3 Habits That Hold Most Down

[alrelax]

BAC is a game where we all receive a unique set of unexpected limitations with variables in a shoe of approximately 80 hands, eight decks of cards, making up 4-6 card presentments.  The question is, how will you decide which hands to respond to that are about to be dealt? You can either totally focus on your three bad habits which we all have, or you can empower yourself to play the game of BAC resourcefully and profitably making the very best of each group of limitations you wager correctly upon.

The bottom line is, while you cannot totally control what is happening, or about to happen in front of you, you must control yourself by the way you respond to what is happening or just happened. And you do exactly that by managing your habits of mind. Yes, much easier said than done.  However, because it is hard to change the thinking habits we all have developed as they are mostly at a subconscious level. We, you, everyone can get better by bringing the awareness as to what each of us are doing when we are in that seat at the BAC table with our hands placing those wagers. Bad habits of drain us. Plain and simple. Bad energy removes good things from each of us, you cannot change that. And if you let it happen you are doomed.

1). The Habit of Expecting Things to be a Certain Way

All of us have it to some degree. Some all the time, others at certain times. Without realizing it and being conscious of it, expecting things in BAC to be presented a certain way will definitely kill you.

Leave the expectations at the door before you buy-in at the table. Realize you do not know and at the same time, you do not expect to know what is going to happen and how it will be presented. (Oh, that will be ultra hard for the egotistical player, buy hey-it's your money my friends). Be totally impartial with total openness and that will in most cases, keep you away from expecting things to be a certain way. Because if you fall into the latter as I said in the first paragraph above, you will kill your buy-in, each and every time.

Have no habit of expectations. Period. Recognize the habit with your consciousness and awareness as you play by saying repeatedly to yourself, "I have no expectation of any certain way".

Try what I laid out, probably a new experience for yourself but all you are doing is setting your mind free of expectations that probably would not have occurred anyways. 

Here is the bottom line of your habit of expecting things to be a certain way. If you approach the BAC table with expectations of how it should be, or how it has to be in order to meet your expectations, they will almost every single time fail to come together and match you. And you will be stuck in a habitual cycle and probably will not even notice the damage you are doing to your gaming results most every time you play.

2). The Habit of Your Inner Resistance

In so many words, your fear and procrastination rolled up into one. Causes hesitation and avoidance of most things you desire. What is better at the BAC table, fear and procrastination or desires? One thing for sure and I welcome challenge, is when the group of clumping of any type is present, only unadulterated desire will allow you the guts and balls to wager on it for some handsome wins! And after all isn't that what gambling is all about getting some decent return on the money that we risk?

The aspect of your inner resistance is, that it is an invisible and negative force that will govern you because we all have common tendency to submit to our vulnerability and fear of failure. You generally feed into it with anxiety and distraction over the loss of your buy-in funds.

You must find what it is you fear that causes your inner resistance. Start by complete acknowledgment of your wagering fears, once you discover, you can then begin moving towards some type of insight to overcome the fears that hold you down in gaming. Most all of us will say, I don't have any fears or inner resistance. And those classifying all losses as uncaptured variables and unplayable shoes have some type of negative inner resistance.

No matter what happens, post each wager, you must face every wager with no tension and with more conscious presence.  That is an ABSOLUTE MUST.  The PRESENCE put you in neutrality and focus that are huge advantages. You will then be able to change your mode from struggling with harmful inner resistance to a beautiful one of flow and acceptance no matter what happens with the hand.

3). The Habit of Focusing Only on What Is/Was Wrong

The greatest thing about BAC is that almost every situation one can imagine has hidden beauty in it, if we are only willing to focus on what is actually happening. Of course that is much easier said than accomplished. Try putting aside the term, "difficult" at the table. Try the best you can to forget all the "wrong" that was or is at the table in past hands or in the current hand.

BAC is playable. And it's very playable and it's winnable. The biggest problem is we are all attempting a rocksolid approach to a "most likely win guaranteed" to be in our favor situation. Like I said in the first sentence of this section, every situation usually happens.  Those are or can be, chop, doubles, triples, ones and twos, ones and threes, streaks long and short, naturals cut, ties cut, ties stick, naturals stick, etc., etc., etc.  Problem being, you cannot follow only one because if you do, then you lose when the 'cut' happens and you become frustrated and emotional.  Because the biggest problem being, when you bet, it changes up. Simple. So simple it is so overlooked by people, because they just don't understand how simple it really is.

So, that is why I say we are in the habit of focusing on what is/was wrong with our decisions. I am not going to sit here and write, our wagers are all controllable and in perfect sync with the presentments that we are betting on. However, if you can always remind yourself that your wager is more powerful than the perfect present circumstance finding some type of inner peace, controlling the situation as it unfolds without any frustration whatsoever.  You will have to be in total consciousness of not allowing yourself to fall back into old habits of 'mind supply', that focus on what you have done wrong. Because you cannot move forward if you keep going back.  (Mind Supply: A person's attention. A person's memory. A person identified with their intellectual faculties. A desire or inclination that occupies one's thoughts.)

