The Long Run - And Other Fiction

#61
Q

QFIT said:
You post talks about leaving a shoe because you have already made what you would expect to make in that shoe. Basically, the post in its entirety talks about how a human can somehow decide when to leave based on results. That's gambler's fallacy.
Well then, that is somewhat like the Fallacy of expecting because the count is very high that you are going to win all those Big bets.:)

CP
 

QFIT

Well-Known Member
#62
creeping panther said:
Well then, that is somewhat like the Fallacy of expecting because the count is very high that you are going to win all those Big bets.:)

CP
Well, it is not a fallacy to believe the count affects your odds. It is a fallacy to expect your short-term past results have some effect on your short-term upcoming results.
 
#63
135

1357111317 said:
CP I think you are missing nynes point. He made the point about poker. He is essentially saying what you are saying. In his example he "got the money in good" meaning got money in at a huge advantage. You can't control the fact that the guy hit runner runner to beat you. Its just like me playing a 9000 SCORE game. I actually managed to lose over a long session. Am I disapointed that I lost? Yeah I am. But I could have done nothing to improve my chances of winning. The fact that I lost there is just part of variance. I did my best to come out ahead but the cards wouldn't allow for it. Sometimes on individual sessions coming out ahead just " Isn't in the cards".
Of course, we can't win all the time.;)

CP
 
#64
Q

QFIT said:
Well, it is not a fallacy to believe the count affects your odds. It is a fallacy to expect your short-term past results have some effect on your short-term upcoming results.
And.... is it not true you will lose more bets with the much higher counts?:)

CP
 
#66
135

1357111317 said:
Well then whats wrong with accepting a couple big losses in the short run as being bad luck if you know you are playing a very strong game?
Why would you EVER ACCEPT a big loss....short or long run?? Why would you ever subscribe what you are doing to LUCK??

You may.. but ....I refuse.

AS to playing a "very strong game",,,if indeed you are, why have the BIG LOSS?? That would tell me directly that I am NOT playing a very strong game, for a variety of reasons....time to do a GUT CHECK. ;)

CP
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#67
QFIT said:
You post talks about leaving a shoe because you have already made what you would expect to make in that shoe. Basically, the post in its entirety talks about how a human can somehow decide when to leave based on results. That's gambler's fallacy.
QFIT, thank you very much for your reply. i shall think about that.
i very much respect your opinion.

i honestly didn't mean to imply that it is wise to leave a shoe, basing such a decision only on results. i did mention the idea of sitting through a 'juicy' count, regardless of prior results. i will freely admit, that i might not do that (sit and play through juicy counts) in every case, reason being that i may have a goal, or i may just be to darned nervous (just plain scared) about the idea that 'i could just lose that money', lol.
i can see where you would confer the mantel of gambler's fallacy on such an idea if it was based solely on results.

it is because of you (your software) and the knowledge that we possess about card counting theory that it is possible to have knowledge about a single shoe and it's range of results before one even sits down to play.

i don't mean to imply that a sustainable advantage can be gained from this knowledge or from some voodoo approach to a single shoe.

it is only my intent to state that such knowledge exists and can be used one shoe (or less) at a time.
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#68
So I have a session where the dealer pulls 21 3 consecutive times of of a 3-6 and then hits back to back 10 up blackjacks. For all of those I have over 30 units out. If I end up dropping 200 units in one shoe how can I just "not accept" that?.
 
#69
135

1357111317 said:
So I have a session where the dealer pulls 21 3 consecutive times of of a 3-6 and then hits back to back 10 up blackjacks. For all of those I have over 30 units out. If I end up dropping 200 units in one shoe how can I just "not accept" that?.
I am very sad that you had that experience, but you now must search your "very soul" as to how, and why, that happened,, the conditions..all the conditions, be hard on yourself,... then look at it as an opportunity to learn, to harden..to search..read my post #66 again.

Thank you for your honesty in relaying what occured to you, and again I am very sorry.:(

CP
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#70
That exact situation did not happen. Stuff close to that has happened but not quite that exact situation. I know you are advocating playing a good game but my point is that even on a very good game ( SCORE of 150+) It is very possible to lose multiple sessions in a row. I know you advocate surrender and one game I am thinking about in particular has a very powerful surrender rule.

I guess my point is here is that I know in a sense what you are saying is that try and play as good of a game as possible so you have less losing sessions but my point is that MATHEMATICALLY you cannot win every session or even 75% of your sessions. ( Assuming you keep your sessions of equal length. One could probably win 95% of their sessions if they quit every time they got ahead any amount of money) The variance in a straight counting game is just too high compared to expect to win more than 60-65% of your sessions. If you could reach the N0 every session you played you would still only win 83% of your sessions.

