Computer Sim for Progression Betting
- Thread starter SPX
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Sonny said:
Ah, touche, you're probably right . . . but I guess I'm not yet to the point of not being curious. I know "trends" or whatever are not mathematical, but it seems that many people who are so obsessed with computer analysis have such a narrow view of this game.
I remember reading something about a betting system that hung tight and performed well in a sim . . . until the 168,000th hand when it began to fail. But you know what? Most people will never play 168,000 hands in their life. And I know that what happens in the long-term is supposed to indicate what you can expect in the short term, but apparently with this particular system you can be profitable for 168,000 hands!
I guess I'll put it like this. . .
If you were going to bet $1000 on which a person at a blackjack table would encounter first--3 losses in a row or 20 losses in a row--I'm sure you would put it on 3 losses. Why? Because it's a fact--and a mathematical (statistical) one, I would say--that you have a lot more 3 loss streaks than 20 loss streaks!
But you try to bring something like this up in conversation and the response is always something like YOU ARE ALWAYS MORE LIKELY TO LOSE THE NEXT HAND THAN WIN IT! but clearly that's a narrow view because it's PROVEN that as a losing streak continues, then less likely it is to go on for another hand.
Sorry to rant. But it seems that sometimes people are blind to such observations and then there is just no answer to them.
I remember reading something about a betting system that hung tight and performed well in a sim . . . until the 168,000th hand when it began to fail. But you know what? Most people will never play 168,000 hands in their life. And I know that what happens in the long-term is supposed to indicate what you can expect in the short term, but apparently with this particular system you can be profitable for 168,000 hands!
I guess I'll put it like this. . .
If you were going to bet $1000 on which a person at a blackjack table would encounter first--3 losses in a row or 20 losses in a row--I'm sure you would put it on 3 losses. Why? Because it's a fact--and a mathematical (statistical) one, I would say--that you have a lot more 3 loss streaks than 20 loss streaks!
But you try to bring something like this up in conversation and the response is always something like YOU ARE ALWAYS MORE LIKELY TO LOSE THE NEXT HAND THAN WIN IT! but clearly that's a narrow view because it's PROVEN that as a losing streak continues, then less likely it is to go on for another hand.
Sorry to rant. But it seems that sometimes people are blind to such observations and then there is just no answer to them.
No need to sim, I know just what you need after reading this! It's called the martingale. It's quite simple, and it uses this exact logic to bring in the money. You just double your bet every time you lose. If you have enough money to double your bet 20 times you would have to lose 20 hands in a row to go bankrupt! Otherwise you just keep winning and winning. Forget the sims, go out and start making money! Good luck! :devil:
PS You might only want to make it something like 10 hands, since you would need 2 million dollars with a 1 dollar unit to make it 20 hands. But you could definitely come up with a bankroll for 10, and come on, losing 10 hands in a row is still pretty unlikely right?
PS You might only want to make it something like 10 hands, since you would need 2 million dollars with a 1 dollar unit to make it 20 hands. But you could definitely come up with a bankroll for 10, and come on, losing 10 hands in a row is still pretty unlikely right?
Ugh, thanks for that. Controversial statement #x: The martingale has its place. Betting on Blackjack is an interesting book in which the author uses it in a way that is effective for him. Can it be backed up by the the math? Ugh. . . I'm not getting into it.
Anyway, speaking of math, statistics IS a mathematical branch . . . and it seems to be that you could set up some sort of betting system that is based on probabilities--as could be determined by a billion simulated hands--that could be shown to be profitable.
Try simming it this way:
Instead of playing 1B hands, sim it for ONLY 1500 hands. You can blast out 1500 hands in a weekend, simple. Record the results. Then, reset your bankroll to where it began, and sim it again.
Then do it 60,000 more times. Use a computer if needed.
Finally, average out all the results.
That's a more real life simulation, right? 600,000 people playing the system over the weekend, rather than one person playing the system for 142 years straight.
Say each "person" starts with $10,000. Assume $1 hands. That's $1,500 WR per person, with a grand total of $900,000,000 (just shy of our coveted 1B, but close enough). The grand total bankroll of the systemers is $6Bil.
Let's assume every single one of these people are PERFECT Basic Stratters, and okay rules. House Edge = 0.005%. In the end, they should have lost, in total, $4.5Mil, leaving them with a final bankroll of $5,995,500,000.00
Here's the bet: Let's run the sim. If the grand total earnings of all these people, playing the trends and not entering the long term, is positive (that is, above the starting $6bil)-- I will paypal you $1000. If it isn't, you paypal me $500. 2-1 odds on your sure thing!
Instead of playing 1B hands, sim it for ONLY 1500 hands. You can blast out 1500 hands in a weekend, simple. Record the results. Then, reset your bankroll to where it began, and sim it again.
