My superstition lives on

I have a superstition where if anything grossly improbable or irregular, or tragic happens on the way to the casino, I'm going to have a lousy session.

Well I did a eastern PA trip over the past few days, and guess who got caught up in that mess on the PA Tpk. by the PJ Camiel service area just west of Philadelphia. A two hour delay, punctuated by the Coroner's van passing us on the shoulder. God, did I curse a blue streak when I saw that, because there was death, and because a fatal accident investigation guarantees hours of stopped traffic. Plus the delays caused by everyone slowing down as they passed the scene when the road was reopened, hoping to catch a glimpse of human remains.*

And you'll never guess what the rest of my trip was like.


* I figured out why people do that. Our imaginations run wild when we hear about things like fatal accidents, and we are hoping to see something that is less horrible than what we imagined, so we have closure and can stop thinking about all the worse possibilities.

yup, same here, i try and convince myself it's bull crap, but i can't convince myself. :whip:
edit: doesn't help that it's often a correct albeit erroneous premoniton.

I'm sure these things affect the mind, especially subconsciously. Probably makes it hard for the portion of the brain you usually use to keep a count a little screwy, therefore a "bad" session. Chalk it up to internal error, it would be natural.

I thought about that, but no, any problem with counting would produce a change too subtle to notice. Nothing short of outright disregard of basic strategy will produce a situation where you can expect a bad session.

Unpleasant variance is caused by... nothing... as are all improbable events. So we're left with the objective-reality equivalent of division by zero. It isn't defined, but I can't prove that zero divided by zero isn't 1 especially being I can't prove zero is really zero.

I thought you already knew... It's bad luck to be superstitious. :joker:

Early this year, I think it was, Tarzan wrote about a fast driver coming up in the rear vision, weaving in and out of traffic. The same guy caused an accident up ahead. I wonder if Tarzan's subconscious mind was affected by that, as he was on his way to the casino... Did ya win, Tarz?

I've noticed periods when I don't get any opportunities for splits, and periods when I get an abundance of split opportunities. Same with doubles. Sometimes I make every double I attempt. Other times I can never make a double. This is really not fair and I've written a long letter to Don to see if he can help. :joker:

AM, I really thought you would have been a whole lot more enlightening about zero divided by zero, considering your training in physics. If you have three cards and you divide them by zero, how many cards have you got?

Math breaks down when you include division by zero in anything.

But in the real world nothing is ever zero on the macroscopic level. No probability is zero, no mass or force is zero. This applies until you get to actions down on the level of Planck's constant, under which absolutely nothing happens. What would be Planck's constant in blackjack? I don't know, maybe one card? You get the cut card, and inserting it one card to either direction of where you did will have a profound impact on your session.

Or maybe it's one pip. You have a huge count using High-Low, a zoo of splits and doubles out there all with max bets. Dealer shows 6. The dealer flips a 10. Now to a High-Low counter 5's and 6's are treated exactly the same. The dealer draws a card with an equal probability of it being a 5 or a 6....

Is it really that random? Of course it isn't random, whether it's a 5 or a 6 is a function of how the cards were discarded on the last shoe transformed by the dealer's shuffle. A person walking by catching the dealer's eye during the shuffle will affect if it's a 5 or a 6. So will the behavior of the ploppies on the last shoe. As far as the car accident, a bad tire slipped through outgoing QC, resulting in a blowout after 15,000 miles, all precipitated by an inspector taking a leak break, because he drank too much coffee that morning because he stayed up late last night watching an interesting movie, or reading something interesting on a blackjack website. So perhaps I created bad variance for both myself and the deceased driver.

Now here's a question- is there a restorative force pushing results towards some theoretically expected goal? You can never get back a bad session (nor give back a good one) and given enough time and bankroll we are all headed towards some EV goal, but how close we can get to that goal can never be determined more closely than that difference between the 5 and the 6; play a billion hands and we will still always have that problem. The smaller our bets, the closer we can get to our EV (which is lower due to the smaller bets). Likewise for our life EV; we are all headed towards a lifespan of 80 or 90, ending lying in our wastes with dementia, but we also face the problem of gambler's ruin when we run out of chips or highway and aren't allowed to play anymore sometime long before that. Reducing our risk (not driving drunk, not driving fast, not driving, and so on) reduces our chance of lifetime gambler's ruin but also decreases the value of our lives.