So I am representing the mathetical point of view that while one should look on at ways to minimize losses one should also EXPECT to have some losing sessions as well as the occaisional big loss. However if you are playing with an advantage you should EXPECT to have more and bigger winning sessions than losing ones.The reason for this is the laws of probability and the inherant variance in completely random sequences of cards. ( Well some people known its not completely random, but from a counting point of view the order of the cards is completely random)
 
#71
135

1357111317 said:
That exact situation did not happen. Stuff close to that has happened but not quite that exact situation. I know you are advocating playing a good game but my point is that even on a very good game ( SCORE of 150+) It is very possible to lose multiple sessions in a row. I know you advocate surrender and one game I am thinking about in particular has a very powerful surrender rule.

I guess my point is here is that I know in a sense what you are saying is that try and play as good of a game as possible so you have less losing sessions but my point is that MATHEMATICALLY you cannot win every session or even 75% of your sessions. ( Assuming you keep your sessions of equal length. One could probably win 95% of their sessions if they quit every time they got ahead any amount of money) The variance in a straight counting game is just too high compared to expect to win more than 60-65% of your sessions. If you could reach the N0 every session you played you would still only win 83% of your sessions.

So I am representing the mathetical point of view that while one should look on at ways to minimize losses one should also EXPECT to have some losing sessions as well as the occaisional big loss. However if you are playing with an advantage you should EXPECT to have more and bigger winning sessions than losing ones.The reason for this is the laws of probability and the inherant variance in completely random sequences of cards. ( Well some people known its not completely random, but from a counting point of view the order of the cards is completely random)
135,

What have I said that you disagree with, do you disagree that you should win.... You said that loses are to be expected, big loses and smaller wins..you are almost,, seems as if, you are arguing for losing, accepting it so you can play on...tell me that isn't so.

You also know that the very experienced Pro players on this site do not even consider counting as AP play :yikes:. They have at time ridiculed it and straight counters. Now I know you pride yourself in being a skilled shuffle tracker and that being the case you SURE AS HELL should not ever accept any loss when you have a game that can be tracked. Were you tracking the game where you lost so big?

My problem is with new players, like SD, who burn through all their Bank while being fed the BS about the long run, because they will never reach it, because they go broke after a few thousand hands. I have seen this with so many players over the years, they are brilliant, but they come and then dissapear, maybe burning through their college money at the casino in the meantime. Disaster:(

The Long Run mythology destroys players, gauging by sessions allows true critique of play and possibilities well before you are wiped out.:cool: This is also so very important today with the Junk games so many here play and think they can beat. You cannot beat the junk games by counting alone and if you are STing you better be damn good or you will burn out even quicker.

Wonging in...have at it and enjoy.:rolleyes:

BTW, were you tracking in that game where you had the big loss?

CP
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#72
"EXPECT to have some losing sessions as well as the occaisional big loss. However if you are playing with an advantage you should EXPECT to have more and bigger winning sessions than losing ones"

Why did you interperet that as "You said that loses are to be expected, big loses and smaller wins"?

I said that you WILL have some losses but you WILL have more wins than losses and on average your wins will be bigger than your losses.

Here is a question for you. You were offered a game where you could bet on either heads or tails. You will get paid 1:1 if you guess it right You know that the coin is weighted towards heads and therefore it will land tails up 51.5% of the time and will lands heads up 48.5% of the time.

Anyone on the forum would obviously accept this game and bet on tails. Lets say you are betting on tails and you are down lets say 50 bets over 5 hours of play. Would you simply say, "I got unlucky and will continue playing this game"?

I see your point about people new to counting. I guess I am from the school of thought that you should know your ROR and variance and all that stuff before you embark on counting so if you do hit a rough patch you know that it was simply bad variance and not you making mistakes, playing a sub par game etc.
 
#73
135

1357111317 said:
"EXPECT to have some losing sessions as well as the occaisional big loss. However if you are playing with an advantage you should EXPECT to have more and bigger winning sessions than losing ones"

Why did you interperet that as "You said that loses are to be expected, big loses and smaller wins"?

I said that you WILL have some losses but you WILL have more wins than losses and on average your wins will be bigger than your losses.

Here is a question for you. You were offered a game where you could bet on either heads or tails. You will get paid 1:1 if you guess it right You know that the coin is weighted towards heads and therefore it will land tails up 51.5% of the time and will lands heads up 48.5% of the time.

Anyone on the forum would obviously accept this game and bet on tails. Lets say you are betting on tails and you are down lets say 50 bets over 5 hours of play. Would you simply say, "I got unlucky and will continue playing this game"?

