Shooting from The Don't

Shooting From The Don’ts…A Journey of Opportunity - Part 3

The drive from Montreal to my next casino destination gave me some time to think about certain ways to make more money when shooting from the Darkside.

Ø The idea is to increase my per-hand profitability without increasing the risk or increasing the amount of table-time it would require to do so.

Ø It occurred to me that I wasn’t taking anywhere close to full advantage of my Come-Out roll Darkside shooting ability.

Ø Though I wanted to approach things in a systematic and methodical way, I also didn’t want to unnecessarily squander any opportunities.

Ø Part of the reluctance to evolve things too quickly may have been due to my wariness of trying to combine too many new elements into my Darkside game all at the same time.

Ø In reality, I knew it was much more attributable to my long held reluctance to arouse too much Pit-attention by betting and hitting back-to-back-to-back-to-back parlayed or heavily-pressed Prop-bets…thereby raising my profile just a little too high for my own good or for that of the dicesetting community in general.

To my mind, a skilled Precision-Shooter has to balance his money-making abilities against the overall health and longevity of what we do as an entire dicesetting community. While many accomplished shooters have taken the “Piss on everyone else, I’m gettin’ me a piece of the brass ring while I can” attitude, I take a slightly longer, more mature view of this skill…just in case the world DOESN’T end tomorrow.

I know that doesn’t mesh well with those who would whore out their own mother for a buck (or a $1.50 for the package deal that would include their own children), but you have to draw the morality-line somewhere…and destroying the game of craps just because a person can’t control their ego or their greed, doesn’t seem like such a great idea.

Admittedly, Horn-bets, World-bets and straight-up or split-action wagers in the center of the layout do hold tremendous Come-out potential without raising as much unwanted notice from the Pit as the same number of repeating Hop-bets will. That’s not to say that if you hit seven or eight Horn-numbers in a row that no one will notice…rather, it’s to say that you’ll raise a Pitmeisters unibrow a little more slowly by avoiding the Hops and sticking to the smaller-headline Props during a betting period (the Come-Our roll in my case) when Prop-action bets are the expected norm.

Instead of blasting 600 watts of tunes between my ears as I normally do when I’m driving, the only sounds that filled those road miles was the whirring hum of my brain-cogs engaged in semi-lucid thoughts of ways to increase the cash-flow from my Darkside Come-Out shooting.

I was formulating a plan, and the tables were coming into sight.

Casino du Lac-Leamy

Located across the river from Canada’s capital of Ottawa, the city of Gatineau, Quebec is home to one very fine casino.

Casino du Lac-Leamy is another in the Caesars Entertainment crown of international jewels and it holds up quite well when compared to the best of their Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Biloxi and Atlantic City counterparts.

I had no problem getting pre-comped into a Deluxe King room at the Hilton Hotel that anchors the property. One of the advantages of corporate-casino ownership families like Caesars, MGM, Mandalay, Harrah’s, etc., is that it’s so much easier to get upfront comps at places that you’ve never played at or in this case, at a casino that I hadn’t played at in quite a while.

Since I had been on the road for quite some time, the last thing I wanted to do was to hit the tables, but I did a little advanced table-scouting. I must have looked like a neophyte because one of the female dealers beckoned me closer and offered to show me how the game worked. I thanked her for the kind offer and told her I’d definitely take a rain-check for another time.

I had an outstanding dinner at Le Baccara with a couple of friends who have run the political office of an infamous bureaucrat who they’ve managed to keep out of jail (and kept hungrily feeding on the public teat) for the past 20 years or so. He’s one of those guys from the Edwin Edwards mold of “The only thing worse than being caught in a hotel-room bed with a dead hooker, is being caught in bed with a live boy” political mandarin types, so their hands are always full (but they keep them relatively blood-free).

The pheasant appetizer at Le Baccara was fantastic…the rack of caribou and fan of ostrich (shared) was shamelessly magnificent…the pannacotta with passion fruit coulis was too good to be true…and the wine-fueled ribald conversation about the political landscape was strictly off-the-record.

Session One

Plenty of sleep…plenty of steam after a solid morning workout…and plenty of 109-octane coffee put me in the right frame of mind to tackle the tables in the morning.

