The Dice Institute

Maddog and others, hang on to your seats because this is a whole new animal.

While the "old" site was a milestone in the evolution of "Dice Influencing" it was created for a few authors to publish some basic information about a subject for a relatively small community. And make no mistake, under "IrishSetter," (the original owner) it did that quite well. But as it grew, it became very time consuming for "IrishSetter" to update and index. So much so that he eventually sold it to free up his own time.

The new owner was not as computer-literate as Irish and was dependent on an editor and webmaster to update the site and put out the monthly newsletter to introduce new articles. This resulted in an appreciable slowing down of the overall publishing process. Combined with her differences of opinion with the other writers about Dice Influencing in general, the end result was an unfortunate alienation between that site and it's main contributing writers.

During 2006, it became clear that the DS site was moving in a different philosophical direction and that a gap in serious writing for serious students of DI had formed. In September, a few of us were in Las Vegas and started talking about that gap and the opportunity to create something new to fill it. That was the beginning of "The Dice Institute."

Although the original idea was to create a new site to host the articles and instructional content that had dissapeared from DS, we soon realized that we had an opportunity to create something more. We started by trying to come up with a site that would serve the community and it's contributors, too. Like many such things, this involved compromise and change.

When we conceived this site, we wanted something that would carry on as the infomational resource that Irish's DS provided but we also wanted to allow for the fact that DI is an still-evolving concept. What we accept to be true now was not seen as true 2 years ago. We also have more people writing about it than ever before.

In order to accomodate a growing number of writers, evolving theories and a changing world for the serious DI, we chose to make this site a weblog, or "blog." Once the domain of high school diary-keepers and gossippy newsletters, blogs have themselves evolved into a powerful self-publishing tool.

Now instead of each writer having to "submit" articles for conversion to HTML and "publication" by the site webmaster, the "Dice Institute" can host an unlimited number of contributors who can log on and write an article of thier chosing, which is "published" the moment they hit the right key. These articles are automatically archived and categorized as they are entered.

There is now no monthly deadline, no waiting for a newsletter and editorial control is given to the writers themselves. If the ownership (Charlie and I) see something we don't want published we can remove or edit it but we expect this to be the exception, not the rule.

In addition the software that powers this site, "Movable Type" allows the information entered to be called up by author, subject, date or category.

Literally, this site will be "what you make it." The infomation is compiled and tagged ready to be retrieved in the context of your choosing. Every new entry (article) joins its predessors to be called up when needed along with those similar in content, or by the same author.

When you open the "home" or "root" page (the one you bookmark) you will see the beginnings of the most recently added articles if you like what you see you can chose to open them completely or look around for something else to read. As new articles are added, they will fall off that page and become part of the archive, waiting to be retrieved and read.

It isn't a static, unchanging "Structure," but an "Erector Set" of information and your commands and searches will determine what is built with the parts. When you are done, it goes back into the box waiting to be something else next time you open it.

If, for instance you want to learn about "Regression Betting" you can type "regression" into the SEARCH box and you will quickly be presented with all articles that contain the word "regression."

Or, you can click on "Mad Professor" where his name appears in the left-side navigation box and see all his articles listed including the "Regression Avoids Depression" series

Or, If you are reading an article by any regular contributor, for instance; "Charlie009" you can click on his name in the byline and all of his articles will be listed for you to browse.

Or, you can look to the navigation boxes and select any topic or author listed and you will get everything about that topic or by that author.

Additionally, articles are "Tagged" by category so that when looking at a long list of titles, you can tell which ones are about which topic.

The only place you will see things presented the same way, each time you log is in the instructional area, where instructional and informatinal articles about craps and APC are always available for the newcomer.

"This is not your father's Oldsmobile."... and it might take some getting used to but it you might just take to it like a duck to water. And, please remember, it will always be "a work in progress." so if we can improve it you can email me, DeadCat.

Thanks for reading.

-DC