was fooin around with excel

[sagefr0g]

i made a excel spreadsheet, where the idea was you could shuffle a pack and then graph the true count at various points of depth into the pack.
haven't really the foggiest if i did it right or if the random number generator for excel is bogus as far as shuffling.

so but anyway the way the sheet is set up you can just repeatedly hit ctrl-y and you'll keep generating these TCvsDepth graphs.
so dong this and watching how the graphs mapped out for each shuffle it struck me how so high a percentage of shuffles the true counts were the majority of the time really low at the 1st deck dealt point, rarely going above TC=1 sort of thing.

well anyway i guess like for a six deck pack and if you use full deck integers for determining your TC then at the 1st deck dealt point the highest true count you could get would be 8 if your flooring. so but for a whole bunch of trials so far i've just seen a TC = 4 as the highest.

just it made this question come to mind. does anyone know if their are expected true count frequencies by deck depth for a given pack, for example say a six deck pack?

[callipygian]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

haven't really the foggiest if i did it right or if the random number generator for excel is bogus as far as shuffling.

I think the Excel RNG is good enough to trust the results; if you don't trust the RNG, you can also find lists of random numbers online.

If you use the Excel RNG, be sure you use the =FLOOR() function rather than the =CEILING() or =ROUND() functions, as Excel defines =RAND() as being [0,1) (i.e. includes 0 but not 1). If you want to generate a random number between 1 and 10 inclusive, =ROUND(RAND()*10,0) will return zero 5% of the time and ten 5% of the time, and one through nine 10% of the time each. =CEILING(RAND()*10,1) will occasionally (~1/1,000,000) return zero, and return ten a little less than 10%, while =FLOOR(RAND()*10,1)+1 will give you exactly 1/10 probability for each number.

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

you can just repeatedly hit ctrl-y

You can also hit F9 to refresh.

Another helpful shortcut here is F4, which is the "redo" button. For example, if you were to copy the RC's and Paste Special -> Values into a new page, you can save the shoe you generated. The shoe will automatically re-randomize after your paste, and by hitting F4 you can paste another shoe.

As a matter of fact, using F4 and the right arrow key, it's pretty easy to fill up a worksheet with randomized counts: depending on your processor speed and manual dexterity, you can generate and save ~40,000 6D shoes in about 5 minutes. Then you can use the =LARGE(), =SMALL(), and =COUNTIF() functions to calculate a probability distribution (note that this really taxes your processor and can take a pretty long time).

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

does anyone know if their are expected true count frequencies by deck depth for a given pack, for example say a six deck pack?

I have a bunch of these saved on another computer, but I'm pretty sure they're in some book or other too. I'd probably try Professional Blackjack or Blackjack Attack if I had them on hand. Blackjackincolor also has graphs, but I'm not sure whether it has the raw data (which is presumably what you want to compare).

If none of the above (or if nobody can find them before me), I'll post what I have later.

[sagefr0g]

Originally Posted by callipygian

I think the Excel RNG is good enough to trust the results; if you don't trust the RNG, you can also find lists of random numbers online.

If you use the Excel RNG, be sure you use the =FLOOR() function rather than the =CEILING() or =ROUND() functions, as Excel defines =RAND() as being [0,1) (i.e. includes 0 but not 1). If you want to generate a random number between 1 and 10 inclusive, =ROUND(RAND()*10,0) will return zero 5% of the time and ten 5% of the time, and one through nine 10% of the time each. =CEILING(RAND()*10,1) will occasionally (~1/1,000,000) return zero, and return ten a little less than 10%, while =FLOOR(RAND()*10,1)+1 will give you exactly 1/10 probability for each number.

You can also hit F9 to refresh.

Another helpful shortcut here is F4, which is the "redo" button. For example, if you were to copy the RC's and Paste Special -> Values into a new page, you can save the shoe you generated. The shoe will automatically re-randomize after your paste, and by hitting F4 you can paste another shoe.

As a matter of fact, using F4 and the right arrow key, it's pretty easy to fill up a worksheet with randomized counts: depending on your processor speed and manual dexterity, you can generate and save ~40,000 6D shoes in about 5 minutes. Then you can use the =LARGE(), =SMALL(), and =COUNTIF() functions to calculate a probability distribution (note that this really taxes your processor and can take a pretty long time).



I have a bunch of these saved on another computer, but I'm pretty sure they're in some book or other too. I'd probably try Professional Blackjack or Blackjack Attack if I had them on hand. Blackjackincolor also has graphs, but I'm not sure whether it has the raw data (which is presumably what you want to compare).

