There has been some criticism on the part of some of our posters, some of our former students and many of our competitors about GTC not allowing different trains of thought about throwing styles, betting styles, the 5-Count, dice sets and what kind of attitude one should have towards advantage play at craps.
Everyone is wrong and GTC is right. (That sentence ought to delight Dom!)
1.The basic criticism of our training has to do with the fact that we don’t recommend different throws, or different positions at the table. Some of the “different throws” would include an underhanded throw, a bullet throw or line drive.
ANSWER ON THROWS: Most throws are not optimum on a regular (normal) table. The line drive throw is a poor throw because it doesn’t lose much energy when the dice skip across the felt. It hits the back wall and strongly bounds out – losing all or almost all of its non-randomness. Think of trying to get a rock to die on the water so it goes straight down. Do you throw a line drive that causes the dice to skip over the water for a far distance or do you loft the dice so it hits flat and goes down into the drink? Obviously the goal is to get the rock to go down and not use any energy to skip across the surface of the water.
The same is true with the GTC throw versus the line drive throw. Our 45 degree arc (give or take some) is geared for the dice to lose most of its energy into the table and against the back wall so when they come to rest we have exerted some influence over them. By lofting the dice we enhance our ability to control them; by skimming them or line driving them, we lose almost all of our control – or we do lose all of our control. We want the dice to die, not fly, off the back wall.
Is a low arc good for some tables? Yes, but it is not a throw to learn from the get-go. It is a throw to learn when one has a real edge over the game and is confronted with a table and no choice to go to a better table.
Now to grips: the pincer grip and the stacking grip might work with the rare experts – and I am talking about rare – and to recommend these grips as optimum is to hurt just about everyone who wishes to be a controlled shooter. They are just too hard to master.
The most eccentric grip and throw I ever saw was the Arm’s, the woman who was in my opinion the greatest dice controller who ever lived. Her dice floated and landed in a way that none of us have been able to duplicate – and I have tried for a couple of decades to do this throw. Now should GTC recommend this incredible throw even though no one has ever been able to duplicate it because the Arm was so good? I think not. That would hurt our students.
Now the underhanded throw is a good throw for certain tables if done the right way. We teach this throw in our Advanced Class for certain tables but the students learning this throw have already demonstrated the ability to beat the casinos. Should we teach this method in our Primer Class? Absolutely not! Think of teaching a kid (meaning novice) how to ice skate. Do you say the following on his first couple of times on the ice: “Now, I want you to go forward and backward and spin and jump and hold someone up with one arm and do this, that or the other thing.” The kid can’t even go forward and you are hitting him with too many advanced ideas. “Run a marathon little Timmy even though you can’t walk yet!”
Now in our Primer Class we do teach throwing on different types of tables: normal, bouncy, and dead. We have these three types of tables in our class. The GTC throw must automatically be modified without adding the stress of giving too much too soon. Too much information is often no information.
Most of our critics who recommend all sorts of throws are just enjoying hearing themselves pontificate. They know almost nothing about how to teach someone something.
IS THE GTC THROW THE SAME FOR EVERYONE: Another criticism is we have a “cookie cutter” throw. Those of you who watched the instructors demonstrate their throws in our class or in our DVD can see with their own eyes that we all have distinctions in our various throws. Your throw is modeled on a single throw but no one throws it the same way. Stickman is not like Dominator who is not like Billy the Kid who is not like No Field Five who is not like Skinny who is not like me or Pit Boss or Mr. Finesse, etc.
But our “basics” remain the same nevertheless.
ANSWER ON GRIPS: The best grip for almost all players is the three-finger grip. We recognize that not everyone can do this grip owing to various factors – but these are the exceptions, not the rule, and not even a significant minority of players. The three-finger grip gives you the most stability in your throw. There’s less of a chance for the throw to start out already weakened by randomizing elements.
We have seen students who claim to be advanced shooters, many whom have already taken one or several classes with other schools, throw with so many grips that not one grip creates an actual controlled throw. We have to unlearn them before we can actually teach them. They have wasted a significant amount of time creating a gripping disaster – compliments of poor teaching and poor understanding of the learning process.
DICE SETS: Yes, there are many dice sets. The best for avoiding the seven is the Hardway Set. The best for hitting the 6 or 8 is the 3-V. The best for hitting the 4 or 10 is the 2-V. The best for hitting the seven is the All-Sevens set.
Now beginners and many elite shooters stay with the Hardway Set – some of our most devastating shooters such as Stickman use that set almost exclusively.
Once you have passed the SmartCraps tests and that program tells you what the best set is for you, then you can change your set; but experimenting with sets is a waste of time, especially at the tables, as the following shows:
“The point is a 4, now I want to get that 4, let me change to the 2-V set. Oh, the next throw was a 6 now let me change to the 3-V to hit that. Oops, now the 9 just hit…”
What really happens at a table when you are thinking of set changes? You are thinking too much! If you think when you should be in the zone, then the tendency in performance is that you stink – here’s a saying: Think and you stink!
Picture of a hitter in baseball: If he is thinking as the ball is zooming towards him at 95 miles per hour – he isn’t going to hit it. If a boxer thinks before he throws a punch, the other boxer hits him first.
The advocates of constant set changes and too much thinking at the tables should change their thinking because it is harmful to a performance athlete – which is exactly what a dice controller is.
CRITICISM OF THE 5-COUNT: Almost all of our members know how to use or know about the 5-Count. You know why we use it, how it works, how it keeps us in the game and still allows us to look like regular players.
Go here to read some very important information about this technique and what it can and can’t do for you:
“The 5-Count is 100 Proof” by Frank Scoblete
http://www.goldentouchcraps.com/proof.shtml
“The 5-Count Changes the Odds of the Game” by Skinny http://www.goldentouchcraps.com/skinny0001.shtml
“The 5-Count is Not a Charting System” by Skinny http://www.goldentouchcraps.com/skinny0003.shtml
BETTING SYSTEMS: Even though some of our members think we don’t understand the glory of different betting systems the fact is this: The lower the house edge on a bet, the easier it is to get the edge over the house on that bet.
This rule in its simplicity and rationality is sometimes lost on gamblers who think they can come up with some wacky way to beat the house. Ploppies advocate the “see a horn, bet a horn” philosophy on controlled shooters, which loosely translated means that if any bet in the high house edge range is showing up, it is fine to make that bet because it will continue to show up.
That is nonsense. The simple question to ask yourself is this: Is this shooter really capable of overcoming the house edge on these high-house-edge bets from this moment on? The answer is invariably “NO.” The “see a horn, bet a horn” ploppies are leading people down a path of no return – no return on their bankroll that is.
Trend systems have been analyzed to death on this site – you can find them by searching the archives. These are all, each and every one, incapable of giving one an edge over the house.
Low house edge bets can be beaten by a controlled shooter. Plain, simple, and correct.
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