As usual this is gonna be LOOONG because I'm full of air... and I wanna touch on different strategical changes I've made and why (or who) with advise to get me to "think better" (like a true DI believer, not a gambler). In order of the (long-term) impact their advice made on me...
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I type all this for others like me who don't have a solid betting scheme or understanding of "how to" when faced with losing streaks, winning streaks, progressions, and the built-in psychological timidity within one's own accepted betting schemes. I hope it helps those who've been where I am/was.
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#1) I met Kumar for lunch earlier last week. We were able to discuss (and he was willing to be frankly open) in our face-to-face about his personal betting schemes and strategies. By his own admittance, he's an "aggressive" bettor (and as he said, "maybe moreso than you [me, Brian] are). Way mo'; he plays at Beau Rivage--at least for right now, I can't stomach a $25 Place Bet minimum--where's my room for regression at that level? But that said, he advised that my overall betting strategy should be the same as his (which it was not).
Conceptually, we all understand that we want to be "ahead" when we're betting. He put it much more succinctly and his advice sharpened my own focus on how I bet... I'm a regimen addict-- I have faith in certain betting schemes; too much, as it happens. AND I used to really feel that “FOMO ghost” looking over my shoulder influencing my penchant for booking Place Bets immediately after the CO. My downfall (when I have BIG losing days) is my following my belief that a betting scheme will overcome my losses and can bring me back, out of sheer dominance of "statistical regularity and ‘a perfect strategy when it works’ "--which of course takes NO consideration for volatility... and I get killed riding $66 Insides or 150 Across losses when they PSO-PPPSO repeatedly.
But he pointed out that there are two things wrong with my schemes--(to paraphrase) if I wanna "go to the moon" with my betting, the money I should be betting to do that with, should be "house money"--profits--that when I've got profits, apply them without Chicken Little looking over my shoulder (my paraphrase)--"it's free money" I'm betting with. [b]I can be as aggressive as my greed dictates when I'm using house money--and my bankroll/buy-in won't suffer for my greed.[/b]
And more importantly, "a good bettor knows to reduce his bets to minimums when things get cold--not 'minimum level bets Across', but better-odds bets bet at minimum levels--like a Place 6 & 8 bet only--no Field, no HW, no Place 4, 5, 9, or 10 on the hope that some miracle I’m banking on could pay off. There is no wishing." (my paraphrase)
Reducing bets to better bets at minimum levels never occurred to me before Kumar; I had too much faith in betting schemes. This was one of the best pieces of advice I received that altered my results. "Shooting the moon" with a sense of overt aggression, using house money was never something I held in focus. Making a profit/coming out ahead--these were cloudy concepts that I could embrace--"for the moon, quickly, and OUT!" was not. These things changed during this last weekend, which I'll detail later.
2) Heavy once counciled me privately that I should alter my Hard 4 and Hard 10 bets. On my own, I'd increase my H4 and H10 bets in this progression (each): $5, $10, 25, 50, and then dream of a $100-bet day. Later, after understanding the rarity of repeated HWs, I modified that to: $5, $25, $50, $100 on each H4/H10 But getting to a $100 HW bet requires 3 consecutive H4s or H10s--and only the $25 and $50 bets have paid off at that point.
Heavy advised that since a 3x occurrence is rare enough, that I might consider his own practice: $5, $25, $100 because the 3rd HW toss would pay $700 and even though the smaller HW bet sits at $25 (and not at at least $50 as in my system) at the least it'd pay $175 while I lurk for a $700 payoff. His system has worked well for me; I've won 5x $700 in 3 months (maybe 45 sessions). His council after that was at the 3rd win, if I put on my Big Boy Pants, I'd go to $150... I never have done that after winning $700--I just ride the $100 HW to see if it can hit again; after all, it's a 1/9 chance AND I'm only getting a payday of 7 to 1 for such a long shot--Chicken Little says $100 is plenty of bet. More later...
