Controlled throwing device (CTD)

Quote: Ahigh

If anybody knows a cameraman that works on the cheap, I need one Thursday to get everything on film that I can get for our brief experiment. Ideally a forum member that can reasonably operate a video camera and has an interest would be ideal, but I have three e-mails out to potential camera people so far, but too soon to hear back yet.

I wish that I could have stayed in Vegas for the rest of the week -- I had my camera and lights with me. I would have shot it for free.

Quote:

So far I have one camera man lined up for $250 that includes 4 hours of work who's pretty experienced. SOOPOO, do you want to have a cameraman for our get together?

I might be able to find a good shooter with lights (and, possibly, with an NEX-700) for $200. Feel free to text me on my cell.

Quote: Ahigh

If anybody knows a cameraman that works on the cheap, I need one Thursday to get everything on film that I can get for our brief experiment. Ideally a forum member that can reasonably operate a video camera and has an interest would be ideal, but I have three e-mails out to potential camera people so far, but too soon to hear back yet.

So far I have one camera man lined up for $250 that includes 4 hours of work who's pretty experienced. SOOPOO, do you want to have a cameraman for our get together?

It's not worth it to me to invest money in this endeavor..... time, yes..... money, no..... As I have said I'm happy to report back to the forum any results... but I'm not willing to pay to do so...

What? I'm surprised money bags! I'll pay $200 for the day if we get a guy all day with an NEX-FS700U. But I think SOOPOO should help me out. He wanted to come visit. Okay? He wants more time? I take a day off. I want to film it, and he can't pay $100? Wow.

But alright, I spend my money on stuff that I like. I understand if SOOPOO only sees it as an investment and isn't into the slow motion stuff like I am. I think it'd be a better use of funds than the time I watched SOOPOO play that tile game. (j/k SOOPOO but man that was a brutal session and series of losses you had!)

Quote: Ahigh

What? I'm surprised money bags! I'll pay $250 for the day if we get a guy all day with an NEX-FS700U.

LOL!!! If I'm 'money bags', then there is a reason for it.......

I've been there. I'm a happier guy now. So no worries, I'll pay for your fun McScrooge duck.

Quote: Ahigh

I think it'd be a better use of funds than the time I watched SOOPOO play that tile game.

You did see me at the EXTREME side of negative variance!

You had about the same percentage of losses in Pai Gow tiles as I had percentage of wins at craps. I think they were both around 90% (not counting your ties as either win or loss -- or counting the $10 the guy bet for me to convince me to shoot after I told him I was done.)

Quote: Ahigh

You had about the same percentage of losses in Pai Gow tiles as I had percentage of wins at craps. I think they were both around 90% (not counting your ties as either win or loss -- or counting the $10 the guy bet for me to convince me to shoot after I told him I was done.)

So, then you admit that your winning can be explained by luck?

(I'm just messing with you. Sort of) :)

Oh, I'm lucky for sure! No question. I could explain everything I have been able to attain by just having good luck.

ABSOLUTELY!!!

You do see my point, though, right? If SOOPOO can be that unlucky at pai gow for that session, you can just as easily be that lucky at craps for that session.

Personally, I can never remember what all the tiles mean, so if I played the game, my losses could easily be explained by lack of skill :)

Also, I always set the dice and try to make my throw as controlled as possible when I shoot craps. I figure it doesn't help, but it can't hurt, and it adds to the fun of the game. Once, one of the pit bosses Casino Royale was getting really pissed off at me because some of my throws were short (actually, I claim that my throws were perfect, and the table was long). That just added to my fun. I was the only one at the table who bought in for any real money so I was pretty sure they were not going to follow through on their threats. I won a lot, too (complete and utter luck)

And, when I play baccarat, I look for patterns and bet on them. It doesn't change the odds either, but it adds to the fun of the game, which is all that matters. I won't play baccarat unless I can look for patterns and destroy the cards. Without that, I don't really see the point of the game.

We should play craps some time in Vegas. I should warn you that I will tell anyone who will listen that you are a professional dice setter. I'll also assure them that I'm a professional cooler, and that even with all your skill, you are sure to lose with me at the table, unless you start betting dark side.

Just send me a PM and let's meet up. I play pretty darn frequently. You can say whatever you want. I am not the secretive type.

Just an update, no progress on the CTD this weekend. Instead I ended up spending a couple thousand bucks on artwork and drapes for the lady (and doing all the work to install all that stuff). She is wanting to have some of her friends come over for a craps playing party, and something about women and drapes and framed art and stuff. IDK. I am beat. Ended up with some Godard artwork with custom frames from Michaels and some drapes from Bed Bath and Beyond. It is hard spending money on stuff that women want, but she's happy and that makes me happy.

Ahigh kindly invited me to his very nice house to see what I like to refer to as 'the contraption'. First of all, Ahigh was appreciative of my constructive criticism, and he is well aware that 'the contraption' is nowhere near ready to accomplish it's intendid goal. It is quite remarkable the time, effort, and money, that Ahigh has put into it so far. The biggest problem he has to overcome right now is finding a way to impart a consisten force on the 'catapult'. Right now he loads a spring device while lining up shadows by eye and hand... clearly not an exactly reproducable event. And having the dice sit in th exact same spot on the catapult is also being done by human eye.
We went to Silverton, the Gold Coast, to roll them bones. First of all, the Silvrton was having some massive food comp promotion, and my measly $100 buy in and perhaps 1/2 hour of play had me getting a free 'anytime buffet' and $20 in comps. I believe equal play at Rio would have gotten me around 50 cents in comps. Anyway, Ahigh told me before he started that he'd be trying to get more hardways than one would randomly expect, but, more importantly, he was trying to not hit the pyramids. He was quite successful at having the dice bounce of the felt and hit the back wall over the pyramids, I'd say well in excess of 50% of the time. That did not change my impression that with that high a bounce and hitting the flat part of the back wall, the dice were randomized so that there was no way they could be 'influenced' using Ahigh's roll.
Anyway, I experienced 'positive variance' on my rolls and more than doubled my starting bankroll. We quit at Ahigh's suggestion, as he 'hit' for a small win, I think it was $50, and went for lunch. That very short play was enough for us to get a freebie at the diner type restaurant in the Silverton, which had good food.
We then went to the Palms, and I think Ahigh was behind, expriencing negative varince, when I left.

Quote: SOOPOO

Anyway, I experienced 'positive variance' on my rolls and more than doubled my starting bankroll. We quit at Ahigh's suggestion, as he 'hit' for a small win, I think it was $50, and went for lunch. That very short play was enough for us to get a freebie at the diner type restaurant in the Silverton, which had good food.

That does it. I am a negative variance magnet. When I played with AHigh, we lost at 5 out of 6 casinos, and he couldn't believe it. He never loses this much he said. Same thing happened with AcesAndEights (busted his months long winning streak), and rdw4potus...

If anyone wants to win big playing from the don'ts, contact me immediately!

Quote: teddys

That does it. I am a negative variance magnet. When I played with AHigh, we lost at 5 out of 6 casinos, and he couldn't believe it. He never loses this much he said. Same thing happened with AcesAndEights (busted his months long winning streak), and rdw4potus...

If anyone wants to win big playing from the don'ts, contact me immediately!

Next time I'm in town, we'll have to play the don'ts. Not that I'm superstitious or anything...but I'm sure we'll run into the hottest table in the casino immediately!

Quote: teddys

That does it. I am a negative variance magnet. When I played with AHigh, we lost at 5 out of 6 casinos, and he couldn't believe it. He never loses this much he said. Same thing happened with AcesAndEights (busted his months long winning streak), and rdw4potus...

If anyone wants to win big playing from the don'ts, contact me immediately!

Don't worry, teddy, when it comes to craps, I'm a professional cooler too!

Quote: teddys

That does it. I am a negative variance magnet. When I played with AHigh, we lost at 5 out of 6 casinos, and he couldn't believe it. He never loses this much he said. Same thing happened with AcesAndEights (busted his months long winning streak), and rdw4potus...

If anyone wants to win big playing from the don'ts, contact me immediately!

damn teddys, I wanted to play along side you sometime, BUT .............. I don't like playing the Don'ts. Get it figured it out! :)

I lost on both of these visits. Loss per play time with each visit was about the same. But Teddy and I played for a long time.

I had a great time in both cases. There will be more wins in the future, but oh well. Nothing unusual really for the conditions.

Teddys:

I won:

$105 at SunCoast
$50 at Binions
$170 at Silverton

So I don't know about you .. but I won at three of our stops. I lost huge at Main Street Station. And I only lost $10 at El Cortez.

The main sad part for our visit was betting way too big to try to impress you at Main Street Station and also just betting big on your roll and hoping for the best. That went HORRIBLY wrong for me. But it's not big deal. I think we ended up losing the same amount by the end of the night, but I stopped trying to bet big like you do after losing on your roll.