The first thing I’ve got to say about the tables at Lac Leamy is that they feel like the base is made out of concrete instead of your normal run of the mill 6/4 plywood. Think in terms of a sidewalk with a layer of 32-ounce felt over top of it and you start to get the idea.

The night before when I was scoping out the tables, I did notice a discernibly different sound as the dice hit the felt, but it didn’t register enough for me to take more of an interest in it. Now it may have been the short conversation with that dealerette that diverted my attention away from what I should have been paying attention to, so I had to figure it out now that I was actually in the game and not just a casual observer anymore.

The dice were several players away from me when I bought in. I intentionally fumbled with my stack of chips when the dealer sent them out to me in order to get a good feel of the felt as well as bouncing a few chips on their edges just to see how the base-material was going to affect any type of impact. Surprisingly it felt normal to the touch and to the bounce of the chips, but when the dice struck at the far end of the table, it had more of a dull “thwomp” sound instead of the usual one.

I made a $5 line-bet in case they enforced the “You have to have a table-minimum bet of the previous shooter if you want to throw the dice” policy…which by the way they do have and they mostly enforce. That bet went down in very quick order, so when they came to the player beside me, I sent in another fiver but this time I put it on the Don’t.

I figured if I’m going to shoot from the Don’t, and the table is trending to the Don’t; then why the heck aren’t I betting on the Don’t? It took that guy exactly two rolls to get into the game and then get out of the game. My bankroll was now back to even when the dice came to me.

I’ll go into the details of how I’ve revised my Come-Out betting in a moment, but suffice it to say that my Session One experience with it paid off in spades. I can say quite unequivocally that the Come-Out roll, when shooting from the Don’ts, can be just as or even MORE profitable than the Point-then-7-Out cycle itself.

I managed to get my paws on the dice three separate times during that session, and each hand provided a fairly long Come-Out sequence of ~4 tosses before establishing the PL-Point, and a Point-cycle sequence of ~3 rolls before I got the sought after 7-Out I was looking for.

Each time that I established my PL-Point (or more appropriately, my anti PL-Point), I didn’t do anything fancier than laying maximum Odds against it and looking for the All-7 variation of either the Straight-Sixes, Parallel-Sixes or very rarely the double-pitched Hardways All-7 set to get the job done.

As a Darksider, 7’ing-Out should not be overly complicated, and there’s absolutely no reason to make it so.

Picking Your Poison

Once you establish the Passline-Point that you are now trying to avoid…and seeking to roll a 7-Out in the process; you have to select an appropriate dice-set that helps evade the Point but assist the 7.

It’s actually far easier than it sounds…well, let me correct that…choosing the Point-determined dice-set itself is much easier than it sounds…the execution of the toss and the on-axis, primary-face delivery and outcome is entirely up to you.

I always point to Heavy’s Dice Set Distribution Chart as a quick-reference source for you to determine which set is appropriate for a given situation…though frankly, most of this should be second-nature to you once you’ve been doing this for a while.

Ø If my PL-Point is 5 or 9, then the S-6 set with neither of those two numbers (on-axis) is the Point-cycle prescription.

Ø If my PL-Point is 6 or 8, then the P-6 set with only one each of those numbers (on-axis) would be my primary choice.

Ø If my PL-Point is 4 or 10, I have a wider choice of sets that each offer only one on-axis occurrence of each of those numbers. In this case, I’d call upon either the S-6, the All-7 variation of the HW-set, the X-6 or even the V-3 set. Of those, I generally opt for the All-7 variation of the HW-set and hedge my anti PL-Point with a Hardway-bet that will cover my DP line-bet and Odds exposure in the event that I accidentally throw an on-axis Point-winner.

Hedging With The Hardways

At first blush, hedging your even-numbered DP-Points with a Hardway-bet looks like a fairly good idea. I mean after all…you have a ton of cash on the DP-line and an even bigger heap backing it up with inverse-Odds…so a sizeable bet on the Hardway-form of the Point that you are trying to avoid, looks like a common sense approach.

As with many things in life…not everything is as simple or even as attractive as they might at first appear.

Hardway DP-hedges are no exception.

Ø For me, it’s a matter of how I feel and more specifically how the dice feel and are reacting in terms of double-pitch outcomes.