So here's my magnum opus, either:

1a.) Hack variance. Determine the effect of random and pseudo-random actions on the blackjack game and avoid sessions where they are determined to have a negative (from my point of view) effect on the game, or,

1b.) Discover and amplify a force that will cause variance to stray less from expectation and force it back into compliance if it does stray, or,

2.) Refit Kelly's Theorem to all of life, balancing the benefit of any activity we undertake with the risk of not being able to partake in beneficial activities again as a result, thus maximizing the value of one's life.

division by zero is dead, dead, not even kilt, never was

what the heck causes variance in blackjack anyway?:whip:

I dunno, Sage, but Automonk covered it so well that I don't have much of a clue wtf he was talking about. But I did read somewhere - might have been a Don or Arnold book, can't recall - where variance is definitely caused by a whole family of voodoo gremlins employed by casinos. (Or maybe it was Aslan said that.) :joker:

Play a Strong Game, Live a Smart Life

Don't play when tired
Don't play when drunk
Don't steam

Play a strong game
Play good games
Play a lot, the more you play the less variance is an issue

Don't speed, drive safe:
fewer tickets
fewer accidents
lower car insurance
less chance of death in an accident:joker::whip:

Australian aborigines had a tribal system where the witch doctor held great power and respect. If the wd pointed the bone at you, about one week later you just up and dropped dead, for no apparent reason. This system was obviously open to abuse, in that if you had a problem with a pesky neighbor or relative, you could bribe the wd who would point the bone and your problem would be solved.

This magic voodoo bone might be fashioned from kangaroo carcass, emu or goanna. The point is, it worked. Now, to the Western mind obviously a bone is a bone and boner shmoner. So why am I mentioning this? Yeah, well these wd victims; indeed all of the tribes who subscribed to this belief system, had transferred their personal power to an agent.

Human beliefs as we now know, are extremely powerful, so powerful that if you hear that a wd has pointed the bone at you, you just know you're daid, rreal soon pal. Ha, but these are primitive superstitious beliefs, you say. If someone points a bone at me I'll laugh. It can't do me any harm, unless he sticks it in my gizzard.

So what is a belief then? The best definition I saw is: A belief is simply a thought that you keep on thinking. Self-help gurus have long gone on about how beliefs set up your life. So now I get to the point of my bone rave here... If you have a belief that says: Oh look at that terribly negative event I just witnessed on the way to the casino. That means I am in for a crap session! Then that belief could help bring the calamity.

So what if you had this belief: Wherever I go, I expect the very best situations that I desire to unfold, easily and smoothly.

There, I just got rid of witch doctors for you, and cleared the way for you to simply observe (without reacting) earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, muggings, Amway salesmen and any miserable asshole pitcritters.

Hope this helps with your superstitions. No charge. :cool2:

This remind me of a story I heard, supposedly true; where both men when to hospital and one of them has cancer I believe, only the results were mixed. The one who has it was given a clean bill of health while the other guy was told otherwise. Four months later when the hospital found out there mistake, the actual cancerous man is still alive while the one who was given the wrong news died of natural causes. The human mind is a powerful thing, the guy was told he is going to die, believed it and later died even though he is physically healthy.

Amway salesmen and any miserable asshole pitcritters.

Amway......... I love amway!!!!

Machinist

Kat for President!:joker:

Yeah, nice one claw. Hey, this is the Black Swan dude that Sage and Aslan favorited. Now he's a Black Cat?

good grief man! that looks like the Stealthy Won!!!
creeping panther.
CP!
did you pose for that book CP?
:angel::whip::laugh:

Did I win?

I can't recall if I won that particular playing session or not, Kat. I do know that freaky things happen and that whole "dealer from hell" scenario is all too real! This is merely a perception though... streaks and runs occur but there is no predicting them. You only perceive them after the fact.