I see your point about people new to counting. I guess I am from the school of thought that you should know your ROR and variance and all that stuff before you embark on counting so if you do hit a rough patch you know that it was simply bad variance and not you making mistakes, playing a sub par game etc.
135,

I hope that the game is kinder to you in the future and you do not experience such devastating "Variance" as you have written about above.

I pray that you are still posting here for many years to come.:)

CP
 

StandardDeviant

Well-Known Member
#76
Post-Thanksgivings Musings

Machinist said:
Yes SD, thankyou, I shall google more often.
Machinist, please understand I was just kidding. :) I didn't know what Zeno's Paradox was either, so I Googled it and read the Wikipedia entry. After that...I still didn't know what Zeno's paradox is! Maybe that's the paradox.

By the way, my first attempt at VP was successful. I was up about $2K after just 4 hours of play on $0.25 and $1 machines. I just wish I could claim that this was due to my skill at the game! :laugh:

Interesting article with a wacky conclusion...

So, in this game, if we define "long run" to mean approximately how long you must play before you're more or less assured of being ahead, the answer is about 200 consecutive hours.

CVCX shows me that after 200 hours there is about a 25% chance of being under water. That doesn't fit my definition of "more or less assured." It looks like 3,500 hours is more like it.

creeping panther said:
In order for the sim to be correct you must play the same game, the same rules, same pen, same conditions, same physical and mental condition...to have accurate math sampling. The same for a few, billion or a few million hands. This is a problem isn't it! And BTW, most of us will not hit a few million hands:rolleyes:
I think we use our sim runs as a drug, a drug that numbs us to the reality that we are always gambling at this game.

CP, your point about the sims running the same conditions, can't be overstated. Who plays this way? Who among us would run our bankroll from, say, $10K to $500k (in the mythical long run) spreading red chips 1:15, and still only be making $10 bets with a half-million dollar bankroll???

QFIT said:
Sage, this is the gambler's fallacy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy
While reading this, it occurred to me that, while if we play enough hands our play in total can perhaps achieve the mythical long run, our status at any point in time is defined by a bankroll and a risk of ruin.

This means that a successful player who has grown her bankroll from $10K to $500K is no more assured of success in the future than the beginning player, if she keeps her ROR constant by scaling her bets as bankroll increases. By definition, both face the same risk of ruin, which by implication means that neither have achieved the long run.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the long run is part of the gambler's fallacy.

creeping panther said:
And.... is it not true you will lose more bets with the much higher counts?:)

CP
True. We lose approximately the same number of bets as we do at low counts. We just lose more money at those high counts! :eek:

1357111317 said:
I guess my point is here is that I know in a sense what you are saying is that try and play as good of a game as possible so you have less losing sessions but my point is that MATHEMATICALLY you cannot win every session or even 75% of your sessions. ( Assuming you keep your sessions of equal length. One could probably win 95% of their sessions if they quit every time they got ahead any amount of money).
Right. Sessions don't matter other than from an emotional perspective. Results are defined by an EV, a SD, and total playing duration (PD). Chopping PD into sessions because we need to eat, sleep, and do other things does not change the underlying characteristics of the game.

Losing sessions don't matter. Neither do winning sessions.

creeping panther said:
You also know that the very experienced Pro players on this site do not even consider counting as AP play :yikes:. They have at time ridiculed it and straight counters.

...

My problem is with new players, like SD, who burn through all their Bank while being fed the BS about the long run, because they will never reach it, because they go broke after a few thousand hands. I have seen this with so many players over the years, they are brilliant, but they come and then dissapear, maybe burning through their college money at the casino in the meantime. Disaster:(

The Long Run mythology destroys players, gauging by sessions allows true critique of play and possibilities well before you are wiped out.:cool: This is also so very important today with the Junk games so many here play and think they can beat. You cannot beat the junk games by counting alone and if you are STing you better be damn good or you will burn out even quicker.

Wonging in...have at it and enjoy.:rolleyes:
A very interesting set of comments CP!!

After one year and some 15K hands of BJ, I am starting to see this counting business for what it is - a religion. There's salvation in the long run for the true believers who have the faith to turn the other cheek while the bankroll declines. Hallelujah!

I'm not sure where shuffle tracking (ST) fits into this religion. Is ST a form of exorcism that rids the deck of probability's demons? Maybe so, but something in my gut tells me that ST just amplifies the good and the bad. Maybe it's best not to mess with the devil...

