A little known secret about KR Training is the USPSA matches they host during the summer months. These are quick and somewhat intimate evening matches that contain about four or five stages and are limited to no more than 25 participants which are held in the middle of week. Every now and then a drill one might see while attending a firearms course is adapted for hit factor scoring and added as a stage. A recent example of this is the Casino drill developed by Tom Givens.

I really enjoy the Casio drill. The drill requires use of different marksmanship skills such drawing the gun, presenting the gun, getting good hits, transitions, and reloads. However, marksmanship is not the main point of the drill. The main point is practice those skills while processing information. Thinking with a gun in your hand. Being able to run a gun under a cognitive load is an absolutely essential ability folks who carry a gun for defensive or duty purposes should possess.

It was inevitable that I would find myself writing about this drill and performing a difficulty analysis eventually. However, seeing the sheer number of competent competitors that got tripped up by this drill at the KR Training summer USPSA match was surprising to me. Even more surprising was realizing that this was the first time a lot of those same competitors were exposed to it. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was. While I have mentioned the Casino drill in several after action reports in this blog over the years, they were all in the context of a Rangemaster or KR Training course that I attended which are all self defense oriented and not competition oriented.

At any rate, I’m writing about the drill now. So let’s take a look at it.

The Course of Fire

Target: Discretionary Command Training Target (Versions 2-A, 2-B, or 2-C)

Distance: 5 Yards

Start Position: Loaded and holstered in a manner consistent with how the firearm is carried with three magazines loaded with exactly 7 rounds in each.

Procedure: On the signal, engage each shape on the target in sequential numerical order with exactly the same number of rounds as indicated by the number of the shape starting with shape number one. Reload as needed.

Par Time: 21 seconds

Scoring: In my head, this is a pass or fail test. Either all the shapes were hit with the correct number of shots in the correct sequence within the time limit or they weren’t. However, every time I’ve shot it it’s scored as total time plus one second for each miss (hit outside of the shape).

It’s worth noting that there are several variations of this drill which don’t alter the difficulty, but rather help maintain the drill’s main point fresh. We’ll touch on variations later in this post.

My Thoughts on the Drill

I kept the “course of fire” section very light intentionally. This is because it’s a simple drill. Don’t confuse simple for easy. That is a mistake. But let’s break down the drill in more depth which I think will help folks appreciate its elegance.

The target consists of six shapes that are each about the size of a typical 8″ A-zone. There are two squares, two circles, and two triangles. The shapes are colored in pairs as well – two red, two blue, and two yellow. In the most basic form of the drill as explained in the course of fire section above, the shapes and colors are of no consequence, but come into play with variations of the drill. What is important is that the shapes are numbered one through six and must be shot in numerical sequence with the corresponding number of shots before moving on to the next one. The sum of all the numbers is 21 which corresponds to the number of rounds that are loaded evenly across the three magazines.

As mentioned, the point of the drill is to practice thinking while running a gun. The thinking that is required is counting the correct number of hits each shape gets before moving on to the next one and recalling how many shots were fired at a target where a reload is required in order to resume shooting that shape with the correct number of remaining shots. This trips folks up a good fair bit the first time they shoot the drill, but it doesn’t take long to memorize the pattern allowing one to pre-load a motor program that easily beats the 21 second time limit with a modicum of skill.

That pattern is:

• One hit on number one
• Two hits on number two
• Three hits on number three
• One hit on number four, reload, three hits on number four
• Four hits on number five, reload, one hit on number five
• Six hits on number six

Once this pattern is learned. The drill can be gamed and some pretty spicy times can be posted. I can’t recall what the current record on the Casino drill is, but 10.33 second clean Casino Drill was posted at the Rangemaster instructor reunion in 2019.

While spicy drill times are cool and all, a memorized pre-loaded motor program doesn’t require much thinking and defeats the purpose of the drill.

One thing that can be done to combat this is to switch between variants of the target. Each of the targets offers a different sequence of shapes and colors located in different places. While this can help initially, it still doesn’t take very long to remember the location of the sequenced shapes which are still engaged with the same pattern: one on one, two on two, three on three, one of four, reload, three on four, four on five, reload, one on five, and six on six.

However, there are a number of things that can be done to rejuvenate the purpose of the drill. The simplest thing that we can do is reverse the shape engagement order. Memorizing the pattern for that isn’t difficult to do. It is: six on six, one on five, reload, four on five, three on four, reload, one on four, three on three, two on two, and one on one. Randomly picking the order at the last possible moment before the start signal will trip folks up at first because it will force them to process the shooting order at the last moment, pick the correct sequence program, load it, and execute it and that takes a little time. A fun way to do this by one’s self is to flip a coin.

Another thing we can do is change the number of rounds loaded in each magazine so that they are unequal. For example, six in one, seven in another, and eight in the last one. Then shuffle the magazines inserting one randomly into the gun and placing the other two randomly in their corresponding magazine pouches. A simple change like this creates additional cognitive load because now the shooter won’t know if they will need to reload before engaging number four or one to two rounds into it. Even if the first reload occurs on shape number four the second reload will not occur at the same place on target number five.

