Tracking outcomes

I want to tighten up my numbers on my outcome log. I just track hours and outcome now as it helps me get a rough idea of the severity of downturns and my resultant hourly expectation.

I was tracking all hours in once at the gambling site so that skewed my hourly way down. I am getting CVBJ today and hope it has a good layout to log hours.

Do you guys track hours at the table down to the minute? I use a rough idea say 15 min here or 20 there, never to exceed an hour at one stop. I suppose you could get as detailed as you like.

I wonder what useful info could be gleaned from such a database? At one time I was hoping to amass enough data to find where the best play was and even what days were best and what times of day i.e. morning or night. I am sure it could be done but accurate record keeping with alot of entries would be needed.

Small data samples are very rarely going to generate significant results of any type.

Depending on how many hours you record, it could be a VERY long time before you

can glean anything meaningful that is not already (visibly) obvious.

I round off/estimate time played.

OTOH, a good friend of mine uses a stopwatch to track his sessions. I always kid him about it saying it's his lawyer training, billing clients by the minute.

i think it would be helpful for you if you had Kasi's spread sheet and some sims of the games you play.

you would then want to have an knowledge of how many rounds you play for a session.

with the spread sheet, sims and knowing how many rounds you are getting in you would have some useful information to better understand what's going on with your play.

No big deal - my goal would be to track, as best I could, number of physical rounds played first and foremost. How many hours it took you to play them is secondary to me. Sure, record the "hrs" if you want, and I would too, but it's how many rounds I actually played I really want to know.

All that "hourly" stuff can get skewed quickly, if you ask me. Does "hourly" assume 100/rds/hr, 200/rds/hr or 60/rds/hr? The first might be reasonable if 4 people, the second if "heads-up", the latter if at a full table. "Hourly" always ultimately assumes "x/rds/hr" seen or played anyway.

What does "hourly" mean when back-counting or wonging-out when one may only physically "play" x% of every y% rounds "seen"? Like say a back-counter may only physically play 16% of every 100 rounds seen. If an "hour" means "100 rounds seen", then he will have played 16 physical rounds in an hour. If an "hour" means he will only see 60/rds/hr while back-counting, then he will only have physically played 10 rds in an hour. 100 "hrs" later, if all you know is you've ben playing for "100 hrs", how do you know whether you have played 1000 physical rds or 1600 physical rds?

Maybe you can see the potential dangers of only knowing how much ahead/behind much later and "I played 100 hours".

What I like most is knowing EV & SD per round physically-played and go from there. Screw the hours - let my "hourly" win rate fall where it may. If I'm within 1sd of EV after x physical rds played, I don't really give a dam* how long it took me to play them.

So that, if I am, say, back-counting I know what to expect after playing 1000 physical rounds whether it took me 15 hrs or 30 hrs to play that many physical rounds.

Basically, to me, every rd I physically play has an EV and SD attached to it.
It's simple after that - I just want to know how many rds I played.

Basically, it never really occurs to me to state anything in "hrs" anyway except as an afterthought for amusement-only purposes.

Maybe just me and my prejudice from internet play. I know how many rds I physically played after 5 years of playing and my "hrly" win rate changes a bunch if I assume "x" rds/played/hr vs "y" rds/played/hr. All I really know is how many rds I actually played. I have no idea what more I need to know.

Somebody says "I'm down x after 6 months". All I do is cringe and wonder whether "6 months" means 100 rds played or 100,000 rds played. Or, a classic, "I'm down x after 44 sessions" - how many rds did you play lol?

That only makes sense and is some useful info. Since I am shortening my sessions I suppose I could jot on a card how many decks I played and with how many people. I am in the bathroom every 15 min or so.

I can keep hourly info for kicks and work to improve that but you are dead right about hands played being the meat of the equation.

Again; thanks for the time you took to provide your answer.

Dopple if you have excel then try and scope this spread sheet out:

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/attachment.php?attachmentid=2214&d=1238727413

a spread sheet similar to that and a sim, i think you'd find most interesting.

I have excel and will figure out where to start with the spreadsheet. I just got cvbj and that is keeping me busy too.

In theory results from cvbj could be added to your spreadsheet just like real games, all other factors being the same. Yes there is no in and out of other players and delays, true.

Thanks again, Sage Frog.

Of course you can tell cvbj to have players come and go.

So because small samples rarely generate "significant" results is a reason to not keep track of the results of "small" samples?

So becasue it could be a very long time before anything "meaningful" might show up is a reason to not record anything until a "long" time has past?

You make it almost sound like you feel there's little reason to record anything until a long time has past to see what has happened?

Like I'd say, why not record after every period of time so one can tell early on how "rare" such results are. Just in case they are. It didn't take long for people to expose the Hi-Lo vid poker double up bet on the internet. It didn't take long to expose whoever it was for dealing a dishonest game. It didn't take long to expose the poker cheating.

It wouldn't take long to figure out you are flipping an unfair coin.

Whatever, this is not really at you FLASH, but I ask you , do you think one can one measure the likllihood of actual results compared to "time" played too often, both individually for that day and cumulatively to date? What does one have to lose?

Thrilled you got CVBJ! Good for you. Now you can practice faster and for free and gain the confidence you can keep an accurate count most of the time, maybe use indexes, maybe bet a a disciplined ramp, etc.

It's not a sim but that's OK.

You make want to check out for the fun of it some old thread called "Weekend Warriors" where people compared their CVBJ results to those predicted by a sim.

Out of curiosity, what would be the game you think would play (or have been playing) most often? And with what count system, and/or indexes?

Just thinking maybe someone could generate a sim you for that scenario so you could maybe generally compare your results to it just for the fun of it.

Of course another biggie, is always betting in a "disciplined" way lol.

You start betting different amts at diferent TC's, or start spreading here and there, or start wonging-out etc, then, it might be a good idea to run a sim for each of those separate scenarios - a sim can only do one set of assumptions at a time.

Don't be shy with any questions

Not shy here. The CVBJ is great to get my card fix at home.

I am not going to worry about outcome per hand now but I see your point. To much data is just a mind mess for one such as I.

I had the rare chance to double a soft 18 vs 7 today and what a gas.

They had me on the ropes and just wanted to be up a note instead of down one.

I paid my dues today. Now I am "due for luck".

Of course record keeping is highly advisable,
but I have known many players whose understanding of
statistics is poor. They misinterpret data very easily.

Here is an example of a facile misinterpretation.

One plays full pay 9/6 JOB V.P. for a week.
He plays 20 hrs and he is dog tired.
He looks at his notes:
He played very slowly.
He estimates having played $1.25 per hand for [20 x 400] hands = $8,000
He proceeds to compute: $8,000 x $1.25 = $10,000
He finds that his expectation of −0.50% of $10,000 is $50
His bottom line was that he was a Net Loser of triple that. $150.

What does he conclude ?

He understands that the game returns 99.5% but he doesn't understand
that if a Royal is never scored, the return is SEVERAL points below 99.5%

As a Royal happens rarely, he will need a very large sample to conclude anything with confidence.