Ø If I’m having any sort of control problems, then I DO “insure” my DP line-wager with a Hardway-hedge.

Ø If my throwing is zoned-in and the dice are landing the way that all this Precision-Shooting stuff is supposed to work; then I expressly avoid using a HW-hedge and shoot with a confidence that the 7-Out is close by.

Session Two

I know this is going to sound boring, but my second session was pretty much a replay of Session One.

My Come-Out cycle was lasting a little longer than four rolls (~4.1 by my reckoning), and my Point-cycle throws were taking just over three rolls (~3.6 on average) before the 7-Out brought in the DP cash.

I’ll readily admit that doing the same thing in the same way throw after throw and hand after hand might seem overly boring to some people, but to me, if it brings in the cash then there’s no need to add any more excitement (or RISK) to the equation. Precision-Shooting is all about reducing the risk to your money, and increasing the predictability of your dice outcomes. That pretty much sums up my philosophy on the subject…and my approach to the game.

The random-rollers prevailing trend during the Second Session was much choppier than the first. There were a few players who started throwing what looked like potentially promising hands, but as soon as everyone at the table was convinced they were going to see it turn into a somewhat warmer trend, the dice did what the dice do in an aggravatingly frequent way…the 7-Out would show up to dash their Rightside-betting hope and dreams.

I stayed for two full rotations of the table (and three hands for me); then headed back to my room to make a few calls. I had to see a guy over in Ottawa about a thing, and I got back to the hotel fairly late so I didn’t get any more sessions in on Day One.

Come-Out Betting For Fun and Profit

As most of you know, I treat the Come-Out roll-sequence as a distinct revenue-source that is totally separate from the Point-cycle itself.

I sometimes allow one cycle to influence the other especially if I’m trying to establish a specific PL-Point or rather to AVOID establishing a specific PL-Point. I’ll have more to say about that particular subject in Part Four of this series, but for now I just want to take a detailed look at the Come-Out sequence from a Darkside Precision-Shooters perspective.

While we know that certain 7-dominant dice-sets favor the Passline-players Come-Out roll, the situation gets a little trickier when shooting from the Don’t. The Darksider wants Horn-hits but doesn’t want to shoot himself in the foot with the appearance of a lot of C-O 7-losers.

Though I’ve looked at and carefully considered EVERY dice-set and permutation, I’m always drawn back to the Straight-Six set even when shooting from the Don’t’s. While it is admittedly 7-heavy (with an on-axis 7 ratio of 4:1), it also has such an attractively large array of on-axis Horn-numbers (a 2 and a 12, plus two 3’s as well as two 11’s).

So how do we reconcile the possibility of an on-axis C-O 7-loser with the charm, appeal and profit-potential of all those Horn-numbers?

Well, to my mind, we first have to consider how good we actually are with our dice-throwing abilities.

Ø If we are fairly good (up to ~51% on-axis) or pretty good (up to ~55% on-axis) at influencing the dice outcomes; then we still have a decent shot at Horn or World profit-production during the C-O.

Ø With that skill-level, Horn-repeaters are not something that a disproportionate amount of our money should be spent on chasing (or at least, we shouldn’t spend a whole lot of money in parlaying our first win…although some Press-action may be prescribed), depending again on your on-axis consistency. In other words, Horn or World-betting can be very net-profitable with moderate on-axis control, but that same profitability can quickly disappear if you use too much (to high of a ratio) of your newly-minted income on trying to hit two or more hits in a row without first locking in SOME of it as RETAINED profit.

Ø In other words, if your on-axis consistency isn’t high enough; then the volatility that accompanies parlayed or too-rapidly-pressed Horn or World betting can easily wipe out any apparent edge that you have over this particular wager.

Ø Now if your shooting is more than 55% reliably on-axis; then the whole Come-Out cycle offers revenue prospects that begin to make PL or DP line-bet earnings quickly pale by comparison. In other words, the better you get at keeping the dice on-axis using the S-6 set (or any other set for that matter); the better your profit-prospects are (as long as you bet that advantage in a responsible way).

To be completely fair, you also have to consider the lesser number of 7’s on a 7-avoidance (but still Horn-heavy) set like the Crossed-Sixes.