Summation

It's totally up to you and you alone. I know at the BAC table, I have won a great deal of wagers 'easier' when I was in a total oblivious state to my past bad habits as well as being in my current win state with total consciousness of neutrality. Likewise, I know I have lost a lot of wagers in sessions because I was stuck consciously within my bad habits. I admit it here, unlike many forums with countless members that write about how they all have their "unpublished——secret and never to be disclosed" protocols for winning all their hands for fear of casinos learning.  In so many words, their precious and golden Holy Grails.  ROMAFL! 

Myself, I found that writing, expressing and discovering my thoughts, play and related have led me to a much better understanding of the game, the people playing it and how psychologically our brain functions play a much larger part of wagering and interpreting the baccarat shoe and its presentments than most can ever imagine.

I am well aware how most all of us will go to a casino, walk up to a BAC table and our mind goes basically blank. We will remember our last couple of losses and possibly our wins easily, but as far as the things I brought out here, confusion surrounds us how to remember them as we play. All you have to do is write some small reminders on the BAC card, as you were allowed to have scorecards in front of you at all the properties I have ever been to in the USA. They are as follows.

"Do not expect things a certain way"

"No inner resistance at all"

"Ignore everything wrong, what Was/Is'

As the old saying goes, the balls in your court.

[AsymBacGuy]

Good thread.

Al wrote: The bottom line is, while you cannot totally control what is happening, or about to happen in front of you, you must control yourself by the way you respond to what is happening or just happened.

That's a very good rule of thumb and our general answer, when in doubt, is to bet very few hands.
Obviously there are many specific guidelines to follow as well that more or less are framed in the "hoping for the best but expecting the worst" picture.
This seems to collide with the #2 point (The habit of your inner resistance) but it doesn't if one has verified a long term edge that must be adapted to the actual outcomes.
Laboratory tests are made by a way greater speed than live shoe results and this leads us to do a lot of mistakes at real tables, especially when we're losing.

Then:
1). The Habit of Expecting Things to be a Certain Way

As you sayed, this point is very subjective.
We'd guess that at least 95% of bac players hope for limitless positive deviations, 4.99% "wrongly" confide about 1-step long term math/statistical data (B>P, B/P average ratio, etc) but only the remaining 0.001% (an optimistic percentage, I know) are really able to understand and more importantly exploit the intricacies of the game.
"Expected things" need a moderate/huge hands volume to be exploited, providing one had carefully tested and measured why his/her edge comes from.

2-The Habit of Your Inner Resistance

Not a surprise knowing that 100% of keen bac players have lost their a$$es at the tables.
The game is conceived to make the players to lose no matter how smart or st.u.p.id or aggressive or cautious they are.
If a coin flip proposition (No HE) cannot guarantee a player to be ahead after X hands, let's imagine what happens after several trials of betting when the ROI is constantly 0.9894:1 or 0.9876:1.
In a word, this factor is important to be "ignored" after having assessed to play with a verified long term edge, even though we all know that most "no edge" players are particularly prone to raise their bets while losing and being particulary prudent while winning (an asymmetrical detrimental attitude).

3). The Habit of Focusing Only on What Is/Was Wrong

This is a very important factor to be constantly aware of.
When things are not going to our favor, we should evaluate what are the probabilities that future patterns will fit (or not) our plan and now our brain must be particularly focused about NOT losing more hands than promptly recovering the actual losing status.
It's here that most money is lost by the intervention of what we call as "compounding error" even if the first hands were lost by natural variance.

as.

[alrelax]

Asym, as I highlighted in my summation, "how psychologically our brain functions play a much larger part of wagering and interpreting the baccarat shoe and its presentments than most can ever imagine."

This IMO is the underlying reason the highest majority of bac players lose or give back their winnings in pursuit of greater immediate winnings. 

One must (MUST) understand with a deep, clear, conscious thought of their ingrained psychological habits I outlined above and then be able to combat those with perfect clearity at the the table. NOT an easy thing to do,  but hey-winning money is the same as hard work.  NOT EASY.  If it all was, the games would not be there, the casinos would not be there, and so on. 

People are lazy.  People want to read a few forums, watch a few imbecile crazy fallacy YouTuber's, grab a few hundred dollars, believe there are guaranteed triggers and hit the casino. They have some off-the-wall fallacy about turning that into thousands and repeatedly doing the same, session after session after session. 

As I have admitted, I believe you have also () and others have on this forum, "Not a surprise knowing that 100% of keen bac players have lost their a$$es at the tables."  100% HONEST AND SPOT-ON, high five my friend. 

As well, by my writings I have gained numerous advantages, learned countless things I was doing wrong and improved my psychological aspects of play.  One of those that I accomplished was a conscious ability to employ positive progression while interfacing each hand along with acknowledging those 3 habits and my Money Management Method.