Please don't anyone
pinch me. I want to keep having this dream for at least the next two
years. Okay, I'll cut to the chase and tell you up front what this
is all about. On Sunday, July 23, I won the Captain's Trophy at the
World Craps Championship tournament.
You see, I belong
to the Golden Touch Craps Club (www.goldentouchcraps.com), which is
sponsored by Frank Scoblete Enterprises. In April 2005, Frank posted
a question on the club's message board, asking if anyone were interested
in a World Series of Craps type tournament, in which members would
compete in different categories and in which a best overall shooter
would be determined. Instructors would compete with each other in
demonstration challenges only, not against entrants.
The response was
so overwhelming that on June 8 of last year, it was announced that
the World Craps Championship would take place in Las Vegas on July
22 and 23, 2006. An awards dinner was to take place on Sunday, the
23rd, following the contest.
My history with
Golden Touch Craps dates back to November 2003, when I attended the
Gamblers Jamboree in Tunica, Mississippi. I wrote a few columns about
that weekend and finally admitted that I was coming out of the closet
- I was accepting dice control as a viable, and yes even mathematical,
way to lower the house's edge in the game of craps.
But it wasn't
until February 2005 that I took my first dice control class. I've
never been very good at target games, so it came as no surprise to
me when I did not do very well in that first class.
To illustrate:
I once was on a company team that played in a slow-pitch softball
league. The coach promised us that everyone would get to play in every
game. You guessed it; yours truly warmed the bench in every game except
the first. I once bowled every week for three years straight and never
got above a 36 (gutter balls were my specialty).
It easily became
apparent to the Golden Touch Craps instructors that a large part of
my problem was mental; my losing history at games gave me the negative
impression that I would never be any good at this thing called dice
control and that my only hope was to follow the accomplished shooters
around, hoping to win money off their throws, not my own. But for
some reason that not even I can fathom, I didn't give up. I took the
class again and made a little bit of improvement.
Somehow, I met
a few other shooters in the Biloxi area and gained access to a craps
practice table that was set up in a storage shed over in Gulfport.
During the summer of 2005, I managed to get to the practice shed three
to four times a week, and I finally realized that with enough practice,
I just might even get good at this thing called dice control. At least
good enough that I wouldn't embarrass myself.
Then came Katrina,
and there went the shed and the craps table.
Even though I
had not practiced since Katrina, I attended the advanced GTC class
in Tunica in November of 2005. Why I thought I should be in the advanced
class, I have no idea; I guess maybe because I had taken the basic
class twice and thought it was time to refine my toss? But the other
advanced students put me to shame. That weekend, I saw some of the
smoothest, straightest, softest tosses that I had ever witnessed.
I was suffering from a first-class case of envy.
I can't say that
the instructors actually gave up on me, but I'm sure they were wondering
if I would ever catch on. Two of them narrowed the many flaws in my
toss down to two major ones that I needed to focus on. I bought a
practice rig, took it home, set it up and started working on those
two main flaws. I kept my practice routine down to six 20-minute sessions
per day, with regular household chores and casino runs in between.
The first ten minutes of each session was spent working on those two
main flaws without even tossing the dice.
Then in June,
just one month before WCC, I took another class, just to make sure
I was not developing any bad habits in my practice routine. I did
find one or two and then went home and worked on them.
Now, all this
was done without any thought that I would win at WCC. When the contest
was first announced, I thought that it would simply be fun to attend,
to meet up with old friends and to put faces together with "handles"
from the GTC message board. The World Famous Florida Shooters Association
had already taken me in as a member in the team event, and I figured
it would be a hoot just running around Vegas with them.
And, indeed, it
was fun. Five of us got into town three days early and went casino
hopping. We met up with several other GTC members that we had met
in class and on previous trips. It was a lot like a high school or
college reunion. The hot, dry, desert air of Las Vegas seemed charged
with electricity. And then, finally, came the weekend, the weekend
when we'd be meeting up with over 100 fellow alumni and GTC members
that we had been "talking" to on the message board for the
last two years. The contest itself melted away in comparison to this
meeting that we had anticipated for over a year.
The tournament's
format was as follows: there were nine contests, ranging anywhere
from Hardways to Make The Point to Come Out. In four of these nine
contests, I did not do well and did not advance even one level. In
two of them, I advanced one level, and in two more I advanced two
levels.
Then in the next-to-last
contest on Saturday, which entailed rolling more 4s and 10s than your
opponents, I actually won second place. To get that far, I had to
place a hex on one of my opponents, a classmate from the advanced
class last November; he had one of those straight, smooth tosses that
was almost always on target and was the envy of everyone in class.
But my hex held, and he wasn't able to break it.
The first two
winners from each of the nine contests plus 14 wild card drawing winners
advanced to the Championship table, which would determine the winner
of The Captain's Trophy. There, we each threw four times and those
of us who threw four box numbers advanced to the final table. There
were seven of us there, and we each had four more throws. If more
than one person hit four box numbers again, then a runoff would occur
to determine first, second and third places.
I was trying to
stay calm, cool and collected - no small feat because of the pressure
we all felt. I imagined myself back home, tossing at my practice rig.
The TV's on because I'm trying to provide some distraction (probably
Battlestar Galactica). Our yellow cat Sunny, the one who thinks he's
a lion, is lying on his back nearby, sound asleep because he's grown
accustomed to the sound of dice. The other cat is still afraid of
that sound and has found refuge under the coffee table. My feet hurt
because I'm in those ridiculously high wedges, trying to get some
height over the table.
Back in Vegas,
I managed to hit four box numbers again, while the others hit three.
I had just won the coveted Captain's Trophy.
My memory of the
next 15 to 20 minutes plus the awards dinner is still a haze to me.
I knew I should try to get to the winners of the other nine contests
and congratulate them, but I don't think I managed to do even that.
I was the one on the receiving end of all those high fives, congrats
and pats on the back. To tell the truth, I had never imagined that
winning something could be that much fun.
Okay, now for
the humility part. We all know that I was not THE absolute best shooter
in that room. There were at least a dozen shooters with tosses that
I wanted for my own. And there were at least that many that consistently
have won more money at the tables than I do just because of the power
of their shooting abilities. By saying this, I don't think I'm denigrating
my win. I've practiced a lot and worked hard at overcoming the mental
obstacles I've thrown up in my way. But I was lucky at the right time,
and things clicked for me just when I needed them to.
And let's face
it, that's the way it works out in the real world at real craps tables.
Sometimes, luck will often give skill a boost up, but it's usually
skill giving luck the boost.
Until next time,
dice be nice.