Then do it 60,000 more times. Use a computer if needed.
Finally, average out all the results.
That's a more real life simulation, right? 600,000 people playing the system over the weekend, rather than one person playing the system for 142 years straight.
Say each "person" starts with $10,000. Assume $1 hands. That's $1,500 WR per person, with a grand total of $900,000,000 (just shy of our coveted 1B, but close enough). The grand total bankroll of the systemers is $6Bil.
Let's assume every single one of these people are PERFECT Basic Stratters, and okay rules. House Edge = 0.005%. In the end, they should have lost, in total, $4.5Mil, leaving them with a final bankroll of $5,995,500,000.00
Here's the bet: Let's run the sim. If the grand total earnings of all these people, playing the trends and not entering the long term, is positive (that is, above the starting $6bil)-- I will paypal you $1000. If it isn't, you paypal me $500. 2-1 odds on your sure thing!
How does it work?
I play craps for fun when I need a break from counting, sometimes use Oscar's Grind. I believe dice control is possible, but have never met anyone who could do it that I know of. I assume it's a very conservative system to hang in for a while, is it like "Triplet" or can I bet on every shooter and use it? Can you post it?
I play craps for fun when I need a break from counting, sometimes use Oscar's Grind. I believe dice control is possible, but have never met anyone who could do it that I know of. I assume it's a very conservative system to hang in for a while, is it like "Triplet" or can I bet on every shooter and use it? Can you post it?
Why do you say that? Most of the people who can run computer simulations have already tested progression systems and seen that they all fail. They’re not narrow minded, they’re just tired of answering the same questions over and over again when the truth is so widely known.
But you never know when that losing streak will happen! Just because it is a 1-in-168,000 shot doesn’t mean it will take that long to happen. It may happen in your first session, or your second. That is the fallacy behind the odds. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it won’t happen right away.
Because you can’t possibly lose 20 hands in a row without first losing 3. The guy who is only waiting for 3 losses will quit and will never get to 20 losses. That’s a trick question.
True, but it is not significantly more likely to win the next hand. You can watch the roulette wheel hit red 20 times in a row and it doesn’t mean that you have an advantage on the black bet. That happens all the time. You would have to lose maybe hundreds of bets before it becomes statistically significant. And even then, it still has to be big enough to overcome the house edge.
Another problem is that a loss in blackjack does not necessarily correlate to a rising advantage. There is no indication that a loss will involve lots of small cards coming out of the deck. It may, but the cards that have previously come out may still have you at a disadvantage. If you are only looking at win/loss information then you will be placing many large bets at a big disadvantage. A win/loss system does not accurately track your advantage at blackjack. That’s a fact.
-Sonny-
But you never know when that losing streak will happen! Just because it is a 1-in-168,000 shot doesn’t mean it will take that long to happen. It may happen in your first session, or your second. That is the fallacy behind the odds. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it won’t happen right away.
Because you can’t possibly lose 20 hands in a row without first losing 3. The guy who is only waiting for 3 losses will quit and will never get to 20 losses. That’s a trick question.
True, but it is not significantly more likely to win the next hand. You can watch the roulette wheel hit red 20 times in a row and it doesn’t mean that you have an advantage on the black bet. That happens all the time. You would have to lose maybe hundreds of bets before it becomes statistically significant. And even then, it still has to be big enough to overcome the house edge.
Another problem is that a loss in blackjack does not necessarily correlate to a rising advantage. There is no indication that a loss will involve lots of small cards coming out of the deck. It may, but the cards that have previously come out may still have you at a disadvantage. If you are only looking at win/loss information then you will be placing many large bets at a big disadvantage. A win/loss system does not accurately track your advantage at blackjack. That’s a fact.
-Sonny-
very very well said. Can't agree more. What if however, the losses occurred during a time when the RC was rising. Then what? Me thinks the odds of winning the next hand go up in favor of the bettor that lost the previous hand. In very high positive RC's, the odds can be as high as 5% for the player. If a player has a 5% advantage over the house, that 5% MUST show up at some point. Otherwise, cardcounting is a worthless study and exercise.
Not quite. The odds of winning may not go up significantly, only the odds of winning more money due to blackjacks and doubles. Even a card counter will lose more hands than he wins even though he shows an overall profit. That is why even professionals are almost always more likely to lose the next hand.
-Sonny-
-Sonny-
Sonny said:
Why do you say that? Most of the people who can run computer simulations have already tested progression systems and seen that they all fail. They’re not narrow minded, they’re just tired of answering the same questions over and over again when the truth is so widely known.
But you never know when that losing streak will happen! Just because it is a 1-in-168,000 shot doesn’t mean it will take that long to happen. It may happen in your first session, or your second. That is the fallacy behind the odds. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it won’t happen right away.