Ø While the X-6 set has less on-axis 7’s than the S-6, it also has less of those tasty looking Horn-numbers too (the X-6 has four Horns and two 7’s, while the S-6’s have six Horns, and four 7’s).

Ø At first blush the X-6 set has a 66% versus 33% ratio when comparing Horns-to-Sevens, while the S-6 is a little more even with its 60% versus 40% H:7 ratio…but there’s much more to it than that.

Ø The relatively small difference in those two comparative ratios is more than compensated for by the higher-ratio payouts that the Horn-numbers offer versus the even-money rewards when a DP Come-Out winner rolls (or when a DP bet has to be replaced because a C-O 7 eliminated it).

Ø For that reason, I’ve stuck with the S-6 set because of it’s net-profitability for me on the Come-Out, but my mind remains completely open to any improvements or better approaches that I may not yet be aware of.

For now, here’s how I approach the whole Come-Out sequence when I’m shooting from the Don’t:

My Darkside Straight-Sixes C-O Progression

Ø Using the S-6, I wager so that my DP-bet equals my C-O World-bet.

Ø That is, if I’ve got a $25 wager on the Don’t Pass line; then I’ll also make a $25 World-bet (aka “whirl” bet), which cover the 7, 2, 3, 11 and 12 with one $5 betting-unit on each.

Ø I also make a $5 bet on the Hard-4 and Hard-10 that I have “working on the Come-out”.

Ø In some jurisdictions, the Hardways are automatically “on” during the C-O, while in other places they are “off” unless called (and marked with a lammer) as “on”.

Ø The S-6 set contains both an on-axis H-4 and H-10. As a Darksider, I want to avoid the C-O 7 so I set two of the primary-faces on the H-4 and H-10, while the other two faces are the two aces (2), and the two sixes (12).

Ø Obviously if I was using this set as a Rightside shooter, I’d be transposing those Hardways into intentional 5/2 and 2/5 7’s and looking for dedicated C-O PL-winners as well as the Horn/World hits.

Ø You could just as easily modify this approach with a more conservative approach by using a $5 DP-bet, a $5 World-bet, and $1 each on the Hard-4 and Hard-10.

Ø If my Darkside C-O outcome is a double-pitch 7...then my World-bet stays at its initial value, and I replace my DP wager along with the two HW-bets on the 4 and 10.

Let me add another side-note on the element of intentionally using a 7-dominant set knowing full well the S-6 has four on-axis 7-losers on it.

Ø If a 7 rolls on the C-O, the World-bet is self-sustaining in that it’s a “push” (no gain and no loss), but your DP flat-bet has to be replaced.

Ø I balance that off with the single appearance of the 2 and 12, along with the double appearance of the 3 and 11.

Ø With the high-ratio payouts on each of those Horn-numbers, the sting of having to replace your DP bet if a 7 or 11 shows up, is offset with the quinella-type double payoff if a 2, 3 or 12 shows up.

In addition to that, the appearance of a $5 Hard-4 or Hard-10 not only pays off quite nicely, it concurrently sets a (relatively) tough-to-repeat PL-Point.

Though it’s not a perfect-world scenario, I’ve found that the S-6 still generates net-profit…and does so in spades when the dice end up on one of their primary-faces, and especially if I bring in back-to-back-to-back Horn-number repeaters.

So let’s continue our look at how I book a progression when I get repeating Horn-outcomes.

Ø If the first outcome is an 11...I keep the World-bet at its initial level and I replace my DP-wager. That means that my first hit on an 11 generates a net-profit of $30.

Ø If the outcome is a 3...I double the World-bet to $50, and maintain the same initial $25 bet for my DP-wager. That means that a 3 (along with the DP even-money payment) generates a net-profit (after the World-bet is pressed) of $55.

Ø If the outcome is a 2 or 12...I once again double the World-bet to $50, but still keep the same initial bet for the DP-line. That means that a 2 generates a net-profit (after the World-bet is pressed) of $130, while a 12 generates a net-profit (after the World-bet is pressed) of $105.

On the very next C-O decision...

Ø If the outcome is a 7...I keep the same bet for both the World and the DP. If the World is at $50, then it stays at $50, but I almost always keep my DP base-bet at $25 no matter how large the World-bet grows. Again, this acts to minimize the impact of an on-axis C-O DP 7-loser. I concurrently replace the two $5 wagers on the working Hard-4 and Hard-10 once again if the Come-Out 7 rolls.

