• On a hard eight, you only win if the roll is 4 & 4. You lose if it is 2 & 6, 3 & 5, 5 & 3 and 6 & 2. So of the five ways to make a six or eight, four are soft ways and only one is hard.
• These metal dice are fortified with zinc! This makes Harbor Loot dice super durable and allows for clean, hard edges. Soft edges are for plastics, you need hard core edges because you are a hard-core gamer with sophisticated tastes. These dice are 100% metal and will damage your table top if you don’t use a dice.

Hard Eight (originally titled Sydney^[2]) is a 1996 American crime film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in his feature directorial debut. It stars Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson.^[3]

Plot[edit]

Sydney, a senior gambler, finds a young man, John, forlornly sitting outside a diner in Sparks, Nevada. He offers to give him a cigarette and buy a cup of coffee. Sydney soon learns that John needs $6,000 to pay for his mother's funeral. He offers to drive John to Las Vegas and teach him how to gamble and survive. Although John is skeptical at first, he agrees to Sydney's proposal.

Two years later, John has become Sydney's protégé. Sydney is calm and reserved, and displays a fatherly care for John, who is unsophisticated and not overly intelligent. John has a new friend named Jimmy, who does security work, and he is attracted to Clementine, a cocktail waitress in Reno. Sydney meets Clementine, and learns that she moonlights as a prostitute and is much less sophisticated than John. Although Clementine believes that Sydney might want to sleep with her, Sydney wants to build a connection between her and John. Sydney asks John to show Clementine around the town. After receiving a frantic phone call, Sydney goes to a motel, where he finds John and Clementine holding a tourist hostage, a client of Clementine who did not pay her $300. John reveals that he and Clementine had impulsively gotten married, and she then sold herself to the tourist for sex. The tension is heightened because John and Clementine have called the hostage's wife, threatening to murder him if they do not get the money. They do not have a plan after killing the hostage. Sydney manages to calm the situation, advising John and Clementine to leave town and go on honeymoon. After the two leave, Sydney removes the evidence from the motel room.

A gambling game played with two dice in which a first throw of 7 or 11 wins, a first throw of 2, 3, or 12 loses the bet, and a first throw of any.

Sydney meets with Jimmy, who threatens to tell John that Sydney had killed John's father years ago unless Sydney gives him $10,000. Jimmy then points a gun at Sydney, threatening to kill him. They go to Sydney and John's suite where Jimmy explains that he is from back east, where he heard stories of how Sydney killed John's father in Atlantic City. Sydney gives Jimmy $6,000 cash, and they part ways. John calls from a roadside phone to update Sydney regarding the honeymoon journey. During the call, Sydney tells John that he loves him like a son. Sydney sneaks into the house and kills Jimmy in order to retrieve the money. The next day, Sydney returns to the diner and covers a bloodstain with his shirt cuff.

Cast[edit]

• Philip Baker Hall as Sydney
• John C. Reilly as John Finnegan
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Clementine
• Samuel L. Jackson as Jimmy
• Philip Seymour Hoffman as young craps player
• Robert Ridgely as Keno Bar Manager
• Melora Walters as Jimmy's Girl

Production[edit]

Originally titled Sydney, it was Anderson's first feature film, and was the expansion of the short film Cigarettes & Coffee.^[4][5] The main character of Sydney, was named after the previous one in Midnight Run. Hall, Walters, Reilly and Hoffman later appeared in Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

Release[edit]

The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.^[6] In 2018, Anderson said he was working on a Blu-ray release of the film.^[7]

Hard Eight Dice Svg

Reception[edit]

Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing 'Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us.'^[8] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote 'Hard Eight is not a movie that wants to make a grand statement. It is really little more than a small resonant mood piece whose hard-bitten characters are difficult to like. But within its self-imposed limitations, it accomplishes most of what it sets out to do. And the acting is wonderfully understated, economical and unsentimental.'^[9] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 80% based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 6.89/10. The website's critical consensus states: 'An absorbing showcase for Philip Baker Hall, Paul Thomas Anderson's feature debut is a gamble that pays off handsomely.'^[10] It is described by some authors as a neo-noir film.^[11]