3) Mark invited me to meet with some other shooters one morning. I showed up about 20 minutes late. I buy in anticipating that they'll all show up shortly. In the meantime, I bet my usual: $5 Horn High Ace-Deuce, $5 each H4 and H10. If I'm lucky enough to hit a Horn number, I press up one unit (only and always). That morning I hit 6 consecutive Horn numbers. That ended with a CO Hard 4. I tossed in $5 and pressed the H4 and H10 to $25 each. Before the hand ended I hit the H4 for $175 and pressed it to $100 (netting me $100 for my $15 bet investment) where it died when I fired off Red after another 3-4 rolls. I was up ~$600 and colored up. Mark texts me and apologizes for having left before I arrived--he too, had had a GWAG hand of 5 consecutive Horn numbers, but he got paid in the thousands because his GWAG bets went this way: $10 World with a $2 Ace-Deuce; progressing from 10/2 to 30/6 to 50/10 to 100/20 to 200/30. As we discussed when we met later, "bidness is bidness--up two grand or whatever, when you're up it's time to walk. WE should understand and practice that RELIGIOUSLY and he and I both understood that." and I had no problem with their "no show" when I read his text. GREAT discipline in this case NOT to take $2 Gs "to the moon" when the rest of the table play is seesawing. At some point, the winnings has to count for something.
But his betting scheme opened my eyes to the possibilities; I'd never considered deliberately playing GWAG; nor did I have a good plan for repeaters (for those unfamiliar, Game Within A Game is the practice of betting some variation of World or Horn bet during the CO roll in the hopes that one can repeatedly hit trash numbers (2,3,11,12). The payoffs are either 15-1 (3,11) or 30-1 (for the 2, 12). Progressive increased betting schemes obviously balloon the winnings. Obviously all ya'll who're reading of my 6 consecutive hits are pullin' your hair out at my dismal reward. More later..
4) I saw Aloha Jonny (Johnny[?]) late yesterday morning and he said something I only realized the day before: "listen to the dealers when they suggest something; experienced dealers have seen it all--they have a feel for the game's trends and can grasp it almost immediately and usually better than you. They know all the right moves."
Two pieces of advice I learned from dealers: ALWAYS book a HOP bet on a number if I have a big bet on it and it's turned off. For example, on the CO my $5 HW bets work. But at $25, I itch all over, afraid of the random Red so whenever my HWs are $25 or more, I turn them off on the CO. But Scott prompted me once: "if your H4/10 pops on the CO you'll miss it while 'OFF'--you wanna Hop the two for $5 each?" The second piece of advice will be obvious in the narrative below (and it's akin to Kumar's advice: "to the moon with house money!!")
SOOO.. to my report...
On Sunday night, I was having my usual time, seesawing with no true established win/loss trend. Up $200, down $250 for about 40 minutes. Then the table thinned out and there were 5 shooters left in total. I was SO as usual. I've been having ferocious trouble lately with too much dice "scatter" after the wall bounce and lots of increased DPs. It's been very frustrating... Then Sunday night I ran into this other SO bettor who flatly refused to move his bet out of my target area (the "A" in 'PASS'). My "bombs away" high arc short hop to the wall suffered because I couldn't get a straight-on shot with a guy at My First and The Hook on my end--restricting me from keeping my target 90* from the wall. Sooo... I experimented and lowered the trajectory and shortened the target zone to keep the first bounce constant--now I was shooting about 5" in front of his PL bet, bouncing over his Odds and off the wall with an even better "scatter" that my own usual "A" toss.
I had a 30-minute toss that ended IMMEDIATELY when Sam, the Stick said (as I was launching) and as he pointed to me, "same shooter as last stick". He caught me in the middle of my toss literally. I couldn't hold the dice and cussed with an "F!" which is unusual for me in such a setting. But all my pressed bets and $50 HWs fell then and I quit, up about $500. The jist of Sunday's session was that I had a 20-something roll hand and a 30-minute hand after I adjusted the toss and landing zone.
Monday morning, the table is seesawing; after about an hour, some of the guys leave. I've had two turns at the dice; one made a few bucks with my newly-learned GWAG betting (thanks, Mark!) and I had a roll that ran into the 14-15 tosses. But I wanted one more try; this new landing zone showed real promise with two well-paying GWAG "test sessions" during their COs.
