Current Practice…Future Profitability
Part III

Your current practice determines your future profit, so it’s pretty easy to see how and why the time you spend on your at-home rig today can pay bigger dividends at the casino tomorrow.

So far in this series we’ve looked at a couple of ways to make your practice-sessions more effective and far more efficient.  They include:

Ø       Tuning your practice-rig to closely mimic your favorite casino layout.

Ø       Tuning your practice-rig to match the table-conditions that have been giving you the most trouble.

Ø       How to differentiate between skill-development practice where you are experimenting with various grips, release-points and throwing-motions versus maintenance-practice where you can ”war-game” various casino-simulation and betting-strategy exercises.

Ø       We also looked at a couple of more-relevant-than-ever skill-maximizing approaches that the late Mickey_D bestowed upon the dice-influencing community. 

Let me add one more compelling reason why at-home practice today can add to your casino-profit tomorrow:

Ø       The learning and development process that we go through during our practice-sessions today is directly linked to our Signature-Number trend-awareness and early-stage non S-N streak alertness during our casino play tomorrow. 

That means that the more in-tune we are to recognizing and comprehending what our roll-by-roll progress is telling us during our practice-sessions, and the faster we clue into what our right-here/right-now practice-throws are telling us today; then the easier it is to detect and profit from as-it’s-happening real-world revenue-earning opportunities when we are in the casino tomorrow.

The sooner you clue in to Signature-Number trend-changes or to the earliest stages of a valid non-Signature-Number persistently-recurring betting-opportunity (and learn to avoid all of the non-valid phantom pretenders); then the more profit you can pull off of the tables.

Ø       An attentive mind during each practice-session builds opportunity-awareness for later use during your casino-sessions. 

Ø       Each element of your practice today can contribute to your casino-profit tomorrow; but first you have to be aware of streak and trend possibilities, and then take the proper and in-proportion-to-the-opportunity betting-action to turn them into bankroll-building probabilities.

We’ll be discussing this concept in much greater depth in subsequent installments, but first let’s look at a problem that can shake even our strongest dice-influencing faith.

When Your Skills Look WORSE Than Random

If there is such a thing as unintentionally throwing the dice "worse than random", then an aspiring dice-influencer can find a way to do it…though not necessarily when they want to.

Ø       When dice-influencers are still in the formative development stage of their toss-mechanics, it seems that as soon as they get one-die to stay on-axis, the other one goes off-axis, and vice versa.

Ø       At times it can seem like trying to plug holes in a leaky dam.    As soon as you have one problem plugged…two more spring up.

Ø       For example, as soon as one major off-axis problem is fixed, a new and pernicious on-axis double-pitch problem arises.

This is the point where many apprentice dice-influencers start to panic.  They are tempted to abandon the firmly-established basic tenets of Precision-Shooting in favor of something far more radical (but much less likely to bring about reliable steady-revenue success).  

Panic isn’t necessary…however a sound approach to not only curing the latest defect-of-the-moment but also sensibly building a much stronger consistent-throwing/consistent-earnings foundation is.

Ø       The simplest cure to most on-axis double-pitch problems is usually a small grip-pressure and/or finger-alignment change.  If you want an in-depth look at resolving grip-pressure issues, a quick review of Shooting Bible – Part Eight should do the trick.

But here’s an example of why I bring up this point:

Ø       Though a light and delicate touch will work beautifully with some types of throws (and I use it extensively myself on some table surfaces from certain throwing-positions), many players find that they get inconsistent results (and an on-axis percentage that rarely stays above 65%) because their grip contributes insufficient command-direction.

Ø       In many cases, the fine (and unflinchingly steady) muscle-control, grip-pressure and finger-alignment needed to maintain a light-enough-to-balance-an-eyelash-on-its-end toss-consistency is just variable enough to produce throw-to-throw unreliability. 

Ø       Further to that, many players find that the random popping, sideways hopping and backwall-rebound scattering that sometimes plagues a “lighter-than-air” throw is quickly cured with just a tiny little bit of additional control-INPUT.

Ø       Now that does not mean you have to turn the light touch that you’ve been working on into a ham-fisted grasp that would make Hulk Hogan proud.   Rather, it means that you have to experiment with gradually lighter or firmer grip-pressures until you hit one extreme (of on-axis consistency or inconsistency), and then gradually increase it to the other extreme until you find the limits of that direction as well.  In other words, a grip that is TOO light or TOO firm may not be right for YOU.

Ø       YOU have to find out what works best for YOU, and your at-home experimentation-sessions is the place to find that out.

Ø       If too light of a grip (or too tight of a grip) isn’t working, then you can GRADUALLY lighten or tighten it until it does.  All of that assumes of course that the rest of your throwing-dynamics are properly dialed-in.  If they are not, then you have to do the same more-or-less adjustment-exercise for each of those elements as well.  