References[edit]

1. ^Hard Eight at Box Office Mojo.
2. ^'Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Hard Eight', AKA 'Sydney': 'It's Always Good to Meet a New Friend' • Cinephilia & Beyond'. Cinephilia & Beyond. 2020-09-10. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
3. ^Conrad, Mark T. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, 2009. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN081319217X.
4. ^Mottram, James (2006). The Sundance Kids : how the mavericks took back Hollywood. NY: Faber & Faber, Inc. p. 129. ISBN9780865479678.
5. ^Waxman, Sharon R. (2005). Rebels on the backlot: six maverick directors and how they conquered the Hollywood studio system. HarperCollins. p. 87. ISBN978-0-06-054017-3.
6. ^'Festival de Cannes: Hard Eight'. Cannes Film Festival. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
7. ^Anderson, Paul Thomas (January 16, 2018). 'I'm Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director of PHANTOM THREAD, AMA!'. IAmA. Reddit.
8. ^Ebert, Roger (February 27, 1997). 'Hard Eight'. RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC.
9. ^Holden, Stephen (February 28, 1997). 'Suspense-Filled Puzzle Draped in a Dark Mood'. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
10. ^Hard Eight at Rotten Tomatoes.
11. ^Conard, Mark T.; ed. (2009). The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN081319217X.

External links[edit]

• Hard Eight at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Hard Eight at IMDb
• Hard Eight at AllMovie
• Hard Eight at Box Office Mojo
• Hard Eight at Rotten Tomatoes

Hard Eight In Dice

Why do I go through the hassles of taking on the casinos? It’s not for entertainment – though often it is entertaining. It’s not so I can tip the dealers and show what a good sport I am. I play to win. It’s not just a goal. It’s the only goal. The rest of it — the comps, the excitement, the roller-coaster thrill — is all secondary. I’m in the casino for one reason. I want their money – and lots of it.

Hard Eight Dice Tattoo

I look at advantage play in the casino as the best possible part-time job for me. But as in any profession, there are certain basic tools you must have to ply your trade. I call these tools the Hard Eight. They’re really quite easy, but players around the world struggle with them every day. Let’s open the tool box and take a brief look at them.

1. Knowledge of the game. One of the silliest questions I hear people ask at the craps table is “How do you play this game?” Standing at the table with your hard-earned cash at risk is not the time to learn. Before placing your first bet you should have mastered all of the basic rules of the game, understand the terminology, have a working knowledge of the correct odds and pay-off, and be comfortable with both the pass and don’t pass sides of the game. To that end, you should read some of the top books on the game – including Scarne on Dice, Sam Grafstein’s The Dice Doctor, and John Patrick’s Advanced Craps. Explore the game on the internet through forums like this and through “play for fun” sites and downloads such as WinCraps. Once you feel you have a good command of the game – head to the casino the try it out. But be sure you have a good command of the other seven tools of the trade.

2. Conservative Strategy. A friend of mine loves to play marathon craps session, but long sessions in a negative expectation game will eventually grind you down. The only way to survive these sessions over the long haul is to adopt an extremely conservative betting philosophy. In this gentleman’s case, that consists of a single Don’t Pass bet on each shooter. If he wins a bet his next wager is a single Don’t Pass bet with single odds. On any loss he reverts to his original single unit bet. And while he will never win a huge amount of money, he will rarely lose a large amount either. He is patient and plays his strategy flawlessly, and it achieves exactly what he wants.

You must approach the table with the same type of logically conceived, conservative game plan. That doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to the pass line or don’t pass – or limit yourself to a single bet. It simply means you step up to the table with a plan. A strategy that allows you to adjust the size of your bets based on your bankroll, minimize your losses, and maximize your wins. How? By positioning yourself to take advantage of the gambler’s friend – the almighty streak.