With two Garys and Steve(?) and one other shooter, I got the dice. GWAG paid off 3x immediately. Three rolls after the Point, I hit a H4. The short of it is, I tossed a 39-roll hand. For the first time EVER, I had the Place 8 @ $420 (from an $18 bet). $420 from Chicken Little! (all Kumar's doing.. the GWAG winnings and Sunday's dice adjustment gave me real faith and hope) In the end, I had the P4 and P10 at $100 and $150 respectively. The 5 was at $50, the 9 at $36 and the 6 was at $150. That's a LOT spread Across for me. I usually regress back to something in the 250-300 Across range when the money gets that high.
But the biggest contribution came thus:
During this hand I toss a Hard 4; I toss in $5 and go to $25 each on H4/10. I hit the Point and we get paid. CO GWAG doesn't payoff this time, but I'd turned off the HWs and Hopped the 4/10 for $5 each and the CO was an immediate H4 which paid $150 for the $5 Hop-4.
I pressed both HWs to $50 (in violation of Heavy's "press to $100 from $25" only because I was too cheap to let some of the 'lesser' profit Hop 4 money[$150 instead of $175 for a Hardway 4 payoff] be spent on the H4 alone)
About 5 tosses later, H10; it pays $350. I'm glad now that I'd spread the profits to include the H10. I press the $50 HWs to $100 each.
Then I hit the H4 again. Pays $700. I skim $100 and press them both to $150 each. I'm in Heavy's "Big Boy Pants" area and mine are starting to leak...
Hard 4 again! Pays $1050; I press both HWs to $200. Remember, my pants are leaking. I can't hear Kumar over Chicken Little.
Hard 10 !! I get paid $1400. I decline when the Stick, Anthony (who I KNOW knows his stuff) asks me to "push to 3, B!" but Brian's to much of a Chicken Little to spend $200 knowing that this cannot last and I'll be proven right for being frugal! But...
Hard 4 !! Jessica pays me another $1400 and says, "He told you so" with a big smile. Finally I can hear Kumar, too. So, okay, let's go to $300. In the back I can hear him: "to the moon with house money!! You stand to lose nothing!"
Hard 4 !! Anthony jests, "That should be a $3500 payoff! that's where I'da taken you if you'da hit that $200 H4 as a $300 bet." But anyway, I get $2100 on the 7th HW hit. And learned another lesson from the dealers and Kumar.
Seven "consecutive" Hard Ways. For a total of $6800 in HW winnings. I tossed about another 5 times and Redded. There was another time when I hit 5 H4s (read "the Game of Five Throws" in the VIP forum). THAT session paid $2400 including all other winning bets. That's what Heavy's advice was worth on the HW boxes.
Each one of the "new guidelines" that I outlined above contributed to my session. I bought in for $1020 and cashed in for $9734, winning $8714. I tipped the dealers $225 at various times during the hand and topped it off with a $500 thank you for forcing me to remember Kumar's "to the moon with house money, ...FOOL!".
Aaaand... to today's report:
For the first hand, no joy on the GWAG. I get the HWs to $25, I've made enough off the Place bets to regress from $199 Across ($36, 42, 60, 36, 25 for the 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) to $78 Inside and start looking "for the moon" or take one more hit and truly start a moon search with ~$135 Across. But no, Big Red. I'm down after the first hand having tossed about 11-13 numbers. Sunday's target adjustment seems to still be proving itself...
I have another go at it; two or three payoffs and I make the Point. I've recovered and I'm even. On the CO, GWAG scores 3x consecutively. I've got about the same bet Across ($50, 36, 42, 18, 25 for the 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) as I count my rack. If I take down all my bets, I'll be up ~$340 if I lose the PL and Odds. That's what I do; and the PL 6 pays off. I cash in with enough to tip the dealers and go home with $320 profit on two hands that lasted at the least 9 rolls each. After the previous day's winnings, I don't wanna tempt fate with a sense of pure greed (remembering Chicken Little's axiom--"$300 a day is $300 a day"--no tax and 23 minutes' time...you could spend the next hour or two chasing down the next hands' $320 loss if you chase the moon. So I decided to let the next few days prove out that dice-target adjustment.) But color me pleased with that target adjustment for the moment! in three sessions I haven't thrown less than about a 9-roll hand NOT including the GWAGs. Yeeha.
