Since Rose had her knee replacement surgery, Doc has been practicing and Rose giving instruction. In our conversations we came up with some ideas—some old and some new. Both types need repeating from time to time.

1. Make at least some of your practice with casino conditions as best you can. For example ,Doc often goes to the practice table in the house in my sock feet or even bare footed. Our table is located on hard wood floors and Doc did not realize how much my feet were sliding around–and his dice looked horrible. So now I only practice with shoes like I would wear in the casino. If something is in my pants pocket that will be uncomfortable as I lean against the table, I take it out. Doc would do this in the casino. You get the idea.

2. Do a little warm up practice with setting the dice and examining the grip. As we know the grip is the largest single most important part of our throw.

3. Practice without setting the dice. You don’t care what the resulting number is–only how the dice look in the air and how they land. Are the dice level, are they together, do they hit the table together, do they bounce straight back are a few things to look for. Trust us you can make money by from time to time not setting the dice in practice.

4. We like to take a 24 " by 36′ mirror and place it in the table (inside a practice rig) at the far end of the table and adjust the mirror so that we can see our entire throw from setup to release. For this exercise, do not look at your "target" since you want to observe your back swing, forward swing, release to insure the 3 fingers are level, etc. Again you don’t care about the results. Let the dice hit the mirror after they bounce on the table. I assure you the dice will not damage the mirror.

5. Yes play with chips from time to time. You need to do this to insure you know how you want to bet and what presses you want to make and when to make them. This should be automatic.

6. 7’s don’t count. When doing this practice routine with chips ignore all 7’s so you can work on your betting. You need to know what to do when you do get into a long roll. How will you press. Pick a method that will work for you and your bank roll. Here is what we do. We do the Big Skinny using come bets and some placing of the 6 and 8. We like to get 4 numbers working before we stop come betting. If we get a payday and that number comes down we make a come bet. We will not go over 4 numbers until we have 3 paydays. Once we get these 3 hits, it "peddle to the metal" with a come bet on each an every roll of the dice. Should be get to max odds we will place/buy the numbers for a "double dip." Adjust this for your bank roll and risk tolerance.

Just a few ideas. Hope these will be of help to everyone.

Look forward to Vegas next month.

Rose and Doc

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