While this change does add some additional cognitive load making the 21 second time limit harder to beat with a memorized pattern, the permutations are limited to the following magazine load and shooting sequences:

• 6/7/8: one on one, two on two, three on three, reload, four on four, three on five, reload, two on five, six on six.
• 6/8/7: one on one, two on two, three on three, reload, four on four, four on five, reload, one on five, six on six.
• 7/6/8: one on one, two on two, three on three, one on four, reload, three on four, three on five, reload, two on five, six on six.
• 7/8/6: one on one, two on two, three on three, one on four, reload, three on four, four on five, reload, one on five, six on six.
• 8/6/7: one on one, two on two, three on three, two on four, reload, two on four, four on five, reload, one on five, six on six.
• 8/7/6: one on one, two on two, three on three, two on four, reload, two on four, five on five, reload, six on six.

Looking at these permutations, we can see that no thinking is required for the first three shapes. They are always: one on one, two on two, three on three. The other common thing is that six is always on six. This means that only two shapes one really has to pay attention to and think while working shapes four and five. This holds true even if shooting the drill in reverse order.

Thankfully we don’t have to limit ourselves to loading the magazines with 6, 7, and 8 rounds respectively. We can distribute those 21 rounds in any random fashion as long as we fit exactly 21 rounds in three magazines. The difference between paying attention to what’s happening on two shapes versus six makes a gigantic difference because there is no way of predicting on which shape a reload will be required.

But we don’t have to stop there. Remember there are three shapes and three colors? We can use those to change the sequence of engagement from only numerical to a specific shape or color sequence in numerical sequence. For example, the instructions right before the signal might be “square, triangle, circle” or “blue, red, yellow, reverse”. Assuming evenly loaded 7 round magazines, those sequences would look like this on the 2-A target:

• “square, triangle, circle”: four on four, three on six, reload, three on six, one on one, three on three, reload, two on two, five on five.
• “blue, red, yellow, reverse”: four on four, three on three, reload, two on two, one on one, four on six, reload, two on six, five on five.

Mix that with unevenly loaded or randomly loaded magazines and the cognitive complexity goes through the roof.

If that wasn’t enough, we can also throw evens and odds in the mix and issue instructions like “evens reversed then odds”.

All of this is why I really enjoy the Casino drill. With one simple target we have a bunch of options to alter the cognitive difficulty of the drill. This makes it a drill that can be used in its simplest form to put up spicy times or as a very powerful tool to develop our ability to think with a gun in hand.

Relative Difficulty

I had a lot to say about the Casino drill. I hope that the thoughts I shared makes it apparent that the cognitive difficulty of the drill has a very wide adjustment range.

Unfortunately, there is no good way that I’m aware of to quantify the cognitive load aspect of the drill. How much additional time would be added to a USPSA Grand Master’s draw to first shot by having to decide which target to draw to is not something I’m going to be able to answer. Part of that depends on the complexity of the instructions. Another part of that depends on their ability to process that information into their next immediate action. Yet another part has to do with how much exposure they have had to the target they are using.

So while I can’t account for cognitive difficulty in complex engagement instructions, we can look at the relative difficulty of the Casino drill in its most basic form using USPSA GM data for 8″ a-zone targets from five yards which gives a GM speed break down on each shape as follows:

• 1.2 (one on one) = 1.2 seconds
• 0.23 + 0.18 (two on two). = 0.41 seconds
• 0.23 + 0.18 x 2 (three on three) = 0.59 seconds
• 0.23 + 1.63 + 0.18 x 2 (one on four, reload, three on four) = 2.22 seconds
• 0.23 + 0.18 x 3 + 1.63 (four on five, reload, one on five) = 2.4 seconds
• 0.23 + 0.18 x 5 (six on six) = 1.13 seconds

Adding that all up we get a GM speed par time of 8.05 seconds. Comparing that with the 21 second par time of the Casino drill we get a relative difficulty score of 38.3%. A 38.3% relative difficulty score puts the Casino drill in Easy bucket according to the scale established in the first drill difficulty analysis post on this blog. This means that a C-class USPSA competitor should be able to shoot the Casino drill clean within the time limit. This feels about right to me, but it’s close enough to the border between the Easy and the Normal difficulty buckets that I would put it on the lower end of the normal spectrum. Especially, when this drill is shot for score in a class setting for the change at earning one of Tom Givens’ Casino challenge coins.

While the 10.33 second score from 2019 may no longer be the current high speed record, that was approximately 78% of the theoretical GM Speed calculated in this post which was shot by an highly skilled individual under a good bit of peer pressure. This also makes me think that the relative difficulty isn’t far off but likely a little low.

As Karl Rehn mentions in his book where I stole this methodology from, there are a lot of “loose” factors here. One factor here is that the shapes are roughly equivalent to 8″ A-zone. However, some of the shapes, like the triangles, have noticeably less surface area than an 8″ circle. Considering this factor, adding peer pressure in a class setting, and variants that increase cognitive difficulty can alter the categorization from Easy/Normal into Hard. Possibly even into the Expert category. That’s entirely subjective, but not out of the realm of possibility in my opinion.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve said it enough times, but I’ll say it once more… I really enjoy the Casino drill. Running it fast in its simplest form is fun and works several important marksmanship skills. Running it in hard mode with unpredictable reloads is a fantastic exercise to improve one’s ability to process information and think while running a gun. The latter is something that folks who carry pistols regularly should work on from time to time as any real world scenario will require processing a lot of information and making very important decisions very quickly in order to preserve life and minimize the likelihood of serious negative outcomes.

Give it a whirl and see how you do. Then come back and tell us about it.