Because you can’t possibly lose 20 hands in a row without first losing 3. The guy who is only waiting for 3 losses will quit and will never get to 20 losses. That’s a trick question.
True, but it is not significantly more likely to win the next hand. You can watch the roulette wheel hit red 20 times in a row and it doesn’t mean that you have an advantage on the black bet. That happens all the time. You would have to lose maybe hundreds of bets before it becomes statistically significant. And even then, it still has to be big enough to overcome the house edge.
Another problem is that a loss in blackjack does not necessarily correlate to a rising advantage. There is no indication that a loss will involve lots of small cards coming out of the deck. It may, but the cards that have previously come out may still have you at a disadvantage. If you are only looking at win/loss information then you will be placing many large bets at a big disadvantage. A win/loss system does not accurately track your advantage at blackjack. That’s a fact.
-Sonny-
But you never know when that losing streak will happen! Just because it is a 1-in-168,000 shot doesn’t mean it will take that long to happen. It may happen in your first session, or your second. That is the fallacy behind the odds. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it won’t happen right away.
Because you can’t possibly lose 20 hands in a row without first losing 3. The guy who is only waiting for 3 losses will quit and will never get to 20 losses. That’s a trick question.
True, but it is not significantly more likely to win the next hand. You can watch the roulette wheel hit red 20 times in a row and it doesn’t mean that you have an advantage on the black bet. That happens all the time. You would have to lose maybe hundreds of bets before it becomes statistically significant. And even then, it still has to be big enough to overcome the house edge.
Another problem is that a loss in blackjack does not necessarily correlate to a rising advantage. There is no indication that a loss will involve lots of small cards coming out of the deck. It may, but the cards that have previously come out may still have you at a disadvantage. If you are only looking at win/loss information then you will be placing many large bets at a big disadvantage. A win/loss system does not accurately track your advantage at blackjack. That’s a fact.
-Sonny-
Okay, a few points. . .
1: In regard to progression systems, or any betting system for that matter, it seems to me that the failure is progression systems might have to do with the simplicity of the progression. As I've mentioned before, if you want to rely on computer simulations and believe them to be an accurate representation of real-life shuffles, then by analyzing the nature of the game you could determine methods in which to bet optimally. I remember reading something in Blackbelt in Blackjack about "situational betting" I believe it was called, in which a number things were determined to be true by analyzing trends in the game. For instance, the player is slightly more likely to lose a hand after a win, lose a hand after a push, to win a hand after a hard double down, and a number of other things that were determined.
Snyder determined the advantage wasn't much if you played according to all these rules--less than for a standard counting system--but still it was an advantage.
Perhaps when I say that I think a betting system can work, perhaps I am merely saying that there may be an equally powerful--or even more powerful--way to play the game other than card counting. After all, card counting is merely a betting system in which data from the game in progress is incorporated into your decisions to bet in certain ways. Perhaps with further analysis of the game, an even better way to bet could be determined.
And that's what we all want, right? To be clever enough to beat the game and win more money!
2. You're right, just because something is likely to happen doesn't mean it will--or won't--happen right away. As you say, that losing session could be session #1. But what you fail to mention is that even if you're a master card counter the first session could be a total bust. To refer back to Blackbelt in Blackjack, Snyder mentions a number of teams who, betting according to Kelly guidelines and counting properly, succeeded marvelously in losing their entire bankrolls!
Counting ONLY looks at the long run. Any single session can be a total bust. One thing that always annoys me is when a player who has been playing a progression shows up on a forum and says something like, "I was using Thomason's progression and it didn't work! Why?!" And then someone else answers, "I didn't work because it DOESN'T work!"
But that's intellectually dishonest. Because a progression CAN work for any single session. It can also fail. HiLo is the same way. Martingale is the same way. Whatever. To say it didn't work for you on your weekend in Vegas because it doesn't work over a billion hands is simply wrong. It didn't work because you didn't get the right cards. Just like those guys mentioned by Snyder.
3. It remains a statistical fact that 20-loss losing streaks happen a lot less frequently than 3-loss losing streaks. Period. Just like roulette. Red will come up seven times in something like 1-in-300 spins (or some number, I forget exactly) while an 11-loss losing streak will come up in 1-in-9,716 spins (or something like that). Consider this: There's never been a single instance of Red coming up 1,000 times in a row. So while the wheel is random, that doesn't change the fact that there are still certain characteristics that you can expect out of the game and it's not unintelligent to bet according to these (statistical/mathematical) realities.
Furthermore, it's also a fact that losing streaks, on average, are generally shorter in blackjack than in roulette. That's more data that can be taken into account as you play.
Sorry for being long-winded. I look forward to your reply and admire you for being a good sport (unlike some others who come along).
SPX
I have no reason to think that computers cannot simulate casino conditions accurately.
