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The
Mad Professor's Shooting Bible Most
talented dice-influencers find that imparting a certain amount of spin to their dice-throw
not only helps the two cubes fly in perfect side-by-side tandem, but it also keeps the
dice from developing all kinds of sideways hopping, popping and scattering as soon as they
touch down at the other end of the table. Taken
a step further, inertial spin also acts to keep both dice in phase with each other when
they hit and rebound off of the backwall. Simply
stated, the right amount of spin will produce more primary-face outcomes and fewer random
conclusions. Whether
its forward-spin or back-spin
were going to look at it in detail and
explore how you can use it to gain MORE control, more on-axis results, more primary-face
outcomes, more in-phase emulation and correlation, and of course more predictable results
and much more skill-matched-to-efficient-wagering revenue.
Controlling ANY Amount of Spin
Creating
and controlling spin is a subjective thing. Toss-consistency
becomes more difficult as spin is either artificially increased or
decreased. Let
me explain... For
the sake of clarity, I'll stick with "backspin" since that is what most players
use these days. There
are three different types of backspin. Within each of these types, you have some latitude
(rotational speed control) as far as increasing or decreasing the amount of spin you can
put onto the dice:
Ø
Natural
Spin
Ø
Wrist-Snap
Spin
Ø
Finger-Roll
Spin
This
is the amount of rotation that happens when you release the dice without adding any
"wrist snap" or other artificial last-second movement of your finger, hand or
arm, and therefore your wrist, hand and finger speed is the same as your lower arm. In
this case, the amount of spin that is imparted to the dice is a product of your forward
hand-and-arm speed, instead of any intentionally increased or decreased movement to induce
more or less spin as you release the dice. Depending
on the arc of your arm-movement and where the dice are released in relation to that arc,
as well as how smoothly your release transitions to a same-arc or different-arc
follow-through; determines the amount of spin that will be transmitted and
contributed to the dice. Further,
the direction and speed of release from your fingertips (how quickly or slowly
you open your fingers and thumb), and where your fingertips were pointing to or arced
towards, will also influence how much "natural" spin the dice receive. Just
as the name implies, this spin is controlled by the speed difference between
the arc of your lower arm and that of your wrist as it unfurls at the point of release. If
you gracefully move your wrist from a "demure swan" position (wrist curled
under) to a fully extended and straight-aligned fingers/hand/wrist/lower arm configuration
(aimed at your target-area) at the point of release; then the amount of spin will
obviously be controlled by how quickly you make that transition and how quickly you unfurl
or snap your wrist. Less snap = less spin, more snap = more spin. Additionally,
your dice release-point will also impart more spin if the dice are held fractionally
longer in the upward extending throwing-arc than if they were released sooner and more
directly (in a straight line) towards the backwall. That
is, a dice-release that is flatter and more inline with the table surface will tend to
have less spin than one where the dice are released when your arm has started to arc
toward the ceiling. Again too, the speed of
that arc-movement at the time of release will also impact the spin-rate of the dice. Taking
that knowledge in a different direction; some skilled players use a downward arc that
starts directly over but above the rail-height of their dice pick-up position and then
angles the throwing motion downward on a steep glide-path towards their intended
initial touch down target. This way,
spin-rate can be controlled to near zero WITHOUT the troubling off-axis popping that
traditionally hounds knuckleball tosses that are gently lobbed and plopped towards the
target area. If
you grip the dice as you normally do, you'll notice that you can "rock" (sway,
mildly wobble, or undulate) the dice within that grip by rolling your finger(s)
forward or pulling them back...all the while using your thumb as the hinge (pivot or
fulcrum) on which the dice can be rocked back and forth. That
rocking variance within the same grip can be used to add or subtract spin right at (or
just before) the point of release. The
quicker you rock the dice or unfurl your fingertips when you release them, the more
backspin you will add. If you unfurl them slower than your forward-moving hand-speed, then
less spin is imparted and you end up with a spin-rate that is much slower than your
arm-movement throwing speed would suggest. Therefore,
some players use this method to retard backspin or to eliminate any spin whatsoever. Conversely,
some players rock the dice or unfurl their fingertips faster than their forward-moving
