6 each while placing a $5 dont come bet and continuing his
transition to the dark side. He has $17
action exposed to the seven on this roll, but it is well hedged by the lay against the
five. For the sake of this example, the nine
rolls next and the DC bet travels. The player
then has the option to remove the $31 lay bet on the five and lay odds against the nine. Suppose he lays $15 odds. Once again, the seven cannot hurt him. If the six or eight roll next he will collect
another $7. Should the seven show he will
have a net $3 win on the DC and odds bet.
But what if our player is not satisfied with just the no-nine bet? No problem. By
increasing his free odds wager to $21 he can hedge a second $5 Dont Pass bet. Once again, a hit on the six or eight will kick
off a $7 win. This time, if the seven rolls
the player will have a net $2 win. Now
imagine the next roll is a ten. What next? Well, the Dont Come bet travels to the ten
and again the player has a decision to make. Since
ten is a harder number to roll than nine, the smarter play would be to remove
the lay odds on the nine and lay $20 odds against the ten.
At that point the player completes his transition to the donts by telling the
dealer to Bring me down on my six and eight.
He now has a $14 win locked up from the earlier hit on the six. The player also has a $5 flat behind the nine and
a $5 flat with $20 odds behind the ten. Thats
a net of $16 at risk to win $20, and the seven is working for him instead of against him. He simply sits back and waits for
decision on that game.
Lets assume the shooter sevens out and our player locks up an additional $20
win for that hand. What is his next move? He is now a Dont bettor and should play his
dark-side strategy of choice. With a little
luck he may catch a streak seven-out shooters and grind out a nice win. Of course, thats not always the way it works
out.
There are few things more frustrating that sitting on a single Dont Pass bet
while the roll of the day passes you buy. To
guard against that, the transitional player is always ready to make his move back to the
Do side. How do you manage that? Pretty much by doing the opposite of what we did
when transitioning to the Donts. Lets
look at an example.
Imagine our player has a $25 Dont Pass bet established on the 4, and has laid
$50 in odds against the point. He has $75 at
risk to win $50, and is in a very powerful position.
But as the shooter passes the five count, the six count, and the seven count our
Dont player starts to sweat it. Rather
than take his Dont wager down, though, he places the six and eight for $24 each. A hit on the six or eight will kick off a $28 win
and afford him another regression opportunity. The
seven will pay off as well, with a net $2 win. Once
again he is in a very strong position.
Lets pretend were in the Ideal Casino again, and the shooter tosses an
eight. Now our transitional player makes a
power play. He collects $28 for the hit on
the eight. He returns $3 to the dealer and
asks for a hard four, while picking up his odds bet on the Dont Pass. Then tells the dealers to, Bring my place
action down to $22 inside.
How did his position improve? He is
now risking one $25 unit on the Dont Pass to win one unit where previously he
was risking three units to win two. He has a
partial hedge against the four with the $3 hardway bet.
And he has $22 in place action working for him all paid for by the hit on
the eight. The seven cannot hurt him, and it
only takes one more hit on any inside number to give our player a guaranteed win for the
shooter. After that he can begin an
up-and-pull press strategy or if it suits him better start going through the
come and progressively increasing his odds by one unit on every subsequent hit. The Dont Pass bet, however, should not be
taken down. Since the odds favor the player
on that bet it should be left up for a decision.
Here are the three keys to the transition move:
(1)
Have a pre-planned strategy that
incorporates hedges while taking advantage of the three most powerful numbers on the table
the six, seven and eight.
(2)
Chart continuously for the current
table trend and follow the trend.
(3)
Avoid chasing your bets by setting
and adhering to a strict loss limit.
Can you master the transition move? Absolutely. Will it help you win more? That depends.
One system is about as good as another when facing a choppy table. As far as the mathematics of it goes, it is not
better or worse than sticking with the Pass Line or Dont Pass bet. But if you master the hedge moves, incorporate low
vig bets into your strategy, and adhere to your loss limits you will certainly lose less. And losing less keeps you in the game longer
which gives you more opportunities to catch a streak. That aint necessarily a bad thing.
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