One of the posters on the GTC private message board brought up an excellent topic that I have thought about in the past. It got me thinking about it again and I decided to write an article on the subject. He talked about being afraid to bet more money at the tables as a hand progresses and gets longer.

One of the things we try to do in the Golden Touch Craps classes is to take the "gambler" out of the player. We want to teach people the best bets to make and to avoid the bad bets with a high house advantage. So I am not talking about reversing that attitude with this post. Everything Frank, Dom and the other instructors said in class still holds.

But I have often heard players say things like:

* I just can not get myself to bet more when I know I should, it makes me scared.

* Wow, look at all the money that player just left up on the table when the shooter sevened out.

* It terrifies me whenever I have a (you pick the color) chip out on the table.

If you see yourself in any of those comments, I want you to ask yourself the following questions.

What are you afraid of? What is it about those situations that make you worried or fearful?

Do it now before reading further and answer honestly to yourself. Go ahead and answer, I can wait.

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Answered yet?

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OK, got it? Is the answer along the lines of, you are worried about losing money? Are you concerned that we are talking about betting a large sum of money and you are fearful of losing it? If that fits then I want you to pay careful attention to what I am about to tell you.

What you are doing is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for yourself. Let me repeat that because it is critical you understand what you are doing. You are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You are afraid of losing money; you don't press your bets soon enough or at all. You don't bet on additional numbers. You do not increase your line bets and odds as the hand progresses. The hand is over and everyone else at the table seems to have made more money than you.

Now, I am not talking about the crazy crapper bettors or the wild gamblers. I mean the other GTC trained, knowledgeable players who were in on the hand who all did better than you did. Do you realize what just happened?

You LOST money. Your fear of losing money prevented you from betting properly and it made you LOSE money. You should have won a lot more than you did and that is LOST money. You created a self-fulfilling prophecy. You were afraid of losing money and the actions you took to prevent that from happening created the exact situation you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Sure, I know you made money on the hand. But you did not make nearly enough as you could, would and SHOULD have if you bet properly. In your heart, you know you should have made more. The reason you did not is because you were afraid of losing money and instead that is what you did by not betting enough. It may seem like a paradox that you lose money when you win money but that is exactly what you are doing.

Whenever anyone looks at the amount of money a good player has on the table when the shooter sevens out and thinks, "Wow, look at how much he left on the table", they are looking in the wrong place. They should be looking at the chips in his rails. If he is a solid player, I guarantee he has made double, triple or more times the amount he left on the table. If he had not bet more, he would have left less on the table but made far less money. It is not about how much you lost when the seven came, it is about how much you would not have made if you did not bet enough.

It is far more conservative to bet enough so you do not lose money that you should be winning than it is to not bet money for fear of losing it. If you saw yourself in the statements above and admit you are fearful of losing money, I want you to keep that in you. That is a good thing. But remember you need to bet in order to avoid losing money. If you do not press, spread out, increase your line bets/odds and put out the (you name the color) chips, you will LOSE money. Take that fear and put it in the proper perspective. Use it to get you to bet appropriately so you make the correct amount of money.

Doing this will prevent you from creating that self-fulfilling prophecy.