Ø       One of the prime functions of your practice-sessions is to find out what works…and what doesn’t work for you.  Sometimes that means that you’ll have to explore and investigate the 50,000 ways that won’t work…in order to find the ONE way that will.

Ø       What often times happens is a tendency for a player to over-compensate or over-correct their grip-pressure, finger-alignment, trajectory-height, and spin-control adjustments too much in one direction or the other instead of fine-tuning and minutely modifying the most likely middle-ground solution. 

Ø       Instead of incrementally increasing or decreasing the amount of input-control for each element; they’ll radically go off in one extreme direction or another without considering what a little bit more or a little bit less input-control could contribute to their on-axis, primary-face percentages. 

Ø       Unfortunately, many players often discard an idea if they don’t see immediate progress, even though it would hold considerable merit had they taken a more studied, patient and subtle approach to it.

Ø       In that case, they’ll discard what could have been a monumental on-axis, primary-face break-though, simply because they over-corrected (or went TOO far in one direction) due to impulsive impatience or hasty eagerness to excel or because they thought (or misinterpreted) that an “ultra-light grip” meant that they couldn’t put ANY control into the throw without screwing it up.  

When we are doing all of this experimenting and testing, new problems will inevitably arise.  We may also run head-long into some old on-axis troubles that we thought had long since been cleared up.

Ø       At other times, you may find that one solution cures one problem but creates a brand new one in its place.  Dice-influencing is SO nuanced and subtle, that teeny tiny adjustments often have a huge on-axis, primary-face impact.

Ø       Mostly, it's the small (almost infinitesimal) adjustments that have the biggest impact when it comes to nailing it just right.   To find that right combination, you may have to do a lot of trial-and-error analysis and study.

Ø       Most aspiring shooters get so frustrated because the BIG corrections that they try hardly ever work (for long); so they end up making even BIGGER adjustments like switching from right-hand shooting to left-FOOT shooting...without ever understanding the need for restrained subtlety that is most often the correct solution to a variety of minor flaws.

One Session At A Time…One Toss At A Time…One Inch At A Time

Developing your skills as a Precision-Shooter only comes about if you afford yourself the opportunity, patience, discipline, and commitment to learn and develop properly. 

For successfully sustainable dice-influencing there are very few shortcuts.

By seeking the easiest route, many aspiring dice-influencers try to avoid the more obvious but harder-work, larger commitment, long-term solutions, and opt instead to spend their time searching for the pre-digested fast-food pap-du-jour that distracts their hunger-pangs for a moment or two, but fails to provide any sort of endurable nourishment for sustained session-after-session-after-session on-axis, primary-face profit-consistency.

Let me give you an example of how a deliberate and calculated approach during your practice-sessions today can pay huge dividends in the casino tomorrow:

Ø       Starting with the ultra-short throwing distances that we discussed in Shooting-Bible - Part 9 and then  g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y  lengthening out the gap, often gives you a chance to quickly determine the root cause of most off-axis and/or double-pitch problems that you haven’t been able to solve using some of the more traditional grip, release, trajectory, spin, apogee/toss-height and energy/force correction-methods that are commonly talked about.

Ø       When you cure your on-axis problems from a short distance and the same problem re-appears when you stretch out the gap; then you simply go back to the previous backwall-proximity that afforded the perfect outcomes and build on it from there.

Ø       It may feel like you’re going back to elementary school in having to build your success one toss and one inch at a time, but just as you have to crawl before you walk…you also have to shoot right before you can shoot for consistent profit.

Ø       If you throw the dice from a short distance and get it perfect; then it’s only a matter of  l-e-n-g-t-h-e-n-i-n-g  your toss one inch at a time.  Did you notice that I didn’t say one-foot or one-yard or one-metre at a time?  One-inch or a couple of inches at a time lets you work your way up to all kinds of eventual throwing distances that are far beyond the not-always-available SL-1 or SR-1 table-positions that many players restrict themselves to now.

Ø       That way, the crap between your ears about “Oh I can’t throw properly on the mini-tubs ‘cause they’re too short…or on the twenty-four foot land-barges ‘cause they’re too long…or from any straight-out position on 16-footers ‘cause it’s too far”…NEVER BECOMES AN ISSUE AGAIN! 

In other words:

HOW you learn to de-randomize the dice is sometimes just as important as WHAT you learn.

HOW you built up your practice-session skills will play a big role in not only determining HOW MUCH you retain; but more importantly, HOW MUCH and HOW FREQUENTLY and HOW EFFECTIVELY those skills can be applied to real-world opportunities.

Your current practice determines your future profit. 

What you put into your practice-sessions today governs what you’ll be able to do with those skills in the casino tomorrow.

Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.

Sincerely,

The Mad Professor

Back to The Mad Professor Speaks Main Page!