Ø Though this may look like a very costly way to get the profit from those six possible on-axis Horn appearances, a couple of months of closely tracked in-casino play validates the net-profitability (some would even say, the OUTSTANDING net-profitability) of this betting-method. However, let me say right here and now that you have to do your own homework to find out what betting-approach and set-selection works best for YOU. Obviously everyone’s mileage may vary.

Ø Please DO NOT use ANY of my methods without first validating them while using YOUR dice-rolling performances and factoring in your own bankroll and bet-making comfort levels. It is your money and your responsibility to determine whether or not ANY betting-method is right for you, your bankroll and your dice-throwing skills. I urge you to use the utmost caution when you are trying any new method or betting-approach out for the first time.

Ø If on the second Come-Out roll the outcome is an 11...I replace the DP and increase the World-bet by one $25 unit.

Ø If the outcome is a 3...I increase my current World-bet by two more base-units (of $25 each for a current total of $100 on the World), but I still keep the same initial $25 bet on the DP.

Ø If the outcome is a 2 or 12...I increase my current World-bet by three base-units (a $75 increase).

On any subsequent Horn-payers, I add one additional unit to the previous scale.

Now...

Ø I press the World with a further two-unit ($50) increase if the 11 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further three-unit ($75) increase if the 3 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further four-unit ($100) increase if the 2 or 12 rolls.

As you can see the required replacement of a lost DP line-bet has less and less significance as your World-action increases. If I'm fortunate enough to get another Horn-hit, I do the same "add one unit to the previous scale" thing, as in…

Ø I press the World with a further three-unit increase if the 11 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further four-unit increase if the 3 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further five-unit increase if the 2 or 12 rolls.

I haven't gotten all of this press-the-World action past the next progression more than a couple of times, but the net revenue-generation has been quite amazing WITHOUT causing any undue pit attention. Yes, the pit does notice when the Horn is repeating more than four or five times in a row, especially if more than a couple of players are on (or there are big stakes on it), but it hasn’t resulted in more than a passing interest to make sure that the stickman calls out the correct Prop-payments to the base dealer.

In any event, the next progression (if another Horn repeats again), looks like this:

Ø I press the World with a further four-unit increase if the 11 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further five-unit increase if the 3 rolls.

Ø I press the World with a further six-unit increase if the 2 or 12 rolls.

At this point, your World-bet can reach the $500 mark (using $25 base-unit bets) if you’ve had the C-O results that see you using the maximum unit-increase on each one of those steps (especially if the 2 or 12 has been rolling), and this is also the point where you will very likely reach the maximum allowable payout level at many casinos.

Since some houses restrict the maximum Prop-bet to a level that would see the maximum allowable payout to be made (as set by casino policy), you’re likely not going to be allowed to raise your World-action much beyond this point.

I personally never got my World-bet past this point during the Casino du Lac-Leamy portion of the trip although my ego would have LOVED to reach that max and be told that they wouldn’t permit a bigger bet.

Session Three

Day Two (my third day in town) saw significant improvement in a couple of areas.

First, I was able to bet with the prevailing random-roller trend much better than I had at Casino du Montreal. Instead of zigging when I should have been zagging; my trend-determinations (trend-tracking) and “I-think-it’s-a-smart-time-to-wager” predictions were much more accurate.

I’m willing to admit that in fact I might have been lucky in making bets on the prevailing trend and having them work out so well and so consistently…and that luck may have been the chief cause of those earnings. The fact is that during my couple of days at Casino du Montreal, my trend-awareness (which is usually very accurate as far as sniffing out a good betting prospect goes) seemed to be WAY off. Here at Casino du Lac-Leamy, it seemed to be getting back on track.

Now I’ll also admit that betting on ANY random-rollers carries inherent risk and it can be a hit-or-miss situation; but my batting-average up until then had been alarmingly dead-on, balls-accurate in terms of getting in while the trend was good, and getting out before my bets got swept away. Montreal had temporarily sapped some of that trend-spotting confidence and I was elated to have it back.

