I have been experimenting with a little bit different approach to TBS. I don’t know if Skinny ( or any others for that matter ) consider this to be more or less aggressive than the method put out there by Skinny originally, but it is this:

Using $5 units as an example, I will establish the first point and put full odds behind it. If the first point is a 6 or 8, I will immediately place its sister number for $30 and put a come bet out there. If the first point is not a 6 or 8, I will put full odds on the point and place the 6 and 8 for $30 each. In other words, six and eight are in play right away. Any hit I get during the 5 count is placed in my rack. Upon completion of the 5 count, the method begins in earnest. I could have two hits in the rack, for example, during the 5 count, but I don’t go up on the 4th number until the first hit after the 5 count. A variant I am using is to add the 4th come bet after collecting one hit, inside or outside of the 5 count, meaning there is no 5 count, but TBS begins on the 2d hit, not the 1st. I am finding these approaches are preventing me from taking a lot of those 7 outs where you’ve got 3 numbers on the board and then 7 out. Those do still happen, but it is very common for me to hit a six or eight within the 5 count. By racking one or two of those hits, the table exposure is significantly reduced. It usually takes, in my game anyway, a hand of 15 or so to give me a respectable profit, unless you’re just hitting everything in sight from the start. I have a 15+ hand about 25% of the time, so recognizing that there will be several short hands for every long hand, I just think it is critical to hedge a bit, so you’ll be able to take advantage of the leveraged profits that rack up during a long roll, as opposed to just getting back to even because your earlier rolls were too aggressive and the losses were too high. Just throwing this out there.

As you know, I approach craps the same way I approach investing. On a $5 table, if I"ve got a maximum of about $90 at risk on the layout for any one hand. If I can claim a minimum $40 – $50 profit during any three attempt session at a table, I’m going to walk. For example, in my practice this morning, my first hand was 9 rolls in which there were 3 hits. (One more hit and I would have been in the "profit and walk zone") The second hand was 10 rolls with 2 hits. My profit ended up being $40, and I quit practicing with money at that point. (Practice frequently the way you are going to play) You can’t make that kind of return very many other places in 20 or 30 minutes. Even day traders don’t often make 40 or 50% in an entire day unless they are highly skilled like we are supposed to be. So, part of my message here is about controlling your return on investment. I think it is critical that we understand that it is unrealistic to expect three $5 unit numbers with full odds to routinely return you 3, 4, 5 times your per hand risk. Consistently refusing to quit unless you double or quadruple your layout risk will, IMO, lose you a lot of money over time. Wish I could find and post Stickman’s old article about expectations…it was in a GTC ebook. Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered. Multiply my theoretical $40 profit by 5 and you have the $200 profit the $25 player would make on the same strategy with a max of $450 on the layout at any one time. Naturally, the profit should be much higher a lot of the time, but the idea is to get out of there while you’re a respectable winner.

Let me know your thoughts out there.

Alamo

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