hand-speed, and obviously more spin is imparted and you end up with a spin-rate that is
much faster than arm-movement throwing speed would indicate. As
Irishsetter has mentioned previously, the one huge problem that most players suffer when
they use this kind of release, is that they tend to either "push" their thumb
into the dice seam and therefore split the dice in an outward off-axis wobble, or they are
so inconsistent in doing it from throw-to-throw, that they never get the reliability that
they should. As
a result, all the grip-alignment that youve worked so hard to perfect, is shattered
because of the misalignment that you render onto the cubes right at the critical point of
release. Total grip-pressure (as in too much
of it or too little of it), as well as finger-to-finger grip-pressure variance (an
imbalance of grip-pressure between each finger) is something that is covered in detail in Shooting Bible
Part 8 and 9. A
different variant of finger-roll spin is to release your thumb from the dice slightly
before releasing your other fingers, and therefore letting the dice roll-off of your
fingertips. Though youll usually see
this kind of release done to great effect in underhand (palm-up) tosses, it can work just
as effectively in palm-down overhand tosses as well. Heres
how: Because
of the inertia of forward movement of your arm, wrist and hand as it is moving through its
throwing arc, the dice will tend to stick to the ceiling of the underside of
your fingertips longer than to the floor of your grip (the contact patch of
your thumb). Therefore, when the dice do
eventually let go of your fingertips (because the forward-moving inertia carries them
away), the final micro-seconds of contact they had with your fingertips (when they were
finally free of your thumbs grasp); they will take some additional roll and spin
influence with them. The
difference in the release-time lag between your thumb letting go and the rest of your
fingers letting go, is where additional spin is either added or retarded. That
final little bit of fingertip contact is also what often causes one dice to lead or lag
the other. Since
our fingers are each of different lengths; even when we line them up just so, it
means that one or more of our fingers is at a different angle of contact with the dice
than the finger right beside it. In trying to
compensate for their differing lengths, we often unknowingly alter the contact patch size
as well as unwittingly vary the grip-pressure from one finger to the next. Im not saying that this cant be
overcome, Im simply saying that if you arent aware of it, then you may have no
idea why you cant seem to get any sort of consistency from your toss from
throw-to-throw let alone session-to-session. We
explored the entire grip-pressure variance issue in Shooting Bible
Part 8 .
Some
players render what you could call an exaggerated amount of spin to the dice. If for
example, you choose to throw like Yuri recommends, from the farthest end of the table;
then a copious spin-rate is almost always required. However,
hyper-spin where you are combining Wrist-Snap, increased Arm-Speed and excess Finger-Roll;
is rarely required on normal-length, normal layout tables. One example of where it could be useful is on some
of those super-long 18' to 24' land-barge layouts from the straight-out position. In those cases, I have found that a mid-to-high
trajectory, ultra-spin, steep-descent, at-the-backwall-landing seems to work quite well
for me. However, like I said, that amount of
hyper-spin is rarely required in normal play on traditional-length tables. Knuckleball
No-Spin Some
players have found that the close-in positions of SR-1 or SL-1 on shorter 10 or
12 tables require a no-spin knuckleball throw.
As
good as this type of throw can be, it often provides a feast-or-famine level of
consistency. That is, when you get the
landing-angles just right and the dice carry just enough forward momentum to bring them to
the backwall; this toss can be a beautiful thing. However,
because a toss like this requires exact and precise initial touch down targeting, an
imperfect throw or a positive-rebound layout can produce all sorts of random-outcome
ugliness. Further
to that, many players find that their no-spin knuckleball does not transfer well from one
table to the next and requires considerable recalibration as they encounter each new
layout. Due to the no-spin success they may
find and exploit at one layout, they often have a hard time re-adapting it and adjusting
it (and in their mind, undoing and destroying the basic mechanics that they just
perfected), when they move on to a different layout.
The frustration of encountering just enough off-axis unreliability
causes them to either over-compensate and destroy their toss-reliability completely, or to
needlessly abandon a toss that can and should be used selectively and judiciously on
certain types of table surfaces.
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