The other significant improvement that I noticed (which is based more on the skill of throwing the dice than on the luck and volatility of a randomly-determined game), was the fact that my Come-Out cycle rolling and betting took on a life (and a repeatable profitability) all its own.

During the four hands that I had during Session Three, each one saw me go higher in the Horn-progression than I had been averaging up until that point. Though my C-O roll average remained the same, I was able to eliminate a few more C-O 7’s and replace them with higher-paying primary-hits on the 2 and 12 (as well as the 3 and 11). By eliminating a few more double-pitch 7’s, I saw my Horn-number income rise dramatically.

The third significant improvement was the fact that I was able to hit a few more of my working C-O Hardway 4’s and 10’s. Up until this point, I had been hitting them, but also knocking them down with regularity due to those C-O double-pitched 7’s. By eliminating a few more Come-Out 7’s, I was able to accomplish two complimentary things at the same time.

Ø I was able to derive some Hard 4 or 10 profit on the Come-Out.

Ø I was also able to establish the 4 or 10 as the PL-Point.

Frankly, I was starting to feel a little giddy at the way this Come-Out strategy was coming together.

Though I didn’t have to pinch myself to convince myself that it was real…I found myself shaking my head in disbelief at the seeming ease at which it was happening. I tempered all those high-spitited thoughts with the fact that craps…no matter HOW GOOD you get at Precision-Shooting…can make you humble real fast if you allow your head to get too big or if you allow yourself to get distracted from your game-plan, your discipline or your dice-tossing focus.

A Culinary Interlude

I was able to get a great comp to the mid-afternoon Sunday brunch at Arôme Seafood and Grill. As most of you know, I strongly counsel against mixing alcohol with gambling. I certainly wasn’t planning on doing any drinking, but when I found the great wine pairings that they had available to compliment the incredible food; I didn’t hesitate to imbibe (within reason). The one concession that I made for that decision was to resolve not to play any further that afternoon.

Arôme is a premium-grade restaurant that brings in some of the finest foods available anywhere and presents them with an artistically tasteful flair and a flavorfully bold passion.

I take food seriously, and judging by their offerings…they do too.

Session Four

My mid-afternoon brunch actually carried me much further into the day than I had projected when I left the craps table for what was supposed to be a short late lunch.

I got back to the tables just after 8 pm and of course they were as busy as one would expect them to be on a weekend evening. The neat thing though, was that many random-rollers at my table had back-to-back-to-back hot rolls. Have you noticed that I never call R-R’s “chicken feeders”? Anyway, one rotation of the table took a few minutes less than three hours to complete…yes, it was THAT hot!

I like a good thing just as much as the next guy, and I can tell you that some random-shooters were blazing the dice all over the layout (and frequently off the table) without any disruption to the relentless cascade of Box-numbers and PL-winners for that entire three hour period.

Normally, I don’t jump right on the Passline during a hot roll…opting instead for Place-betting; however in this situation the random-rollers were throwing as many C-O winners as I had been throwing during my two previous sessions so I just HAD to bet into THAT trend too.

If you had asked me at that moment whether I preferred the steady profit-reliability of Precision-Shooting or whether I liked the profit-making high that randomly-thrown ten or eleven hot shooters in a row can generate; I would have admitted that I like the excitement of ANY hot hand even if it is thrown by a R-R (and I like them even more if there are many hot hands in a row as was the case on this occasion), but I still prefer the lower volatility and higher-predictability that skillful dicesetting brings to my game. If I had to choose one over the other, I’d always go for the predictability of Precision-Shooting.

Three-hour hot-streaks don’t come along all that often, but consistent Precision-Shooting can bring the bacon home nearly every day of the week.

By the time the dice got around to me during that marathon hot-streak, the boxman had solicited voluntary partial color-up’s from the players because his chip-bank had run out of white, red and green chips again despite a supplementary chip-fill about halfway through the heat wave.

During that short break in the action, I contemplated shooting the dice from the Rightside, and yes, I even considered shooting them from the Don’t’s.

Instead I simply passed the dice to the next player who just happened to be the first player who had started the hot-streak almost three hours earlier (and who I had gotten into the game on after he made his second PL-winner). Although he once again did quite well, the magic soon disappeared as player after player that shot after him managed to 7-out in such short order that it took less than twenty minutes for the dice to come back around to me again. This time, I definitely wanted to shoot and the choice of which line I would be shooting from would be NO CONTEST. This was my Darkside-shooting journey, and I was determined to make the most of it.