TeddyS is a straight balla' at the crap table!
I hope to roll dem' bones with yall in mid December when I visit...

Yeah, I was absolutely hoping to get lucky with some big ass bets while Teddys had the dice. We had already done things my way at the SunCoast and things went fine for me, so I was trying to do things the "let's just get damn lucky with big wads of cash on every shooter at the table" way, and it was absolutely damn UNlucky.

At the next stop (El Cortez) I was doing some things my way and having a great time (rolling well with small bets) until some douche started betting black chips behind on my roll (and losing) and then he changed over and bet $300 on the line with $3000 odds after I rolled about ten times making my point and a bunch of box numbers (I took him out on a DC with $400 odds on the five in my first two rolls that he bet on me right before making a 9 point). When I said something about him going big on the line with $3000 odds (not unfriendly at all) he told me "I'm embarrassed for you." I think he was not understanding me at all and thought I was be sarcastic instead of having fun. That guy pretty much put me on a bad path until I got to the Silverton. After his big bet and after he insulted me, I passed the dice and the next shooter seven-out and he lost his $3000 odds bet and he walked away quietly. His big plays were the focus of everyone at prior to that. He walked without saying anything after that, and hopefully he knew what a douchebag he was without me saying a word.

But things went fine for me at Silverton and at SunCoast. El Cortez I didn't lose much money, but that player took me out of the game with his comments, and I was still recovering from betting big on Teddys at Main Street Station (I had felt a little better making $50 in 5 minutes at Binions and getting heat for nothing at all that I could understand). I told Teddy before we got in the El Cortez that I would bet small and try to roll well for his bets.

Teddys stuck with his betting strategy the entire night taking max odds every place we went. But my bankroll was not as big as his. I should have stuck to my own techniques. But I was trying to do some good rolls for Teddys at El Cortex before douchebag got there and had me passing. I don't think Teddys brought his bets down when I passed as that's not his style. Very methodical and never taking anything down.

Quote: Ahigh

Teddys stuck with his betting strategy the entire night taking max odds every place we went. But my bankroll was not as big as his. I should have stuck to my own techniques. But I was trying to do some good rolls for Teddys at El Cortex before douchebag got there and had me passing. I don't think Teddys brought his bets down when I passed as that's not his style. Very methodical and never taking anything down.

The Wizard has trained me well. (Too well? :0)

Just curious if anyone is interested in the thrower. I might do some stuff on the thrower on the show tomorrow. I also got my new ATEM Television Studio Hardware and I believe I will be able to have that working to show multiple camera angles at the same time.

Thanks for any feedback relating to interest on the thrower. It's been a while since the thrower has had any attention. I will try to do some homework and we can see if the thrower can make any money or not after running it through the software before the show to figure out what set and betting strategy to use to exploit it.

Sure Ahigh show it I will even tune in to see that part of the show! Please shoot it in Slow Motion

I hope to figure out all the technical details for using the rack-mount hardware to do multiple cameras and what-not tonight. There's a lot of stuff for me to learn. I want to try to get alpha channels in my graphs so I can overlay the graphs on top of the other stuff and hopefully still be able to show multiple cameras in addition to that.

For the longer term, I really want to integrate an IRC channel where observers can place bets with virtual currency and bet on the rolls too. I already have an IRC robot that will take craps bets. You would be able to see the outcome of who wins displayed on the live broadcast if I can get that to show up. I have noticed some comments for people wanting to take bets, so I think that will be fun, but it might be a while before that's working.

Quote: Ahigh

Just curious if anyone is interested in the thrower. I might do some stuff on the thrower on the show tomorrow. I also got my new ATEM Television Studio Hardware and I believe I will be able to have that working to show multiple camera angles at the same time.

Thanks for any feedback relating to interest on the thrower. It's been a while since the thrower has had any attention. I will try to do some homework and we can see if the thrower can make any money or not after running it through the software before the show to figure out what set and betting strategy to use to exploit it.

I would be interested, but then again I haven't been able to watch any of your shows as of yet. I'm hoping to tune in tomorrow though.

The CTD is definitely one avenue to at least prove the "feasibility" of dice-influencing to overcome the house edge at craps. If a machine can't do it, I don't see how any human could. If a machine can do it, well I don't think that means a human can too. But maybe it's an iota closer to proving that.

