Some players bet with more mental certainty on negative-expectation random-rollers than they do on their own validated positive-expectation bets.
When it comes to betting on random-rollers, most dice-influencers have a certain pattern that they follow when it comes to wagering on negative-expectation situations. If they lose a bet on a R-R, their next R-R bet will still be pretty much of the same size and scope as the one before, and their R-R bet after the next one will also be pretty much of the same size and scope too.
While they may not be betting large amounts of money on each individual R-R when they do that (though it does add up to a fair bit of money if they ever stop to consider the collective total of their R-R bets when calculated on a per-lap-around-the-table basis); the random-roller bets that they do make are done with large amounts of mental certainty.
Mental certainty, in this case, is not about whether you think a bet will win or lose; but rather the amount of conviction and confidence you have in making the bet itself.
If your standard R-R bet is a $12 6 and 8 Place-bet; then there’s probably very little fear when it comes time to actually put the chips down on the table. Though you don’t know ahead of time whether it will win or lose; you accept the fact that you are making a negative-edge bet, and in doing so, you make it with a high level of conviction and a low level of stress.
Compare that to how you feel when it comes time to bet on your own hands.
How much mental certainty do you have when it comes to making a properly-sized positive-expectation bet on your own validated advantage-play dice-influencing skills?
When we talk about "properly-sized positive-expectation bets"; we are NOT talking about starting out with widely-spread miniscule near-table-minimum hideously-under-sized bets that seek to turn a matchstick into a lumberyard. That kind of press-your-way-to-prosperity betting-strategy is a wasteful fool's errand, and one that will see you have an occasional big win, but those wins will never be quite large enough to get you over the net-profit deficit-hump of all your small but perniciously cancerous bankroll-eating losses.
Bet that way, and your skills will always produce far less net-profit than they could (and should) be doing right now if you were using geared-to-validated-edge wagers. The problem of course is that you have to truly believe in yourself and your abilities, and then you have to back up that belief with properly-apportioned wagers.
So I ask again, how much mental certainty do you have when it comes to making properly-sized, accurately-focused, proportioned-to-validated-edge bets on your own dice-influencing skills?
It is critically important that we not screw up our advantage-play priorities.
~As dice-influencers, ANY random-roller bets that we make should be done in a way that reduces our negative-expectation exposure to an absolute minimum. I won't coddle you like some co-dependant dice-nanny and say, "There, there little one, I know you feel the need to bet on all those nasty little random-rollers, so let me show you how to do it like a proper degenerate gambler would."
The simple truth is that if your collective one-lap-around-the-table random-bets add up to anywhere close to what you bet on yourself; then your D-I skills will almost never pull you through to net-profit...but when it does, it won't keep you there for very long.
If you'd rather be lucky than good; then count on almost always going home with less money than you came with.
~Betting with mental certainty means that we need to know that the wagers we make (when the dice are in our hands), are the ones that are best matched to our current skills.
~We also have to uphold and support that knowledge with a level of betting-confidence that parallels our skills.
~If our betting-confidence or our shooting-confidence vacillates and is easily spoiled by one or two not-so-good hands, and our bet-decisions waver with uncertainty and trepidation; then it’s likely that our shooting will also reflect that fear and apprehension.
That can't be a good thing in terms of producing great results.
On the other hand, if we’ve validated our actionable edge over the house with both at-home and in-casino verification; then our betting-confidence should stay buoyant despite one or two or even three non-productive hands, and therefore we should be betting on our own hands with a high level of conviction and a low level of stress, just like when we bet lower amounts of money on random-rollers.
In fact, betting on yourself should be way less stressful than betting on random-rollers. One is negative-expectation and the other is positive-expectation, but looking at the way some people bet with trepidation on their own advantaged hands and without fear on random-rollers; you'd think it was the other way around.
Though that doesn’t mean we should try to “shoot through” a shooting slump when our toss is in the toilet, it does means that we can make a small tactical retreat to fix the shooting problem before retackling the tables with as high a bet-confidence and mental-certainty as before.
It is critically important to understand that our edge over the house WILL NOT redeem itself on every toss in every hand and in every session. Rather, it will redeem itself over roughly the SAME RANGE OF ROLLS OVER WHICH YOU FIRST VALIDATED YOUR EDGE.
So, for example, if you first validated your edge on let’s say the 6 & 8 Place-bet over a toss-sampling of 300 in-casino rolls; then you can expect that it will generally redeem itself to that same approximate level again over the same number of in-casino rolls. However, it also means that you’ll probably toss a number of totally crappy hands along the way…the same as you did when you were first validating the very same edge you are seeking to exploit right now.
The some-great and some-not-so-great ebb and flow of results that you endured during your edge-quantification/validation period is likely to roughly repeat itself during your edge-exploitation/profit-making stage too. It would be foolish to expect otherwise, and it would also be foolish to abandon your geared-to-skill wagers on your already-validated advantage-shooting just because you threw a couple or three hands that stunk up the joint.
If you want your D-I profits to move up to the next stage of earnings; then you have to make properly-sized adequately-proportioned-to-your-validated-edge bets with AT LEAST as much mental certainty as you do when you plunk your money down on a random-roller.
That is how you get away from having to rely on luck, and how you start relying on the reliable potency of your skill.
Until next time,
Good Luck and Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
Copyright © 2009