My C-O roll lasted for five tosses before establishing the Point, and from there it took just one additional toss to bring about my winner-7.

My rail and two of my pockets were full of green, black and purple chips as I prepared to leave the game, but less than 2% of those winnings were attributable to my own one hand of DP shooting. Like I said, I like a good thing just as much as the next guy, and when a great betting opportunity (especially a sustainable hot streak) shows up, then I’ll be all over it in a BIG way.

I headed off to catch up on my e-mail along with the latest postings on both Irishsetter’s and Heavy’s excellent Message Boards.

Sessions Five, Six and Seven

I won’t bore you with the details of all three of these sessions that I took part in the following day. Suffice it to say that my C-O average still hovered in the low-4 toss-range, while my Point-cycle shooting took a little less (in the high-three toss-range), although there was one hand during Session Six that required 18 tosses to bring about the 7-Out (yes, I was a little concerned…no, I wasn’t overly worried or frustrated)…although it did remind me of the importance of humility (and the need to avoid feelings of dice-setting omnipotence) once again.

Though Day Two had seen me throw the dice for a relatively small number of times, my overall profit (even after backing out all that R-R hot-streak marathon profit from the night before) was beginning to look pretty good.

Keep in mind that my original intent was to work my Darkside shooting up to a point where it could potentially generate about a thousand dollars a day, with about three to four hours of craps table exposure per day. While Days One, Two and Three each got me to that point, I definitely saw more than just fleeting glimpses of exactly HOW I could pump up the profit-volume even further and potentially curtail the number of hours it would take me to get there in the first place.

To me, the answer was two-fold.

The first part lay in the Come-Out-cycle betting that I had been working on; and the second part was by increasing the free-Odds component of my DP-Point to the level where each hand would generate AT LEAST as much per-shooting-opportunity as my Rightside PL-Point/Odds/and Place-betting combo had been averaging up until the time when I embarked on this trip.

Though I had some distance to go, the journey to sustainably high Darkside profitability sure seemed much closer than it had just a couple of days earlier in Montreal.

Their Standard Buffet and a Gourmet Throwback to the ‘70’s

Banco is name of their buffet with its standard 100 items feeding-trough. Since I can’t think of anything that differentiates this from any other semi-upscale buffet that has become the norm across North America, I’ll just say that if you are hungry…it’ll fill you up…oh, and it’s an easy comp for very minimal casino play.

On the other hand, I DO have something to say about one of Casino du Lac-Leamy’s gourmet restaurants.

Okay, I’ll admit it, I honestly thought that fondue went out of style with Starsky and Hutch, shag carpeting, Alias Smith and Jones, white men with afro’s, Room 222, elephant pants and Robert Blake’s Baretta…along with the rest of the anachronistic things that the ‘70’s had to offer. Well, at La Fondue Royale it is very much alive and doing quite well, thank you very much.

The Salon Royal offers a unique Franco-Swiss concept where you cook your own food (on skewers) in pots of boiling oil, pots of melted cheese, and dessert pots full of melted chocolate for dipping various and sundry fruits and biscuits. Do-it-yourself fondue cooking was something that I definitely wasn’t expecting in a casino setting, but it was a pleasant surprise and my dinner companions thoroughly enjoyed it as a totally new experience that they hadn’t ever heard of before.

It made for a great social gathering that is quite a few steps away from what ordinarily passes for gourmet casino dining. I highly recommend La Fondue Royale, especially if you can get a full-ride comp for the evening.

On the Road Again

I hit the road with a better attitude than I had had when I left Casino du Montreal to head towards this place.

My attitude was buoyed by two facts.

Ø I had made an obscene amount of money off of that ultra-searing non-stop random-roller marathon.

Ø My Come-Out World-betting was spinning much more gold on its own than I expected to earn on both my C-O and Point-cycle shooting combined.

That in and of itself was gratifying enough, but I had also advanced much further on the profit-curve than I thought I would be by this point in my Darkside journey.

I hope you’ll join me as that evolution continues.

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

Sincerely,

The Mad Professor

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