In Part Three, we talked extensively about task-commitment, and how the amount of time and concerted effort you put in on your at-home practice-rig, largely determines how successful you’ll be when you get to the casino. You can make that an even truer statement if you tune your home-rig to mirror the performance of the in-casino layouts that you frequent the most.
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Reaching Your Potential
How can you determine if you have enough grit and determination to turn your D-I hopes into D-I profits?
Immodestly I can say that if you read and really absorb my articles; that’s a good start. I’m serious. Think about it for a second. How many guys just skim over or entirely skip my articles in order to get to the good (less dry) stuff. The simple act of absorbing my stuff, even if you don’t immediately implement it, at least opens your mind to the possibility of someday improving your game, even if you aren’t ready to do it just yet. That puts you miles ahead of most others, and that’s a good place to start.
Another identifier you can use to determine if you have enough commitment and resolve to turn your D-I hopes into D-I profits; is to examine how closely your in-casino betting comes to matching your validated skills, and how attentively you follow an optimal-betting path, versus how often and how far you stray from it.
If you are the kind of player who still likes to zig-and-zag their bets all over hell’s half acre (and beyond); then it’s incumbent upon you to prove or disprove to yourself why you insist on continuing to bet that way.
Here's a good way to start:
War-game your current betting-schemes against a more optimal method and then compare the two of them over 40 or 50 at-home sessions (each session being something like 10 to 15 hands each); but do it honestly. Don’t fool yourself by saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, but I hit nine back-to-back 5’s in Session # 32, and if I had parlayed those hits to a $10,000 table-max; then I would have beaten the crap out of your so-called optimal method MP, so I don't see how you can say that it's anywhere near ideal at all”.
The simple truth is, if you continue to bet like you always have; then you’ll continue to need an outside source of income to fuel your casino gambling.
Instead, I’m talking about doing a side-by-side comparison of your current betting (without doing any revisionist back-tracking) versus what you hopefully know in your heart is a more ideal matched-to-skill betting-method.
Do that over 40 or 50 at-home war-gaming sessions (of maybe 10 or 15 hands each), and then weigh and compare the results. You may be surprised at how much of your money you are letting the casino keep…and how much you could be winning if you made a couple of simple changes to your overall wagering-methods.
Now admittedly, some guys don’t have the tenacity or grit to do it, and some just don’t have the courage to go through an exercise like that. However, in order to accomplish an ambitious, long-term goal like turning your dice-influencing skills into a self-sustaining revenue-stream; you really have to do it.
"I Want to Lose Less" is Really Just Code for "I Wanna Gamble More Without Having to Change Much."
While passion and commitment may be the linchpins of grit, they are not the only elements. Ambition and determination are right on its heels. While ‘wanting to lose less’ may represent the height of ambition for many recreational dice-influencers; many never realize how close they are to being able to turn it into an actual income source. They think it takes ungodly D-I skills to do it, and never realize that it only takes very modest skills that are matched with equally modest betting-techniques, to make it so.
For most people though, "I Want to Lose Less" is really just code for "I Wanna Gamble More Without Having to Change Much"; and for them, the stopping point of their dedication is the break-even point.
Truly gritty people, however, tend to set more challenging “better-than-break-even” goals; so their dedication and commitment eventually pays off…whereas the less gritty and less committed stay stuck in the same rut…and continue to question the forthrightness of those who don’t.
Influencing the dice in a measurable way is not all that difficult; and neither are the optimal betting-methods for taking proper advantage of even the most modest of D-I skills. What is difficult is overcoming, casting out and permanently rejecting any of your left over gambler-mentality baggage that continues to drag down and delay your bankroll-growing progress.
Needless to say, self-discipline is a vitally important part of that process. But whereas perseverance implies the ability to keep doing something; self-discipline primarily implies the ability to refrain from doing something, like ‘Stop the Hops’, or ‘Lay off the Randies’, or ‘Stop straying from the proven optimal’.
Though self-discipline itself may not embody the same gritty ambition and zest needed to tackle a challenging goal; self-discipline is necessary for all that determination and commitment to really work.
The same holds true for optimism, which is a trait that is extremely common among high achievers. Optimism is what helps you to hang in there during the times you have to overcome all of the obstacles we talked about earlier. Optimism is really just believing that in the end you will prevail. When you combine optimism with true grit and perseverance, and you keep on pushing; you eventually get there…and those that won’t persevere, simply don’t get there.
Passion that is Lit-from-Within
It should go without saying that hard work in itself isn't the same as grit or perseverance. Hard work helps of course, but the effort that goes into fully developing and then properly exploiting your dice-influencing skills isn’t really about the old-fashioned notion of gritting your teeth and bearing down to tackle a gruelling task.
In fact, this isn't even related to your grandmother's view of grit, and has nothing to do with clenched teeth. Rather, it's a force of motivation so luminous that it constantly renews itself. The determined commitment we are talking about here comes more from a lit-from-within passion.
When you combine passion that is lit from within, with perseverance; it pays off big-time by way of a slowly gathering but unstoppable-force of skill-exploiting momentum.
In many ways, your commitment to D-I success becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
~With every forward-step, your dedication is validated.
~With every positive change you make to your current betting-methods, your self-discipline pledge is confirmed.
~With every large batch of refined-to-near-perfection tosses that you throw on your practice-rig; the closer and closer your in-casino toss will come to authenticating and verifying your skills in the real world.
Your commitment to skill-improvement, and your dedication to bet-optimization helps to turn your D-I abilities into retainable profit; but a winning toss can really only be fully developed right there on your at-home practice-rig...and that's also the perfect place to develop and foster a winning attitude.
As always,
Good Luck and Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
Copyright © 2009