If none of the above (or if nobody can find them before me), I'll post what I have later.

wow thanks, just the kind of stuff i was wondering about.
and yes i've seen the stuff in Wong's Professional Blackjack. mostly for like overall packs at some penetration, such as below.
but if you have some stuff that you generated for various depth's for six deck or multiple deck i'd be interested in seeing it.

[ccibball50]

I am no expert, but I have a minor in programming. One thing we learned was that normally a random generator is more than likely not 100 percent random. However, it is so close that it would be relatively unoticeable. This was actually a problem when the first online poker sites were started. If you had the privilage of knowing how the programming worked, you could actaully have a small advantage. Not enough to matter though.

Of course this was years ago, things may have changed since then. It always made me think about slot machines, although I am sure that they are true.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

i made a excel spreadsheet, where the idea was you could shuffle a pack and then graph the true count at various points of depth into the pack.
haven't really the foggiest if i did it right or if the random number generator for excel is bogus as far as shuffling.

so but anyway the way the sheet is set up you can just repeatedly hit ctrl-y and you'll keep generating these TCvsDepth graphs.
so dong this and watching how the graphs mapped out for each shuffle it struck me how so high a percentage of shuffles the true counts were the majority of the time really low at the 1st deck dealt point, rarely going above TC=1 sort of thing.

well anyway i guess like for a six deck pack and if you use full deck integers for determining your TC then at the 1st deck dealt point the highest true count you could get would be 8 if your flooring. so but for a whole bunch of trials so far i've just seen a TC = 4 as the highest.

just it made this question come to mind. does anyone know if their are expected true count frequencies by deck depth for a given pack, for example say a six deck pack?

You're getting dangerous

All I know is I used to the @rand function in Lotus to predict my 6 numbers for the lottery. After a while I noticed, the first "calc" always produced the same results lol. So it began with the same seed every time I re-booted lol.

I asked Lotus for my money back but I'm still waiting lol.

Later I used the time of the day for the initial seed. Got different numbers every time but never actually did win the lottery lmao.

Haven't looked at your sheet but there are ways to get to what you want to kinow. I think lmao.

Even those tables at QFIT can, for the same sim, can be combined to to really confuse things.

If something is supposed to happen 1 in 10 times, you can figure out how likely it is it only happened 75 times in 1000 times instead of 100 times. Whatever the sim says as to freq of TC's can be regarded as equally likely - it's like a 41 sided-coin if the the TC's go from -20 to +20.

Getting that crap by deck-depth can be alot of work.

I don't know, if 6D, and the first 52 cards dealt are 24 2's, 24, 3.s and 4 4's, I guess your tC=+52 RC/5=TC 10?

Hey, you're a weekend warrior - the percentage of times you made X bet at each TC of whatever seemed to be in the ball park lol.

[QFIT]

The RNG in Excel is famously awful.

Yes indeed TCs are relatively low in the first deck. For the range of TCs (and RCs for unbalanced) see http://www.blackjackincolor.com/penetration1.htm

[iCountNTrack]

Originally Posted by QFIT

The RNG in Excel is famously awful.

Yes indeed TCs are relatively low in the first deck. For the range of TCs (and RCs for unbalanced) see http://www.blackjackincolor.com/penetration1.htm

Yeah Excel is horrible, with all the money they have, Microsoft couldn't get their statistics right . I use Wavemetrics's Igor Pro which is the DEFINITIVE numerical and statistical analysis tool.

[sagefr0g]

Originally Posted by QFIT

The RNG in Excel is famously awful.

Yes indeed TCs are relatively low in the first deck. For the range of TCs (and RCs for unbalanced) see http://www.blackjackincolor.com/penetration1.htm

when i made my shuffler and true count vs depth graph generator i envisioned that if i ran the shuffler a whole lot of times and real fast and then took a time lapse snap shot of that, then a sort of blurry image would appear of which would be a representation of what goes on in general for TCvsdepth.
so i guess the image in your link is essentially the same thing?
interesting it maps out like a bell curve on it's side sort of thing.

i'm very curious to know what are the attributes of a top rate RNG as opposed to a awful RNG?

[callipygian]

Awful, schmawful. It's good enough for what it's asked to do.

[sagefr0g]

Originally Posted by callipygian

Awful, schmawful. It's good enough for what it's asked to do.

wassat? random pixels in a square?