luck

to go for the full Monty or not may be the question

lmao of, i think there is an old phrase, 'going for the full Monty' or something like that. i guess a real AP goes for the full Monty.
maybe jim where we may have some common ground in our similar ruminating on these matters is the willingness to go for some of that Monty.:cool2:
yeah that's it, jus lemme have some of that Monty brotha. lmao. what is it they say in the street? " it's all good man." lol. or here's a good one, in prison the saying is "it a'int nuthin"...:whip:
the point is though an AP accepts going for that full Monty at some risk.
it just seems to me a full fledged AP has aversions to the idea of going for less than the full Monty especially if the risk is the same. that's an understandable position to take. me i guess i weigh the work i extend and the stress i endure with respect to Monty i end up missing out on with the hope of having the full Monty at least in the short term.

As I said before, if it wasn't for Bad Luck.... I would have No Luck at ALL.

I was sitting in that seat from Sat. 9am to 6:30pm last weekend.:cry: Lost mid 4 digits...:cry:
Then from 6:30-7pm I was in the LUCKY seat. Won high 4 digits...

Just to give it back from 7pm to the 3am :cry::cry::cry:

Is that what they call Unlucky SD? :laugh:

BJC

Where I'm coming from is this: My Mom used to tell me, "God gave you intelligence to use; now use it!" Add to that the adage: "Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you." And the adage: "God helps those who help themselves." To ignore the laws of probability would be folly, same as to ignore a red traffic light would be folly--you may get away with it for a while, but eventually your foolhardiness will catch up with you.

Also, recall that God has 20/20 foresight. Seeing that you were going to ignore the laws of probability, he might just decide that you need to learn a costly lesson. (A loving Father chastises his children.)

There is a sin of presumption; it is taking the mercy of God for granted. Don't do it. Rely on his providence, yes--but not if you are going to do everything you can to thwart it. Think about this--card counting may be part of His providence. Remember the story of the man sitting on his roof during a flood. A boat comes by to rescue him and he refuses the help, thinking, "I will put my faith in God to save me; I will rely solely on the Lord." This happens three times, each time the waters rising higher, and three times he refuses. Well, he dies of drowning and goes to heaven. First thing, he asks the Lord why he did not save him from the flood, since he put his whole faith in Him to do so. He felt like the Lord had let him down. Of course you know the rest of the story. The Lord replied, "I sent boats to you three times and each time you refused them. What more did you expect me to do?!"

The moral of the story is, if you are going to play blackjack for money, use the intelligence that God gave you, including your knowledge of card counting, hole-carding, and shuffle-tracking, and any other tools you may possess, to the best of your ability. And may the force (luck/providence/variance) be with you! BTW, you won't find these exact words in the Bible--you have to read a little between the lines. lol

right, right! maybe i didn't say it very well where i'm commin from.
lmao, maybe i was so humbled by automonk's prostigious luck i came to a loss of words.:joker:
more what i meant would be, i'll second the math, logic and science of card counting as long as i can have the freedom to over ride all that and make and act on decisions based upon all that and who knows what else.
so like yeah, i'm with you, "if you are going to play blackjack for money, use the intelligence that God gave you, including your knowledge of card counting, hole-carding, and shuffle-tracking, and any other tools you may possess, to the best of your ability."
edit:==>> an additional thought on this is to keep in mind that AP techniques are vulnerable to total ruin. rare as it may be that would be a type of not so good luck, something to apply intelligence to above and beyond orthodox AP techniques.
so i get what your saying and what your mom was saying. how do mom's get so smart? maybe part ways cause they care so much.
that guy on the roof and that boat story and gambling and all makes me think of a fuzzy awareness of a phenomenon i've noticed that one might think has to do with God and things we do and all.
that being how it seems as if God has so structured things in such a way that it's often pretty darn difficult to do something stupid or do something thats just plain wrong or unethical or immoral. it's like as if He usually seems to send maybe at least three boats to stop your improper action sort of thing.


but yeah if one insists upon waving those boats off eventually you get your way and end up in a heap of trouble. :whip:

more on luck & God and ?

