I'd Rather be GOOD Than LUCKY - Part Six
Stop Gambling…Start Winning
Most gamblers, and gambling books for that matter, all advise you to bet-it-up when the dice are sizzling hot, and scale things back when the cubes are ice cold (or vice versa for Darkside bettors).
For this discussion, let’s ignore random streaks and indiscriminate trends; we’ll leave them for the gamblers. We are here to make money, not to gamble.
For now let’s concentrate on the times when we ourselves or other skilled dice-influencers have the dice.
Under those circumstances, traditional wisdom still highly recommends that we should press up our bets on a hot D-I hand, and scale things back to a minimum until any given D-I hand is adequately qualified as a bona-fide ‘good’ one.
On the surface that looks like good advice. I mean, who here thinks it’s a bad idea to strike while the iron (or the shooter) is hot?
Question Traditional Wisdom
To the shoot-for-the-moon, go-for-the-gusto, grab-for-the-brass-ring gambler that lives inside all of us, that concept seems to make a lot of sense; and since it follows what we've always been told is traditional gambling wisdom, we follow it just as blindly as every other loser…er, uh, I mean every other gambler who has ever thrown a pair of dice...and not surprisingly, we lose just like every other gambler who has ever thrown a pair of dice.
The reasoning goes that if we press things up when we are on fire, we’ll make enough money to overcome the losses that we expended when things weren’t nearly quite so hot.
Unfortunately when we look at the big-picture to see where we stand overall (by tallying all of our big pressed-up wins, our big meltdown losses, our small wins, and our small losses); we generally find that we still produce an overall net-loss.
You would think that by following the traditional press-when-you-are-winning school-of-gambling-thought, that we’d come out way ahead of the game…or at least even a little ahead.
Sadly though, when measured over a reasonable number of multiple sessions, most press-when-you-are-winning skilled-shooters emerge with a net-loss, or at best, a near-break-even position despite all of their D-I efforts.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well, by buying into traditional gambling wisdom, most skilled players completely overlook advantage-play wisdom.
The two are worlds apart…as is their bankroll-related growth.
~One satisfies the gambler in us…at the cost of a steadily deteriorating bankroll despite our generally positive-expectation D-I shooting.
~The other takes most of the gambling out of the casino-gambling equation and replaces it with advantage-focused bankroll-growing wagering.
Though the prospect of steady and stable bankroll growth is there for the taking for practically every skilled dice-influencer out there; scarcely few take it.
Why?
Gambling satisfies a primal urge that lives deep within our psyche. The thrill of the gamble more often than not outweighs the joy of the win. So even when a gambler loses, his urges are still partially satiated. If he manages to pull off a profit-making win, then all the better; but for him the real thrill is in the chase and not the catch.
Why do you think it's so easy to lose back freshly-made winnings?
It's because the gambler in us makes bet-decisions that are subconsciously geared to lose it back.
The main thrust behind this series is to show you a way to take your current shooting abilities, no matter how humble you personally think they are; and show you the most direct, lowest risk way to turn your D-I skills into real, tangible, and consistently predictable profit.
If you start wishing for luck and you keep putting your money on what you hope will be a lucky hand; then you are effectively surrendering your D-I advantage, rejecting your skill-validation, and distracting your attention from where your verified-edge is, and diverting it to where you desperately hope it will be.
Those continual acts of faithless disengagement (by switching from the skill-edge that you KNOW you have, to an errant bit of fleeting luck that you HOPE to have); devalues all of the efforts you have put into gaining that verified-advantage.
Advantage-play dice-influencing seeks to first develop an edge, and then it seeks to profitably utilize that edge.
Always ask yourself:
Is this bet based on HOPE or FACT?
If you are hoping to be more "lucky than good"; then your bankroll will always show the continued long-term weakness of that strategy.
Until next time,
Good Luck and Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
Copyright © 2009
