Should I keep doing this? Is it correct or am I nuts?

Ok, here goes. Say I am playing with a $1000.00 BR [my stop point for the day, not total BR] and betting red tables with a $10.00 to $100.00 spread (1 unit to 10 units - I know that's a big spread on a small BR) and I find myself quickly (in about 10 minutes) up 13.5 units ($135.00). Statistics say I should just get up and walk right? I shouldn't have been able to make anymore than about $30.00 an hour like this right? So why keep playing.

Here's what I have been doing - I do get up and walk. I take the $135.00 and left pocket it, never to see the light of day again (until I am done with this session) and go to another pit, sometimes another store, and do it again using the original $1000.00 BR as a starting point. As soon as I get up $125.00 or so I do it again, which usually doesn't take long. If I can't get there in 15 minutes or so, I leave and move on. I don't keep flat betting and wait for the cards to turn. Most of the time I have been able to do this about two times per hour for around 3 to 4 hours which seems to make good $$.

Should I continue this or would I make more staying put a little longer here and there? It doesn't matter what the count is to me when I get up, I just do. In fact I have had other AP's look at me (yea, I see you too, lol) like I was nuts when I get up from a good + table and color up. Is this kind of wonging going to bite me in the rear later? I guess I can envision a nightmare where everywhere I sit I immediately get bad cards, and it never stops until my BR is gone, but I haven't run into that yet. I guess statistically if you are surrounded by twenty tables (combining close proximity stores) the odds of them all being bad to you at the same time aren't very good, and maybe that's why this has worked for me. For me it beats "waiting for the count to get better". In large shoe games, that may take all day or not happen at all.

I usually go back to the pit/store/area where I was playing earlier and sit down for a while that evening with a big shoe game just flat betting with occasional bet spreading (light 1-4 unit minimum bet stuff) and have some drinks, play BS and clear my head. I usually stay even or just one way or the other during these "mini session" of mainly BS. I don't know if this helps for camo or not but I seem to be on good terms with the dealers and pits. Haven't felt like I had eyes boring into the back of my head or anything yet. I've even split T's a time or two, albeit usually when the dealer had a 6 up and no one screamed at me.

Most of this kind of play has been at the higher end stores on their lower end tables. It seems they really don't care too much what goes on there as long as you watch the spread a little. I've gotten in the habit of not using many greens, just stacking reds up. Every time I get a green I drop it in my shirt pocket to "keep my wife from coming over from the slots and taking my chips". When it's color up time I may or may not color up the greens, sometimes I just wait until I go to the cashier. If I need more chips because my reds have turned to greens I don't cash them in, I pull out my wallet and change a couple of hundred. Dealer has never said, "What about those greens in your pocket?" It's not like I am leaving with a bunch of them every time anyway.

So, what do you guys think? I'm going to try it again next week and see how it goes. Any and all advice and comments is/are appreciated and respected. Thanks for the help!

If you are playing a big joint at small stakes a few hours a week they won't sweat over you so there is really no need to hit and run. Especially if you come back have drinks and play BS now and then.

If you like to hit and run when you are up a dozen units it is good to keep the sessions short. If you are playing bigger stakes keeping the sessions short is vital. The pit/eye/etc won't have enough time to designate someone to rate your play in short sessions. And if they do the session will probably be short but not on your own accord.

As for ratholing...it is a good thing to do at small stakes. Doing it with black chips is ok if you can hop from pit to pit in a big joint. However, all casinos watch purple chips so it is next to impossible to rathole purple or up. At a chunky red/short green level ratholing green should be easy if you wait for dealer/pit change or take your chips when you go for a washroom break.

Yes. It will take you longer to reach the "long run". You will play fewer hands per hour and walking away from + counts is equivalent to "reverse wonging out" so it will be lowering your expectation.
BW

There's really no difference between jumping in and out as opposed to staying put as far as the count goes.

The shoe you jump into is just as unknown as the shoe you would have stayed in.

Its only lost opportunity if you leave a positive count and if you consistently leave positive counts the negative counts will be too much to overcome.

Keep playing because you still have an advantage. It doesn’t matter what just happened, you still expect to earn about $10-$15 for your next hour of play. If you get up and walk away then you are giving up that money. If you walk away from a positive count then you are giving up even more, and possibly not playing with an advantage at all. Unless the game has gotten worse (too many players, slow dealer, worse penetration, heat, etc.) then you have no logical reason to stop playing.

-Sonny-

essentially i do the same thing, except i wont walk away from a positive true count, but then i'm a recreational player and most of the games i go up against aren't very good games. six or eight deck games with poor penetration. games such as these you can expect over the long term to only see circa 30% advantage hands because of the nature of the games normal true count frequency distribution. me not having a huge time horizon for playing, well i go ahead and play it pretty much as you describe above, but lol just not walking away from a known positive count. so such an approach works well for me from a psychological perspective. and you are correct the problem with the scenario is how there will be times when time after time no advantage will present and you might just lose your trip roll.:sad:
another problem with this approach is that 30% of advantageous true counts can present in all kinds of ways, maybe all at once in the beginning of a shoe or all at once in the latter part of the shoe, or maybe in broken up chunks scattered through out the shoe. so just lucky how it comes about for you, if you take the approach we are discussing.
maybe if there is any happy aspect to the approach would be that the odds are pretty good that by blind luck you end up walking away from a lot of negative true counts with a disadvantage. unfortunately you might be blindly walking away from an advantage that presents in precious rare times as well.
all that said a pro or a serious guy going after the money would not take the approach we are discussing. such a guy would go with what Sonny, ohbehave and Brock Windsor are saying.
i'd say this, if you have a really 'good' game your going up against, then you'd want to grind that baby in a more orthodox way, but your not really helping your self in the crappy games either, just slowing things down a bit really.

Just like Sagefr0g said, I, too, am playing very poor 8D games (unfortunately, nothing else available in Ontario). I tend to do exactly what you said. Knowing that I'm pretty much playing a break even game, at the best, I almost religiously get up and leave, if I am 12-15 units up. The exception is if the count is good. I never leave a table with TC>+1.

This type of play, basically setting up my stop wins and stop losses (roughly 12-15 units for wins, and -30 units for losses) has worked okay, so far.

It is actually a few disastreous sessions, where I got killed on very high counts, that keep my overall results just slightly positive. These are the sessions where I did not leave at -30 units, because of the exceptionally good counts. Guess what happened...I left with -50, or -60 units...oh well!

However, I absolutely agree with everything that more experienced guys suggested to you here. If you play a good game, and you have a strong game, there is no reason to walk away. The more you play, the more you'll make.

I just re-read this and I may be missing something, but how do you decide to sit down at a table in the middle of the shoe? Do you just plop down at a random table and hope to win 12-13% of your BR by a random bet spread?

I try not to just random it if I can help it. I usually do a walk around and pick a table about to shuffle up, or if I am lucky one in the process of actually doing it. If the table is occupied, I'll sit and tell other players, "I'll wait until he/she shuffles before I get in so I don't mess up your 'flow' of the cards." If they insist I get in I will flat bet minimum until I get comfy or leave. If it's a full table and I see a lot of lows out, I may raise my bet a few units basically doing a "right now" table count.