Quote: AcesAndEights

I would be interested, but then again I haven't been able to watch any of your shows as of yet. I'm hoping to tune in tomorrow though.

The CTD is definitely one avenue to at least prove the "feasibility" of dice-influencing to overcome the house edge at craps. If a machine can't do it, I don't see how any human could. If a machine can do it, well I don't think that means a human can too. But maybe it's an iota closer to proving that.

There's no way to assert that a machine can't do it. The only conclusion that could be made is that if a machine _can_ do it, there is underlying theory to support the notion that a person might also be able to achieve a biased throw.

But I don't think that building one machine that fails illuminates anything towards the possibility of a person being unable to accomplish getting an edge over the casino with a method of throwing the dice.

ahigh as long as you're going all out, why not upgrade your table limit signs to the adjustable electronic version?

nowadays the printed placard would be laughed out of the room.


plus you should investigate how the magnetic field thrown off by the LEDs in the sign affect the voodoo of your dice influence.

Ahigh, that is almost exactly what I dreamed it would look like minus a string attachment to easily control the momentum by which the dice get released as well as the exact point at which to let go. You need a breaker to set how far you pull the rod back each time consistently. Scientific experimentation. Bravo! Now to set the whole dice setting conundrum to the test. Can we achieve statistical significance with your controlled dice setting machine?

Quote: Asswhoopermcdaddy

Ahigh, that is almost exactly what I dreamed it would look like minus a string attachment to easily control the momentum by which the dice get released as well as the exact point at which to let go. You need a breaker to set how far you pull the rod back each time consistently. Scientific experimentation. Bravo! Now to set the whole dice setting conundrum to the test. Can we achieve statistical significance with your controlled dice setting machine?

You'll be happy to know that I am already doing what you're thinking. This is an old photo of the CTD. Tune in to the show to see the latest, but it's mostly what you described.

I'm also happy to report that I have successfully been able to get all of the intended devices hooked up to the ATEM television studio and my tests were very successful tonight. It actually worked a little better than I expected in fact.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow's show with the new toys to make it more fun.

Quote: sodawater

ahigh as long as you're going all out, why not upgrade your table limit signs to the adjustable electronic version?

nowadays the printed placard would be laughed out of the room.

plus you should investigate how the magnetic field thrown off by the LEDs in the sign affect the voodoo of your dice influence.

I know you're just goofing, and I did consider the electronic versions. I think the electronic signs are in the neighborhood of $500 each. These green ones cost me about $100 for the two of them custom made. And the bottom mount I created myself using a table saw, wood, and black spray paint.

Red Rock's newest signs are very similar to my signs. They used to have electronic ones and they ditched them and started advertising $5 tables with 10x odds.

When they did that, they started getting a lot more play over there.

The electronic signs, I think, almost all of them say 345x odds on the sign.

https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/gambling/craps/12179-red-rock-stepping-up-their-game/#post200578

Anyway, I specifically like my sign the way it is, and I created it custom exactly the way I wanted it.

I am really stoked about tomorrow's show. The new TV Studio hardware actually even helps me make better use of my display by being able to overlay two HD signals with a fader. It's pretty awesome and I'm extremely happy with the purchase! I haven't heard back from VegasDiceController yet that he will definitely be able to help with the show tomorrow, but even if I don't have help, I think it's going to be much nicer with the new equipment since I can switch cameras without having to pull the plug.

The CTD takes longer to do a shot than I do, though, so I may record some throws before 7:30 the show to get a head-start on the data and to simultaneously make sure that the new Television Studio hardware is working properly before the show starts.

I have refined my own throw in the casino, but I have no idea how the CTD is going to perform. So I also want to do some tests to try to align any bias the CTD has with the do-side strategy by picking a good set based on what my software recommends. So I need at least a couple hundred throws before I can even know how to set the dice for the do strategy with odds working the comeout.

I just spent a couple of hours refining the charts to get the best overlay by using a black background. This keeps the graphics for the charts and output from interfering with the images from the cameras. So it's sort of like a heads-up-display with all the data overlaid.

I hope everyone enjoys the show tomorrow, and thanks so much for the support.

It's been great to have support from everyone, but I want to give special thanks to:

Nickolay
SOOPOO
Teddys
The Wizard
Tupp
Buzzard
SodaWater
7Craps
MrV

I know that there have been a lot of people wasting the time alongside me, and as I have said all along this is all just for fun, but I'm enjoying all of it very much. Thanks everybody for tuning in and helping me to continue to improve the show as we approach the March 11th date.