Heavy's Axis Power Craps Forum

gargoil wrote:Shunkaha, my assumption here is to make money from my play to stay in the game for a while then color up. So here is what I was thinking and please feel free to jump right in with advice. Remember I am still new at this.

Assuming it's shooter # 1 turn....

Shooter #1 MP204 Get a couple of hits then off.
Shooter #2 and #3 play the don't and hope to score.
Shooter #4 and #5 place the 6 and 8 for a couple of hits then down (based on general advice on randies from the forum)

Now you see I am making lots of assumptions and hoping for a lot.

I have to say now that I have taken a couple of classes and observed different betting strategies I would take a different approach.

Maybe its semantics but your desire is to make money and your assumption is that you will or that you have enough to estimate how to... my point is that 1 hand is not enough to make that bold of a move with. I'll illustrate, if you've ever taken any of the IQ tests that give you a series of numbers and you guess out of 5 choices what the next should be you notice they give a series of 4 or more numbers to start. If the test says 1, 4, 5, 9, 14, 23 what number is next you might reasonably be able to guess, you might reasonably be willing to bet money you knew what the number was... but what if the test simply said 5 what is the next number... how much would you bet you knew that next number. With such a small sampling you couldn't determine a mean, a mode, a progression, regression, sequence, anything; whatever you did next is at best a complete guess. Maybe its just me but before I commit a large portion of my resources to a guess... I need a reason to believe that guess might be better than random. Seeing one hand each you're assuming that this isn't the longest hand shooter #1 has shot for the day, you're assuming that betting the don't on a random roller that had 80% of his comeouts as whirl numbers and 75% of those as a 7/11 you'd have enough money to lay on his point to overcome the 3 losses from the earlier DPs. You're assuming that you didn't just witness the shortest most successful roll shooter #3 had of the day. Not trying to beat up on you or anything, but if you make large bets based on equally large assumptions very often including that if the only guy making money was a Don't bettor and your untried toss for the day could weather that storm well then it would also be reasonable assumption those first 2 hands might well knock you off the table.

One of the first things I read Heavy say about money management is don't overbet/underfund [also one of the most frequent, because if you fail that you don't even need any other advice usually], you should bring enough to be able to loose something like 10x without going broke, on a $300 buy in that is $30 per hand on average [notice that MP said $2000 would be more in line if you intend to bet $204, and even then I suspect he'd want more than a 1 hand sampling before he risked 10% on each]. I think the first rule of betting should be never assume that the first occurrence of anything is indicative of future results and in the seeing is believing line of reasoning you need to see an advantage before you try to bet an advantage... craps is entirely a math game and as such in my opinion you have to keep in mind several things, you will see short term variance in every session [the long term statistical mean on a table typically occurs in a period you won't be standing at the table to see [tables trend hot, they trend cold, they are choppy, etc... in the end they adhere to the math but seldom do they adhere to it the entire time, else you'd never see PSO or 40 roll hands]. You need to determine at the point you are on the table if you viewed everyone's toss results as a bell curve, what part of their personal curve for the day are you most likely seeing and what should it tell you for betting. That's why Heavy said he'd ask how's the table doing, he's attempting to get the best guess based on past results as to what future results he might expect [obviously its not a hard science like physics but you can reasonably expect if the Don't bettor says he bought in for $200 4 hrs ago and has yet to see any hand go over 15 rolls... you would be a little more than optimistic to bet on the premise that you were going to see several monster rolls].

Mad Professor wrote:It is totally unreasonable to come in with a $300 buy-in...bet $204 right off the bat on what may be a skilled-shooter...and hope to come away with anything more than disappointment.

I too am not trying to be mean, but I also think that would be putting unreasonable demands on your money.

If you were talking about a $2000 buy-in (with a much, much deeper overall gaming-bankroll reserve to back it up); that would be different; but if we are talking a $300 buy-in; then the MP-$204 is just NOT in the cards.

Similarly, if you have a low threshold of loss-tolerance...for example, if losing three or four $204 bets in a row (on three or four skilled-shooters in a row) would send you into apoplectic shock (especially if your overall gaming bankroll wasn't deep enough to handle that kind of drawdown, or if you yourself would have a hard time mentally handling that sort of loss); then the MP-$204 most definitely is not for you.

The whole idea behind that betting-approach is that you first have a very deep and resilient bankroll that can weather all sorts of negative variance on pos-ex skilled-shooters...and you have to have a very positive loss-tolerant attitude to match.

That is, the MP-$204 seeks to make an overall net-profit from multiple shooters throwing multiple hands over multiple sessions...and coming out the other side with a very decent profit...but all the while recognizing that there is going to be a TON of toss-to-toss, hand-to-hand, shooter-to-shooter, and session-to-session volatility along the way to making that profit.

That's the nature of the advantage-play game.

~If your pos-ex wagers can weather the volatility in a pos-ex game; then you make an overarching profit.

~However, if you run out of bankroll-bullets before you give those skills a reasonable enough chance to show their overall pos-ex advantage; then you will still LOSE despite having the ADVANTAGE.


MP

I tend to agree with you regarding the bankroll and the mental approach to it, you have to be willing to "not give a damn" about losing 1 or several bets in a row to actually succeed. That is not to say you go into it not caring if you win or lose, but rather be willing to accept the loss without a second thought as long as you based the bets on a reasonable framework. I say this because once you begin to have a sinking feeling about your bets and it comes your turn to shoot you may as well toss that money in a shredder. It makes me mindful of the people I hear saying things like, the market is going down... I'm getting out and wait till it goes up [they lost some money and can't see the potential to make it back buying undervalued stocks]. What they really are saying is, I try to buy the stock after its peaked so I can sell it just before its bottomed... and those are the people that loose a small fortune because the road to riches never started out with a story that goes always buy high and sell low. In craps those are the people that catch a monster hand when they only have enough left to bet a couple of numbers... or they bet the wrong things and can't understand how they had a 30 minute roll and lost money when they hit box numbers but were losing more on prop bets than they gained on place bets.

I had a don't bettor go almost completely broke on me one night because despite the growing evidence my hands were long he bet against them until my comeout naturals and points would hurt him severely, then he'd right side bet about 12 - 15 rolls into my hand. So while I slowly made money he lost it and couldn't understand how... easy, he believed the hand couldn't stay hot and bet against it loosing money early, then decided since it was hot it couldn't end so he could loose money late in the hand. Both of course were wrong and if he'd thought about it for awhile he'd have realized he should have spotted that I was "in a groove" and bet accordingly... once I was tired and my shoulder hurt he'd started betting rightside exclusively... good idea bad timing because my hands turned very bad. Too many people on the tables tend to not bring enough money and/or bet too heavy, and they bet against everything the table has shown them all night long... then complain about the lousy table.

It is all about timing, and being in the right place at the right time and still having enough money to actually take advantage of it.

Great advice from everyone. Thanks for your posts. Do not take advice as being too harsh

I actually got similar advice when I took the classes during Crapsfest. Definitely would not make the same play now that I know better. I posted on other topics how the best thing the classes taught me was how to not lose money. In doing so they made me money