=======>>>>>
i suspect luck (even in a casino) is more than standard deviation. i believe because of the human element involved in the execution of advantage play and unknown possible errors in the theory of advantage play that there can be substantial unknown standard error and perhaps even unscalable laws involved. simulations albeit billions of samples as they may be are anecdotal, there is even there room for question. one example question is on k_c's site:
http://www.bjstrat.net/shuffles.html
are there more questions? who knows, certainly not i.

quote from Taleb's, Fooled By Randomness ...... on Pascal's Wager....
"The philospher Pascal proclaimed that the optimal strategy for humans is to believe in the existence of God. For if God exists, then the believer would be rewarded. If he does not exist, the believer would have nothing to lose."

accordingly i'll borrow from Taleb's logic over the matter of Pascal's Wager.
wherein, accordingly we need to accept asymmetry in knowledge, there are situations in which using statistics and advantage play methods can be useful. but i do not want my life to depend upon it.
like Pascal, i will therefore state the folllowing argument. if the science of statistics and advantage play methods can benefit me in anything, i will use them. If it poses a threat, then i will not. i want to take the best of what the past can give me with out it's dangers. accordingly, i will use statistics and inductive methods (ie. AP) to make agressive bets, but i will not use them exlcusively to manage my risks and exposure. i want to make sure that the costs of being wrong are limited.

Luck ...

Funny, that reminds me of an episode I had at planet hollywood. You know. believers believe in a spirit world that somehow interacts with the physical world. They look for signs of God's will and direction. I am no exception. Well, what happened was funny. I'm playing blackjack, 6 deck, counting my a$$ off. During the negative counts I'm betting single units and stacking up considerable gains. Every time the count went positive I ramp up the bet and lose my a$$. Then I start again in a new shoe and continue to win like crazy in negative counts. Hmmm! Now, the dealer keeps telling me, "Sir, you seem to do a lot better when you don't bet so wildly. " Over and over throughout the session this dealer who seems wholly sympathetic with me keeps telling me that maybe I should tone it down a bit. He says maybe I should do what seems to be winning for me. He thinks I get a wild hair you-know-where and just start betting crazy, when in fact, the count has gone positive. I was lucky to keep my head above water. For a while I was sinking sharply and bailing out with two buckets at a time. Finally, I gave into the advice of the dealer and began to tone down my betting, playing more conservatively in positive counts. I got all my money back. Now the AP purist would say that I would have made a profit had I just hung in there. HAAHAAHAA I don't know. I really don't remember how my positive counts went after that. There is more in life than meets the eye. Anyway my angel, the dealer, was very happy to see me make a comeback. From the AP point of view, I was steeped in superstition. The sun went behind the clouds (in a solar eclipse) and I thought the gods were angry (Apocalyto). The thing is, God could have foreseen the appropriate time for a solar eclipse forever and just made it that way so that the nonbeliever would still be at liberty to disbelieve with science on his side to support him. Shades of the matrix, only with God, not the machines, as the matrix Creator. Funny isn't it, that science can envision a machine world god, but not a spiritual God. To me, the notion of a machine world creating a matrix of the complexity of the movie is harder to swallow than the existence of a spiritual God. Go figure!

really? lol i've never tryed that. but i do sometimes have either intuitions or delusions or superstitions that my mental mindset might in a word jinx some out come. especially the pride thing, which you all ready heard my rant on. lol.

reminds me of when i used to play a lot on the Seaescape out of Ft. Lauderdale. back then i really put forth the effort counting and i would wong out religiously. quite a few times stand out in my memory of how when i'd return to the table (just in time for the new shuffle to be dealt) that my table mates would exclaim words to the effect of "where was you! wow you really missed it, table really got hot, everyone was winning." that sort of thing.
and i've had my share of times like your story as well. and had some dealers feeling for me and sympathecally offering ideas.
just the other night my wife and i were at a joint. i'd previously blown $20 (uncharacteristic for me to play more than $3 on slots) on a penny slot machine and she had won $23. so we moved on to a blackjack table that has this sucker side bet. me playing and the wife sitting watching. all i was wanting to do was make up the twenty i'd lost. but the way it was going is i was just losing more and more units and then struggle back up to even and finally to where i had just to win $5 and i be rid of that demon slot loss lol. (i was ashamed of myself for going over my rule of no more than $3 on slots). so at that point it had been pretty much time went by and a fair number of shoes. the wife asks me "when we gonna go to dinner". and i tell her we can go right now, but this lady that had been playing beside me (she'd been playing the sucker bet) she says, "wait don't go yet he hasn't made his $20 yet". she tells me to play the sucker bet. she says she's been watching my hands and i'd been hitting the three card poker all night with no bet on it. well i was hemming and hawing tryin to weasle out of it. the wife tells me go ahead and bet it. well, lol so i did. lost the bet too and the hand. so now i got $15 to go to get rid of the slot demon lmao.
the wife says play it again and the lady next to me says yeah play it again.
they were ganging up on me. so i played it and hit that sucker lol. ended up leaving the table $35 up besting the damm slot demon and making two women feel like hero's. lol.
sure is more than meets the eye and way more than makes it through to the brain and even more than after all that, that one manages to understand. lmao.
i dunno why but all this makes me think of how it is i went from being a guy trying to be an AP to a gambler trying to use AP. funny though that it was QFIT that sparked the idea in me. of all people lmao. you see i noticed this very minute differance lol, between QFIT and Sonny. Sonny as it turns out would likely bet lower on a TC=1 while QFIT just a tad higher. Sonny's qualitative explaination being that of Schlesinger's in the sense of not getting enough bang for one's buck and QFIT on the other hand in a qualitative sense (likely backed by his simms) taking the position of todays games being what they are you need to bet that much at TC=1 to have a good likelyhood of ever getting anywhere sort of thing. well at this point i suspect each is right from his own vantage point. it did however puzzle me for a while when i noted the slight disparity. but i think what it was that i sided (in my mental mind lol ) with QFIT on the point if for no other reason that i so very much agreed about the point of 'todays' games sort of thing (ie. they are crap).
coincidentally i realized this stuff around the time i'd went on my 'blackjack sabbatical' of soul searching after my big losing streak that coincided with my bankroll being sizable enough to raise my spread from 1-8 to 1-10.
so what ever, in essence what i realized was from my big down swing (only really big one i had in two years) was that the risks involved were for real risks (ie. not just some glossed over concept), and i realized that the level of betting i was able to muster would never likely in the long run amount to much for the effort i'd have to put forth (in great part due to the crap games available). so i guess i'd have just given it all up excepting for the fact i love the game so much. so i started fooling with this fuzzy counting approach (what ever it is) and then i ran across Kasi's posts and his fuzzy bet, nothing set in stone approach and his philosophy of 'no big, deal nothing life changing, sort of thing' but with all that having an understanding of what to expect and what it is your gonna do stuff like we practice in wwII.
so i guess what i've come to realize after all that is how it's really not to hard to survive the casinos with out a whole lot of serious damage comming down on you. maybe you just have the very best understanding of what to expect that you can, maybe you do the best you're willing to do as far as discovering an advantage and then knowing your prospects you take your shots sort of thing. maybe some of those shots taken are a gamble but it's a gamble taken from a relatively stable and safe position for which you've got a pretty good idea of what kind of damage you might sustain. just maybe get lucky every so often. so far it's been fun. :cat:

am i my brother's keeper and is ignorance bliss

interesting article, interesting questions. lol i haven't read the full article and not sure i know all the questions. but i think i know what it's pretty much about.
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=223162
maybe it's essentially about the old story Cain and Able and am i my brother's keeper. interesting enough there was supposed to be this game the brothers were playing. :whip:
Genesis 4 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
4And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
5But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
6And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
8And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
9And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?
10And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

and there is another passage perhaps not connected except in a sense of perhaps the question of what is reasonable in the responsiblility of a 'keeper'.

Ecclesiastes 7 (King James Version)
15All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
16Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?
17Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?

so the question we are interested in is questions of things like the cashier overchanging or underchanging chips, the dealer overpaying or underpaying, scavenger plays and stuff like that there.

Proverbs 27:23 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
23Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.

lota stuff to try and spin my argument lmao :devil:
so but anyway yeah we're our brother's keeper.
we should take care of bro and do bro no harm.
question might be as to how much of our energy should we have to extend to protecting bro and how much energy should bro have to extend to protect his own self. point being neither bro or us needs to extend so much energy as to be over wise on the matter. we both got a life after all.
none the less we do have a responsibility to mind our own security and safety.
then as students of AP we have some knowledge about things like casino mistakes and scavenger plays. we know that it's possible to take advantage of these matters and profit as a result. the crux of the matter might be how flagrant are we in the matter with respect to our own conscience.
now comes the matter of ignorance can be bliss. :eyepatch:
i'm thinking because of the even responsibilities our bro and ourselfs have with respect to these matters that we have an asymetry with regard to our watching out for our selve's and a right to some 'innocent' ignorance on our own parts dealing with it all.
but as far as this knowledge about things like casino mistakes and scavenger plays one can in ones honest ignorance, forgetfulness and imperfection of understanding enjoy the fruits of such phenomenon with relative innocence while maintaining vigilence and dilligence regarding ones own safety.
for example, the cashier exchanges your chips for cash. you count your cash and you should count it twice (at least) for your own protection. we may or may not do that with due dilligence as the case may be but the point is we normally have a sense of satisfaction in the transaction that we got our money. we do this because of uncertainty in our perfection of counting. our bro should do it as well. if i know bro over paid me i think i oughta make bro right. if i double checked for my own safety and i have a doubt as to if bro overpaid me i don't have a sense of more repsonsibility to check again for bro's sake. i got a life and far as i'm concerned it doesn't have to be spent being sure that bro lived up to his responsibility to his own self. heck there are often enough times that i walk away not fully certain of my own security in regard to the matter of the exchange. so why can't i walk away in my own sense of security and maybe wondering in ignorance about bro's. sorry bro.
same thing with over payment doubts by the dealer. if i'm in my ignorance doubtful that the dealer may have over paid me i'm not going to extend the energy to argue the matter. that's in essence being over righteous far as i'm concerned. but if i know for a fact the dealer over paid me then i'll give the dealer back the differance.
same sort of outlook on the matter of scavenger plays. if i have only a fuzzy certainty about those matters (which i can assure anyone that is the case) then i can execute those plays in relative innocence with respect to the consequences for bro. :cat:
i just wonder if St. Peter is gonna buy all this. lol.

I wouldn't be too scrupulous about such things. After all, you entered into a contract of sorts with the house. You have a right to challenge an underpayment as well as an overpayment, but neither is a requirement of the contract. The house stipulates that it will take care of its interest in the game, and you are expected to take care of yours. If the house policy is to notify the player of his underpayment when caught, you should probably follow suit in the moral sense (one good turn deserves another), but you have no contractual obligation to do so. As far as doubtful situations go, don't waste your energies. You'll only be holding up the game for time-consuming discussions and follow ups, being a general annoyance to the other players and possibly the dealer.

lmao well yeah it's that contractual obligation within my self that i'm getting at, not the casino. lol.
in essence i want to escape my own moral strictures by keeping myself ignorant as can be so i can ream the casino and my fellow table mates with out feeling bad about it. lmao. :eyepatch: :whip:
to where i'm equating ignorance with innocence as far as my silly self is concerned. rationalization is to much work when just being dumb can do the trick with no effort. :cat:

Ahhh!!! The old "ignorance is bliss" gambit. But it is not something that you can consciously employ unless you have an extraordinary capacity for self deception......which may underlie your avid interest in fuzzy thinking. It's all beginning to come clear...er...I mean fuzzy, that is. lol This may be a job for fuzzy Hilbert-space type thinking. Get my drift? If you do, start over and repeatedly reread what I said until you no longer understand what I'm saying....then everything will be all right. View attachment 1497

yep that's it. self deception is a natural for me due to my prediliction for hardly ever fully understanding anything, being easily confused, being unable to process complex counter intuitive information easily, being often uncertain, having a poor memory, having a tendency to jump to conclusions and if not then being hopelessly indecisiive, having an inability to concentrate for long periods of time, being easily distracted (especialy by long legged cocktail waitress's in low cut blouses), having a tendency to prognosticate for all the wrong reasons (ie. gamblers fallacy), being a natural dreamer beset by all manner of superstitions and wishful thinking and being a hard worker only as long as i can do it the easy way (ie. kind of lazy and a playbaby according to my third grade teacher, the second one, not the first one that flunked me). probably there's much more that i can't think of right now. see there i don't even have a good grasp of my weakness's lol. but i know all this is manifested in all it's glory especially prevalent in the casino evironment. oh yeah and on top of all that i'm a scarity cat. so maybe hopefully i've got nine lives, just not sure how many are left lol. :cat:
but on that Hilbert space stuff i'm still hoping for an easy explaination:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=101574&postcount=13

View attachment 1509 View attachment 1508 View attachment 1506 View attachment 1504 View attachment 1507 :laugh::laugh:

philostratus redux...blackjack AP theory vs humanity

lemme paraphrase and borrow some thing interesting from "Fooled by Randomness" -Taleb

the Greek philospher Pyrrho who advocated a life of equanimity and indifferance, was criticized for failing to keep his composure during a critical circumstance (he was chased by an ox). his answer was that he found it sometimes difficult to rid himself of his humanity.
if Pyrrho cannot stop being human, i do not see why the rest of us should resemble the rational man who acts perfectly under uncertainty as propounded by advantage play (<<===my words) theory. i discovered that much of the rationally obtained results using my computations of the various probabilities do not register deeply enough to impact my own conduct.
.........
one of the most irritating conversations i've had is with people who lecture me on how i should behave. most of us know pretty much how we should behave. it is the execution that is the problem not the absence of knowledge.
........
we need tricks to get us there but before that we need to accept the fact that we are mere animals in need of lower forms of tricks, not lectures.

I was very proud of myself in a humble sort of way, if you get my drift, when yesterday I saw my ship, the USS Bankroll, go down in flames as I repeatedly lost in positive counts, but without losing a grain of my composure, taking it like a man (like they did back in the day, when it was not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game). No whining, no depressed looks, no regrets--the dealer, sweet lady, said as I departed, "The cards just wern't going your way." And that was all there was to it. lol I actually felt good about it. I did what I wanted to do, well within my means, and it was just not meant to be. So, what's the big deal? hahaha I hope I can donduct the remainder of my life with similar poise and detachment. I think everyone would be happier if they could learn this lesson.

I respect your Honesty. You really dont hear that many stories about those of us that lost. Sometimes, you can play your game flawlessely, make no mistakes and still lose.

Sooo how much did you lose...tell me, tell me

Now, now! [I am editing this out. I thought I was answering Sagefr0g. Duh! Why don't I pay attention! Sorry, Sir Sage. -->Don't get froggy on me!] That is not something I wish to share. lol But it all goes back to my theory about the matrix-like quality of all that is, the sense of perfect providence, and nothing being left to coincidence, since all was foreknown by an all-powerful Being who "had no choice" but to shape all things according to His Nature, which consists of Love, Justice, Mercy and infinite Patience.

Haha I could have been placed in that run of cards where it all went my way, counting or not counting. "Could have, would have, should have" In my theory of life you just have to trust in and through whatever happens as being in some unknown and not understood way, the best of all possible outcomes for the given person at the given time in the given manner. That it often seems to make no sense makes perfect sense to me. "My ways are not your ways." It would be good to return to the ways of former times where it was not whether you win or lose, but how you played the game. That is IMHO the ultimate goal of competition. We are limited by our ability and by circumstances, but everyone can do the best he can. Nothing more can be expected of a man. This in mind, we should be celebrating the man who gives it his best over the man who wins without honor or the dignity befiiting a human being.

yes, one of the rarely spoken points. the unknown burial ground of AP's that not just lost a trip roll, or maybe a series of such unfortunate events but that totally bit the dust for what ever reason. unsung hero's, perfect in every way that vanished in some percentage of risk of ruin or perhaps some unknown cause that was just as devastating. the dark side of luck for which even brave men might best learn to avoid. no formula exists that can help us with that problem. still it might be wise to try and devise measures against fortuna's dark side folly as they may be let us err on the side of caution.

I just had the perfect ending for being backed off the other day. My wife wanted a bite to eat, so we went to the place that backed me off the other day when I was $500 down. While she was getting a sandwich, I began playing video poker, Deuces Wild. I must have played 4 or 5 hours and wound up winning--yes, you guessed it--$500. How about that! In a way, when they back you off while you are losing, they are constructively stealing your money--at least, they're not giving you an opportunity to get even. Thinking back to the way I played, I doubt they could win a conclusion that I was counting in a court of law, since if they review the films they will see that I did not always ramp up when the count went positive, and I did raise the bet at other times when the count was going down in negative territory. Of course you can't take it to court--I'm just saying they were relying on very skimpy data. For a large hotel to sweat a possible counter who is losing his money defies imagination--but there you have it!

I wonder if there will be a happy ending for the sessions yesterday when I lost my shirt in positive counts? Haha That would be sweet.