3. Sufficient Bankroll. I like to think of my casino chips as bullets. On the battlefield, if you run out of bullets you’re as good as dead. That’s why it is important to build a sufficient bankroll before stepping into the casino. You will always have limited funds to play with when your bankroll is compared to the casinos. The Pit Boss can roll out the reserves anytime by calling the cage and having the security boys bring out a chip refill.

There are lots of ways you can use your “bullets” against the casino. You can use them like artillery, playing those long shot bets, or a machine gunner raining chips all over the table. Or, if you’re smart, you’ll launch a sniper attack, making every shot count. But to stand any chance at all in these bankroll battles, you must have enough capital to start.

4. Money Management. I can only guess at how many times a player standing next to me at the table has pointed to a stack of chips on the layout and asked, “Is that my money?” I’ve heard it hundreds of times through the years. But money management is more than watching your bets. As I mentioned before, you have to adjust the size of your bets in relation to the size of your bankroll. Money management goes beyond that, as well. It requires you to set specific win objectives and loss limits based on your total bankroll. It means knowing exactly how much you will bet in every conceivable win/loss situation you encounter. And it means having the self-discipline to execute those bets flawlessly.

5. Self Discipline. Most gamblers don’t have it. Simply put, self-discipline is how you control your emotions while gambling. A few months back I bought in at a table and — by using good money management and discipline — doubled my money in about forty-five minutes. At the same time, the player next to me lost a little over $14,000. The more he lost the more he relied on crazy, scared-money wagers – $100 hop bets on two or three numbers every roll, and placing the hardways for $500 each. He was pitting his bankroll bullets against the casino’s. The house had him out-manned and out-gunned. Everyone at the table could see he was destined to lose it all — everyone except him. As the old saying goes, you gotta know when to walk away — and know when to run.

6. Trends and Streaks. Craps is a game of streaks. Streaks of Point – Seven Out. Streaks of Point – Pass. And, most often, choppy streaks where there is no dominant trend. Since craps is a game of independent trials — what happened on the last roll of the dice has no influence on what happens this roll of the dice. Predicting a trend is impossible. However, every forty-five minute monster hand starts out with a dozen tosses of the dice. It moves on to the five-minute mark, then ten, fifteen, and twenty. At some point virtually every player at the table recognizes what is happening and the layout fills up with chips. They have spotted the almighty streak. You can spot it too.

7. Precision Shooting. Have you ever noticed that some shooters at the craps table seem to have consistently longer hands than other players? While random trends and streaks do occur in this game, some players prefer to create their own. They do this, consciously or subconsciously, by influencing the outcome of the roll. Generally they take great care in pre-setting the dice to a particular arrangement. Then they affect a consistent, soft toss to a particular point on the table. Casino personnel often crank up the heat on these individuals in an attempt to break their rhythm. Often, though, these shooters appear unflappable as they throw the dice with zen-like precision, banging out number after number after number. Casinos fear them – and for good reason. The best of them have the ability to significantly alter the odds of the game in their favor – all within the confines of the house rules. Can you master this technique? Absolutely.

8. Winning Attitude. Let’s face it. The only one who likes a loser is the casino. And yet you hear people reinforcing a losing attitude at every turn. The science of neuro-linguist-programming – NLP for short – teaches that you can actually program your mind for success through positive affirmations. Yet so often we program ourselves for failure instead.

On a recent Vegas outing I walked into the casino and turned a quick $360 profit at the craps table. Recognizing that the streak at that table was over, I colored up and strolled over to the Wheel-of-Fortune carousel to see if my companion was ready to go to dinner. “Just a minute,” she said, shaking her coin cup. “I just want to lose these last few dollars, then we can go.”

Think about that. How many times have you stood in the casino and heard someone say something similar? They don’t expect to win – so they don’t. They just stand there until they throw their last chip in.

Well, there you have them – the Hard Eight. Are they really that hard? Not really. Can you master them and become a consistent winner? I believe you can.