Getting the most from the class
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but the best decision I made the whole weekend was to show up to the open house early and to practice the whole time. The second best thing I felt I did was to keep eying the room for open practice rigs and to throw as much as I could while they were being unused and I wasn’t otherwise occupied. Not, of course, to the extent that I was isolated from the team, but there is time where I’d be standing around and I could be working on my throw. It’s really important to carefully pay attention to teammates throws because you can either have or pick up the same problems they’ll have. You also may find a way for them to unlock a solution to a problem they’re having, although keep in mind not to teach while the instructors are teaching. I would quietly take someone’s elbow afterward and tell them my impression, careful to caveat that I am a beginner, too.

The Team (Good Time Rollers)
Thanks so much to Alligator Rose! I learned the most from you. I loved my team, but I have to call out teammate Bounce Back as really amazing. He struggled with a special issue and overcame it toward the end of the weekend. I think out of our team he’s got the most potential, since his grip is fortunately pretty easy for him to employ. Props to Mr. Finesse for his troubleshooting – very skillful and systematic. I’m a network engineer and have worked on tough problems — 5:50 assembly lines filled with union employees, dozens of slot machines stopped by cables that were broken by a janitor with a vacuum on the other side of the building.*

Best lessons from the practice room[list][*]Dr. Crapology’s "take the dice out of my hand" demonstration of grip pressure[/*][*]Missouri Rick’s "drop it in the cup" analogy[/*][*]Randman’s runway to guide your backswing[/*][*]Pit boss’ mantra-oriented way of throwing was really helpful for one of my teammates. He needed the "one-one thousand, two-one thousand, backswing, release", since he was forgetting his backswing[/*][/list]
Lecture commentary
It might be worth shortening the lectures and making them more frequent, although logistically moving the classes back and forth sort of sucks in that hotel. The planned lectures are so long and practice can get so involved that we missed an entire lecture. I get that, I’d rather practice time if I have to choose, but I don’t want to miss a lecture, either. Every one was valuable. Dom is a terrific speaker and the material is obviously honed to a fine edge at this point.

Pit boss’ lecture is excellent. I would do that earlier in the class. There were a lot of questions I considered pretty rudimentary on day 2 and it might be good to have everyone oriented to the flow of the game earlier. It filled in little gaps for me and was valuable even though I knew most of it. Hearing someone else explain a concept you already know can teach you about it.

My after-class approach
I got two sleeves of casino dice and have them around. I don’t have a practice rig so I am 85% focused on grip. I do the toss motion but I have to really not pay attention to the landing since I don’t have a back wall. I want to make sure I don’t get into bad habits, so I’m investigating a rig soon.

Results
Terrible. I’m losing badly and when I should be winning. Frustrating number-sevens, which man — you look like a dick when you do all this prep and you die in two throws :D. Even worse hands where things are going right, and I’m landing my throw and then just make little mistakes and seven into the bowl. This is 80+% due to no practice. What is interesting is I’d say 20% due to the fact that my learned-by-reading one-fingered throw was pretty honed and now I’m back at my familiar tables and I desperately want to go back to that throw but I know I can’t ever do that. Two nights before I came to class, I threw two four-number Fire wins in a row with three people on the table. I was dialed in. I’m a little bit known and somewhat expected to win, so losing rattles me.

Rattled me doesn’t make very good decisions… 😕

Strategy
Stay the eff out of the casino until my rig arrives. Build 401G budget line. Get my ass to class.

Thoughts[list][*]I’ve been doing some gripping with my left hand, just figuring that practicing that way can’t hurt. It may also help, sympathetic muscles and CNS responses working the way they do. Not trying to claim any Badges of Honor® but I think it’s a way to practice.[/*][*]I’m interested in applying lessons I’ve learned from Tai Chi to the throw and grip. I’ve found applicable lessons in the motion, in releasing tension, in the breathing, in the rhythm and so forth. Stay tuned for YAWP (yet another wordy post) on that.[/*][/list]

*I got lucky and discovered the fault. I had to use a time-domain reflectometer the day before, so I knew I had it around after my Fluke had a weird reading. He’d only snapped one transmit wire, so some traffic was flowing which made the results really puzzling. The TDR gave me the approximate distance and so I knew where to eyeball. I clipped the cable in half, crimped ends on both and put a coupler between them. The line was running at 6:03.

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