Whether it’s hitting a bucket of balls before a round of golf, rolling a few balls down the lane, hitting a few balls across the net or just warming up the ole bod … we all realize the importance of practice and warming up before we engage in any activity that evolves our mind and our body. Have you ever tried doing that at a craps table! The only place I have ever found that possible was on a recent cruise very early in the morning … when no one was around.  
 
Practice is normally not a fun thing; at least for me it’s not. Young kids will spend hours practicing because they know that they will get better with practice. Hitting 4 buckets of balls, banging a tennis ball against a wall, playing catch with yourself, shooting baskets, tossing the dice, or any of the other practice routines does get boring after awhile and I’m ready to PLAY!  
 
However, when I start something new I do have the tendency to dive in like a bulldog going after a juicy bone. It was the same with dice setting. Within 48 hours of finding Irish Setters web site I had read most of the articles (if not all) and banged together some plywood, bought some mattress foam padding, and was happily "practicing" on my "new" practice table.  
 
Looking back on those first few days I would hardly call what I was doing as practice. I was trying to learn how to set the dice, grip them and then toss them into my makeshift table. If you have never tossed dice into mattress foam, the kind with the little bumps, let me spare you the experience. You want random dice results? Just toss them onto a table and let them bounce up into mattress foam. (I can just see all the casinos bean counters running out to invest in mattress foam to investigate its properties as a new method to thwart all the dice setters!)  
 
In those early days I practiced daily, hours of it, and I kept records of all my rolls and used them in an attempt to determine which dice set & grip combination worked best for me. Then I tried to simulate different table positions. The funny part was trying to make sense of all the scraps of paper I had accumulated after a couple of weeks of practice! There had to be a better way! So I developed TossTrack to make sense of it all. And it helped a lot!  
 
TossTrack is available free for any ones use! Just a simple little program, easy to use, web based, and will accumulate results of your tosses by grip and set. You can even select records by date range so as you get more proficient you can eliminate earlier tosses from the analysis. Check it out! The link is on the left side of this page.  
 
It was about 9 months after I "discovered" dice setting that I met the Dice Coach. Of course he wasn’t the Dice Coach when I met him and I wasn’t Pablo his Web Master. He and I hit it off immediately and before the day was over he decided to get into coaching dice setting on his own, and I agreed to build the web site to let people know that dice setting classes were now available in Las Vegas.  
 
A short 4 months later, September 1 2002, DiceCoach.Com was launched. From the beginning our mantra has always been "THIS IS NOT A SYSTEM — it is a skill, and one we can teach you!" And as a skill that meant you needed to practice, and to practice you not only needed dice but also you needed something to toss them into.  
 
From the beginning I wanted to design and build a portable craps practice table, one you could put in the trunk of your car or stuff in a suitcase. By the first of November, just 2 months after launching DiceCoach.Com, the DiceCoach agreed, we needed a practice table for our students to practice what they were learning in his class.  
 
Over New Years that year we, PC and I, came to Las Vegas and I brought along the Table & Case and Table Top units that I had designed and built. The Dice Coach thought they were great and commented that now we needed something to toss the dice from! Three weeks later I had designed and shipped a Throwing Station to the Dice Coach for use in a booth at Sunset Station where they were holding a "Beat The House" function.  
 
This month we are excited to announce that we have a new Mini Table Top unit to add to our units that we are sure you will be excited about and want to make it a part of your practice sessions. The beauty of this little gem is that it can go with you anywhere! Take it with you when you go on business trips, trips to Las Vegas, set it up at the office, at home, in your workshop, anywhere you can get in a few minutes of practice!  
 
Check it out now, a link is on our home page. You may want to get your order in early as I suspect this item will be a hot seller. We are even offering a special deal for those of you who already own one of our units.  
 
Practice is one of those things you do to get better at something. Bowling, golf, tennis,  
Horseshoes, playing the piano, cooking, swimming, dancing, singing, driving, blocking, kicking, running, shooting baskets, hitting a ball, catching a ball, etc. etc, etc. And you need good quality equipment; clubs, balls, bats, mitts, rackets, shoes, bats, etc., to practice with. What good are classes and knowledge if you have nothing to practice on?  
 
From my own personal experience I can tell you practice does work! When I first moved to Las Vegas I had a full sized table on loan for about a month and I practiced everyday. At the same time the Cannery Casino was running a daily "Highest Roll" contest, paying anywhere from $50 to $150 daily for the 2 highest rolls of the day. During the month I practiced everyday I was either first or second 18 days out of the 24 days I played! Practice … it does pay off!  
 
See you in the pits!  
 
Pablo
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