That’s not quite what he concluded:
“In deeply dealt one-deck games, with good (Las Vegas Strip) rules, all of these indicators combined might provide the player who is making small bets of $5 and high bets of $100 (1-20 spread) with an expectation of about $1-$2 per hour.”
http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/betting_systems_no_need_to_count_system.htm
Unless you can find the greatest blackjack game in the world and spread $5 to $100 per hand then you will still be at a disadvantage. The win/loss system is far too weak to be effective.
There are numerous ways to play BJ that are much more powerful than card counting. In fact, card counting is probably one of the weakest systems to get an advantage. It works, but there are definitely better ways. That’s where the other AP techniques come from.
Yes, but a good player will know the likelihood of that and will have taken that info into consideration. He will have chosen his bets to maximize his profit within a reasonable amount of risk. He may be comfortable with a 10% chance of going broke or he may budget for less that a 1% chance. Having one bad session, even if it is his first, will not impact a smart player at all, and it certainly won’t get him close to going broke.
That is why understanding the math is so important no matter what system you plan to use.
So all you have to do is wait for red to come up 999 times then bet on black since it will “never” happen 1000 times in a row, right? Or will it? Should you bet on black because it is “due” or red because it is “on a streak?” It really doesn’t matter because the house edge is still 5.26% on the next spin. You lose either way.
Are you sure about that? The win/loss percentages for roulette and BJ are almost the same (47%/53%). So how do you explain your average streak theory? And where did you get the numbers that prove that fact?
Same here. It might help if you read through some of the old posts in this forum since many people have suggested the same type of system you are looking at. Here are a few that stand out in my mind:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=5902
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=2807
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=4957
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=4634
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=909
-Sonny-
That’s not quite what he concluded:
“In deeply dealt one-deck games, with good (Las Vegas Strip) rules, all of these indicators combined might provide the player who is making small bets of $5 and high bets of $100 (1-20 spread) with an expectation of about $1-$2 per hour.”
http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/betting_systems_no_need_to_count_system.htm
Unless you can find the greatest blackjack game in the world and spread $5 to $100 per hand then you will still be at a disadvantage. The win/loss system is far too weak to be effective.
There are numerous ways to play BJ that are much more powerful than card counting. In fact, card counting is probably one of the weakest systems to get an advantage. It works, but there are definitely better ways. That’s where the other AP techniques come from.
Yes, but a good player will know the likelihood of that and will have taken that info into consideration. He will have chosen his bets to maximize his profit within a reasonable amount of risk. He may be comfortable with a 10% chance of going broke or he may budget for less that a 1% chance. Having one bad session, even if it is his first, will not impact a smart player at all, and it certainly won’t get him close to going broke.
That is why understanding the math is so important no matter what system you plan to use.
So all you have to do is wait for red to come up 999 times then bet on black since it will “never” happen 1000 times in a row, right? Or will it? Should you bet on black because it is “due” or red because it is “on a streak?” It really doesn’t matter because the house edge is still 5.26% on the next spin. You lose either way.
Are you sure about that? The win/loss percentages for roulette and BJ are almost the same (47%/53%). So how do you explain your average streak theory? And where did you get the numbers that prove that fact?
Same here. It might help if you read through some of the old posts in this forum since many people have suggested the same type of system you are looking at. Here are a few that stand out in my mind:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=5902
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=2807
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=4957
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=4634
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=909
-Sonny-
Okay, to respond. . .
1. Not much of an advantage, true, but it makes me wonder. . . What are other secrets lie hidden within the game that can be exploited? Card counting and situational betting are both merely ways of analyzing the facts of any particular session/shoe and attempting to determine the future. Could we, perhaps, find an even more efficient/accurate way of determining that future?
Also, you mention other AP techniques. The only one I really know about involves watching for the dealer's hole card, but I know that that's pretty much impossible in the casinos I've played at. What other techniques exist and is card counting the only strategy that can be used at any table (excluding CSMs), at any time, that are not dependent on sloppy dealers or other factors that may or may not be in place at any particularly time?
2. I wouldn't suggest you wait for the 999th streak of black on a roulette wheel . . . mostly because you'll be waiting forever. I could, however, say that betting according to the odds doesn't guarantee that you will win EVERY time . . . but can card counting guarantee that you will win EVERY hand when you "have the advantage?" Are there are not times when it seems like you win every hand in low counts and then lose all your big bets in high counts? Of course there are. But the important thing is not that you win every time . . . but that you win more than you lose. And if the odds state that when a certain series of factors are in place, based on an observation of millions or a billion hands, that you are more likely to win at that time than lose . . . then you may not win every time, but you should win more often than you lose.
3. I'm not sure that I am suggesting ANY particular system right now . . . merely trying to get some responses based upon what seem to me to be logical thoughts. But I will check out the threads you mentioned.
SPX