I am happy (perhaps I should say relieved) to say that after ~14 months of play my bankroll is more or less intact. I've suffered no disaster, nothing even close. Yes, I've had a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride, but isn't that part of what brought me to this in the first place? And I've learned a lot, with your help and the help of others on this forum.

So the question becomes, "Now what?" as I enter year two of AP. :rolleyes:

1357111317 said:
Here is a question for you. You were offered a game where you could bet on either heads or tails. You will get paid 1:1 if you guess it right You know that the coin is weighted towards heads and therefore it will land tails up 51.5% of the time and will lands heads up 48.5% of the time.

Anyone on the forum would obviously accept this game and bet on tails.
It would depend on the minimum bet as a percentage of bankroll and how long one is allowed to play the game. If game conditions don't allow ROR to be below an acceptable level, one shouldn't play even if theoretical EV is positive.
 
Last edited:
#77
SD-Priestes

Thank you for finishing my Sermon, very good work:):toast:

:1st: Well done!

Can you beat the game counting? If you are playing a very fine game of 6d or less, and have great discipline, employ tactics and skillz well beyond what is generally considered the norm, yes, with great regularity.

Funny thing, but all those who have attended the Bash's, have exhibited all those traits.

CP
 
Last edited:

StandardDeviant

Well-Known Member
#78
creeping panther said:
Thank you for finishing my Sermon, very good work:):toast:

:1st: Well done!

Can you beat the game counting? If you are playing a very fine game of 6d or less, and have great discipline, employ tactics and skillz well beyond what is generally considered the norm, yes, with great regularity.

Funny thing, but all those who have attended the Bash's, have exhibited all those traits.

CP
And 15K hands have taught me that counting is only the beginning. Unless one is lucky enough to find a dream game with penetration so deep it takes your breath away, counting seems to have little impact. Sure, one can have some winning sessions, but that may be just from the randomness of the cards. Sure, if one just plays long enough the math will work in the AP's favor, but is spending years of one's life in smokey rooms filled with drunks and creeps just to (maybe) make a few extra $$$ something any sane person should aspire to? There are much easier ways to make some extra spending money.

I've started reading about shuffle tracking with the help of Sonny's incredibly useful posts:


and once again my eyes have been opened and I realize again that I have so much more to learn. At least the next time I end a shoe with a RC=+20 (like happened yesterday), I'll have something to think about while the shuffle proceeds. :)
 
#79
Sd

StandardDeviant said:
And 15K hands have taught me that counting is only the beginning. Unless one is lucky enough to find a dream game with penetration so deep it takes your breath away, counting seems to have little impact. Sure, one can have some winning sessions, but that may be just from the randomness of the cards. Sure, if one just plays long enough the math will work in the AP's favor, but is spending years of one's life in smokey rooms filled with drunks and creeps just to (maybe) make a few extra $$$ something any sane person should aspire to? There are much easier ways to make some extra spending money.

I've started reading about shuffle tracking with the help of Sonny's incredibly useful posts:


and once again my eyes have been opened and I realize again that I have so much more to learn. At least the next time I end a shoe with a RC=+20 (like happened yesterday), I'll have something to think about while the shuffle proceeds. :)
SD,

Yes, as a woman you would be more exposed to "creeps" bothering you.

Another thing, maybe for some of us it is not so much about......the money.;)


CP
 

Machinist

Well-Known Member
#80
There it is

creeping panther said:
SD,

Yes, as a woman you would be more exposed to "creeps" bothering you.

Another thing, maybe for some of us it is not so much about......the money.;)


CP
AAAAHHHHHHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is is CP in all his glory!!!!!!!!! I knew it, I knew it!!!!!!!!!!!!
CP what exactly happened to make you have this feeling inside, to rip this game apart????? IT'S NOT FOR THE MONEY, i knew it!!!! Hey everybody from the Bash, i don't think CPs act is an act!!! This guy actually becomes that deranged, BJ killer we witnessed.!!!! Kind of like the HULK...:eek::eek::eek:
Sorry to all that haven't seen CP in action, please attend a Bash then you will know what i talk about.
"For some of us it's not about the money" Does Brett Favre play football for money, hell no when you look at how he plays, its for the love of the game!!!! You can see it in Bretts laugh, his smile, when he cries at interviews about retiring , he absolutely loves the game and knows his end is near ..
Fortunately the game of BJ doesn't squash you like a linebacker into the turf... Mentally yes i would say thats possible for the newbies. But CP is a well seasoned pro, and the mental stuff is nuttin !!!!!! LOL
I too have a desire to crush the stores at their own games. It comes from a incident in my younger days, that sparked my desire. I wonder of CP?????
Thanks CP.....
 
Top