You can perceive that you had a horrible day at the blackjack table and naturally you can in your mind easily correlate other bad events of the day, the week, etc., connecting the dots so to speak. Those "bad luck" events of the rest of your normal day stand out less when you had a great day at the tables, I bet! When you are working with a -3% to 3% range of probability it leaves a lot of room for the local witch doctor to be waving the official bone of doom at you! hahaha

I see things going bad with a hot dealer, as I have said before... unless there is a count worth playing, I bail. There are other tables. There are other casinos. To flounder along and get your ass kicked riding out a bunch of neutral count action against a dealer that can "do no wrong" wears on you mentally. Finally seeing a count worth playing and that same dealer slaughters you? As soon as the count slides back down or it's time to shuffle I hit the trail... the aggravations and frustrations of it wear you down and perhaps it's time to take a break anyway.

I have huge swings back and forth and you expect this but when that dealer slaps down that 5 on top of his 16 and you are staring in disbelief, knowing, "Holy crap there are only three 5's left in the entire SHOE and they got one of them!"... Variance, randomness happens and not always to your favor!

I've enjoyed talking at length about the "dealer from hell" scenario with Flash, who pays no mind to whether the dealer is "hot" or not and is not swayed by a dealer that when they are not slamming themselves down 4 blackjacks in a row, they can't seem to make anything other than a 20 or 21 when they hit 12 or better and go an entire shoe without breaking one single time regardless of the count. He strives on, undaunted, throwing the middle finger up to the witch doctor pointing the bone even whereas I would have been gone at the first sign of troubles of this nature. Does that make me superstitious? I'm not sure but I have seen some freaky things at the tables along the way and over the years.

One thing with regard to surviving and riding out a neutral count, I have talked about this before with "Those neutral cards are not so neutral" a scenario can arise in which if you do the mathematical evaluation of E.O.R. you appear to have a neutral or near neutral count but the mechanics of the game catch up to you and you are facing an uphill battle when using a standard "number line" sort of count. I have some pages of notes on this that I could compile and put on here but it is useless information unless you are using an advanced Gordon style count, it's nothing that can be reflected by a number line sort of count in actual play. This happens to be when I see the "lucky dealer" tromping all who oppose them even in neutral counts. In that same playing session should you have some negative variance and lose also in some GREAT counts, your perception of it all is that you are tackling the dealer from hell. Traffic jams, accidents, horrible food at the restaurant or other negative occurrances that day are really going to stand out!

Flash needs to throw his two cents in here, as we have enjoyed discussions on this subject along the way while hanging out in "the belly of the beast" in Atlantic City.

Neutral Still Means Variance!



We as humans probably remembe the bad far more easily then the good especially since losing is such a shock because we are suppose to win! Also, if we leave a shoe then it's impossible for that shoe to become worse. We have to stick around for the shoe to be really bad:joker::whip:

I see things going bad with a hot dealer, as I have said before... unless there is a count worth playing, I bail. There are other tables. There are other casinos. To flounder along and get your ass kicked riding out a bunch of neutral count action against a dealer that can "do no wrong" wears on you mentally. Finally seeing a count worth playing and that same dealer slaughters you? As soon as the count slides back down or it's time to shuffle I hit the trail... the aggravations and frustrations of it wear you down and perhaps it's time to take a break anyway.

Click to expand...

Sure if it costs you nothing in terms of expectation; nothing wrong with moving on, who knows the shoe may accidentally be short:joker::whip:

"Those neutral cards are not so neutral"

Click to expand...

No, they are not so neutral. One still has the variance and as already mentioned we are more shocked by bad variance.:joker::whip: If you sit through a whole shoe of neutral hands that can be painful. If half way through the count bottoms out and we leave we have probably won a hand or 2 while the count went down. So those neutral hands leading up to that point don't seem so costly:joker::whip:

The more neutrals you play the bigger bank you need.
Variance, it's just the way it is.:joker::whip: