luck

Well, basically, I agree with you 100%.

I negelected to mention I was going to take advantage of a Sears appliance sale that weekend wherein I counld get free delivery and installation, with removal of old machine too noless, but, although I had a Sears card with an expiration date of 5 months from now, they refused to take it over the internet. With 45 minutes left before the internet "sale" ends I called some 800 credit card number and was told my balance was zero. Tried again and refused again. Called some other number and finally was told they had cancellled the card because I hadn't used it frquently enough. I asked if they had notified me when they cancelled the card but they said their policy was not to send out a notice every time they did that or it would cost too much.

Sure, I asked why they told me the card had a zero balance when I phoned as opposed to saying "card cancelled" but they didn't know why. I even asked why not just wait 5 months and not mail me another card if I wasn't using it enough. They didn't know why they didn't choose that option either.

Then they told me I could always just apply for another credit card after I had asked "can you just re-instate this card now" and they said, of course, of course not.

So I told them, I will never set foot in a Sears store again and he thanked me and asked me if he had answered all my questions satisfactorally and had given good service. I told him, yes indeed he had.

So, I went to Lowe's and used a regular credit card. Saved me $100 too. Until I had to rent a U-Haul to pick it up since it wouldn't fit in my fancy Buick Century.

Cancelled (opted-out) of all my Sears e-mails but I'm still getting them, the b*stards.

But I have to face facts, I am not what one calls a "handy-man". I don't mind minor injuries, they're expected, I just hope, even when just hanging a picture, I don't have to replace the wall.

Been there, done that :grin:

But, taking that extra $1, still bugs me. It has to factor in somewhere, don't you think?

I tried to rationalize that 4 times in the last few years I had bought a 4-lightbulb pack and the 4th lightbulb I used didn't work right out of the pack.
I let it go. I rationalized a couple times I came home without something I had bought on the receipt - apparently they failed to pack it. So maybe I was entitled to that extra $1 after-all.

I don't know - be careful out there :grin:

I read something online recently that linked luck to being attentive. I think a study was done to look at a newpaper and on one page was in large bold type "tell the researcher you see this and get $50". Those who earlier thought they were unlucky mostly missed it. Those who considered themselves lucky mostly saw the statement.

To take that to blackjack. Perhaps if you are more attentive or with-it-ness you catch the flashed card or a few more. Maybe you catch a few more pay out errors.

Zengrifter will like this one, maybe you subconsciously notice the actual values of the cards so in those close pays you "guess" right.

Maybe you need to be lucky:

Preparation

Good frame of mind

Good Karma

With-it-ness

Look at these two different definitions of luck, the first from Webster's dictionary, and the second from Wikipedia:

a force that brings good fortune or adversity

Luck (also called fortuity) is a chance happening, or that which happens beyond a person's control

In my wildest imaginings I never once thought of luck as a force (definition 1)! Shades of Star Wars? These two very different definitions point to the impossibility of coming to terms without first having agreement on basic terms. I have been frustrated in some discussions on this topic, and maybe the reason for this is that we do not all share the same idea of what luck is--maybe we are in essence talking about different things and expecting somehow to find agreement. That can never happen.

good point. we've been from black swans to standard deviation and all about.
luck's a nebulous concept overall. in casino's and for example blackjack i think luck's been pretty much tamed down to standard deviation with well behaved tails on the bell curve sort of thing over the long haul. like anything, complexity can muddy the waters. like most any simulation i know of requires constraints that give you well behaved results. i guess i'm interested in what happens when you mess around with those constraints, maybe in such a way that allows for decision making and judgement. say you do something that may or may not be outside of those constraints and get some results, hold those results up against expectation and standard deviation for say if you had made yourself live within those constraints then make a decision about what you further want to do. in short using knowledge so as to try and capture advantage or even temporarily standard deviation (ie. luck) that may not have been earned as a result of applied skill. thats something that goes on in the short term where it's pretty much agreed most anything can happen. and what is the long term but a bunch of short terms added together over time, sort of thing.
sigh, same ole song and dance, i know.:whip:
lady luck? does she have a poker face? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyDRbp1ZPp8

Yes, same old...and to get to those strings of good luck experiences, I trust you will string together some bad luck experiences that invariably seem to happen in between, so that when you add them all together, you get the true long run--dead even, zilch, zero, nada, nothing but vapor--the thing dreams are made of...ehh? :whip:

hmmm, me thinks i hit the nail on the head:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=113098&postcount=6
:whip:

So you agree? lol :grin:

if they ever manage to get me in a nursing home and they let me have a computer with internet access, i'll let you know.

WTF? What do you mean? Don't leave me hanging on this one, Mr. Fr0gMan. :grin::joker::whip::laugh:

Yes, same old...and to get to those strings of good luck experiences, I trust you will string together some bad luck experiences that invariably seem to happen in between, so that when you add them all together, you get the true long run--dead even, zilch, zero, nada, nothing but vapor--the thing dreams are made of...ehh? :whip:

hmm this deserves a better response than the first one i rattled off. lol.

but all i can say on the bad luck experiences thing, is the same thing i'm pretty sure any AP is gonna say.
wonging in would be best, if not at least wong out of negative counts.

and yes even playing all positive counts bad luck is still gonna happen or that negative fluctuation (perhaps more rigorously stated negative variance).

or have some high enough spread to deal with the negative implications of an awful lot of waiting bets. (yuck)

that said, i'm not convinced the voodoo ideas of setting goals and some sort of loss limits is entirely with out merit.

i haven't an argument to support such notions but frankly i've just accepted the statements of experts that setting loss limits is of no value. never bothered to put any real thought into the notion. wouldn't hurt to give it some thought.:whip:

Bad luck is not a function of negative counts. Bad luck comes in both negative and positive counts. The bad results that you experience in negative counts is more attributable to house edge than to bad luck. We shouldn't confuse the two.

Another way of saying it is luck is all you have after perfect advantage play. It has no influence one way or the other in the long run. Good and bad luck perfectly cancel each other out (in a game context).

Yes!
This will work in the long run, just as all advantage play will.

But you're slowly coming around to it.

Either that or take the voice of experience and scientific research at its word.

ok, yes, in negative counts you not only have expected bad results, you have good and bad luck as well.
standard deviation i believe for the zero and negative counts tends to be a bit greater than that of positive counts. at least for the one example i'm looking at this moment. if you added up all the standard deviations at zeor & negative counts and subtracted those from all the standard deviations at positive counts, i have no idea what you'd get. probably my example isn't so good, cause it cuts off and i guess averages SD at <=-4TC
and goes all the way up to TC=9.
this was for a six deck s17das game 75%pen full table i think.
your point is well taken for absolute AP play in the long run, still though wonging at least can get rid of a lot of your bad results, be it either the negative count luck factor or the disadvantage factor. leaving one then to only deal with the vagaries of expectation and standard deviation (luck) in positive counts.
long run like you say expectation wins out and luck cancels out.
long as standard deviation (luck) didn't get you before the long run resulting in ruin.

again, with in limits it will work. ruin is always a possibility. just the point being, there is no certitude, one is compelled to take the roller coaster ride and hope the thing stays on the track. again, i say yuck.
me, if i'm ever gonna get on a roller coaster again, it's gonna be one where the rider has control.

i believe there is merit for such tact's outside the casino walls. it's said there is no intrinsic value for them for orthodox advantage play. that seems reasonable, maybe even mathematical. i could definitely see where it would slow down the progress of an orthodox AP.
does that mean that stop loss and goals can not be part of a process that yields advantage (ie. 'street smart' advantage)? i'm not so sure.



voice of experience is merely anecdotal. scientific research has been known to miss things. i'm certainly no one to say that the voice of experience and scientific research is wrong, one just has to wonder in the case of blackjack and maybe other stuff if such knowledge can have it's practical use from more of a layman's perspective and grounding.

just as a crazy imagination flight of fancy example. lets put our self's in the twilight zone for a moment, transcending space and time, lmao. the year is 1809. a certain, one Mr. el'perfecto aslan finds himself sitting in some wild west saloon under the baking western sun at a table of chance. the game blackjack. a traveling snake oil salesman stopped in town and introduced the game. and Mr. aslan sitting at said table suddenly and inexplicably is imbued with the knowledge but not the skill of the greatest AP player of all time from the year 2009. how would our hero do, compared to the rest of his fellow players?

You're straining a bit against the goad. lol

On the roller coaster: You do have control if you have enough money. But I fear you may tire of the game before you reach your goal. I am worn out by roller coaster rides. I am now restudying poker. The advantage is higher--there is no roller coaster--proper play should win you 5 out of 6 sessions with average individual losses less than average individual winnings. You can win on only the scientific, but the art of play will reap higher rewards. And you can pick your games by watching the table play for a short time.

if you mean by goad, what to do with bad luck, your right.
perhaps that goal shooting and stop loss voodoo stuff. lol, i dunno.

what's my goal? oh yeah, no big deal nothing life changing sorta thing. have fun, maybe win a little.
i'd love to play poker, thing is man what a learning curve. not sure i have the patience for all that. then say you learn to be a good player, what i've heard is that catching games in a casino is hardly worth it because of the rake. that is unless you are willing to play high stakes games. shudder.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndoe
Well, I suppose I've earned my stripes now - last week I took my first big dive. Damn that variance! 250+ units down in a few days of play. I suppose my long winning streak had to end sometime.

On several shoes, the count skyrocketed, but I just couldn't win a hand. Sometimes not a single win after several hands of TC>+6. Boy, does that make the BR bleed quick!!

Even when I tightened up and only wonged in at +1 or +2 (with a good act), I *still* got slaughtered. This after waiting around endlessly for a +EV shoe.

I am quite confident my skills are in order; I had to be REAL sure I wasn't making any mistakes (my partner attests I wasn't - he lost too, just not as badly).

It'll happen to all of us eventually, of course. It's part of the game, and that RoR is a very real number..

To be sure, this is money I can easily live without, as I'm young, employed, and have a very replenishable bankroll. But it still stings.

At least now my favorite stores can post a nice loss for me, even if the cheap bastards didn't give me much of a rating.

Originally Posted by creeping panther
John,

What you must learn to do is not accept the *variance* but learn how to stop it, and or deal with it, as in nipping it in the bud.

Think outside the box... be proactive.

6d shoe right?

CP
__________________
"Midwest Masters Of Advantage", "Strength and Honor."

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndoe
8D in this case, with good pen. (usually 1 deck)

I'm keeping my eyes open for other opportunities, but I haven't seen many; I could learn shuffle tracking and such, but it's not clear it will be viable in this case. Opportunities for hole carding are very rare, as are scavenger plays. Am I missing something?

My biggest variance reducer was aggressive wonging in/out with a good act, but even that wasn't enough in this case of a spectacularly (for me) bad run.

John, your posts indicates the likelihood that at some point you lost heart.
did at some point in the battle, did you feel that sinking, hopeless morose despairing sense of the battle at some point? what would your loss's have been if you had retreated, not surrendered at that point?