The Long and Winding Road

I've been off the board for a while but still playing quite a bit.

In late August I reached my peak for the year, up 200 units. I then proceeded to experience a horrid negative variance run, I dropped about 120 units on the remainder of that vegas trip.

My next big trip was Biloxi. Again my luck was horrid.

Then Vicksburg, up about 50 units. Lost it all right away, kept the faith and got it all back by the end of the trip +20 units.

There was some smaller trips mixed in with all of this, but come November it was off to Argosy, where I never win. I was hot there and left with about 30 units, pretty good for the small amount of mixed play on their crowded 6D tables and marginal DD game.

So there I was, back up about 100 units heading into a 4 night trip back to Vegas around the Holidays in December.

Once again, enter the negative variance. I blew through 100 units, then another 80. Down 80 units for the year, bleah.

The thing with that final awful trip was I was getting the conditions and counts I wanted. I could not have asked for better odds. It was just that situation where every time you get a big bet out you lose.

This got me wondering about new money management strategies. More specifically, not pressing my bets up when things are going poorly. Those negative streaks are always going to come, but I certainly could have lessened the damage by not pressing when I just couldn't buy a winning hand.

Another thought I'm kicking around is per session stop loss limits. I'll sit down and lose 40 units in a session without flinching if the conditions and counts warrant it. Maybe I need to cut if off more quickly when things are heading South. I know as well as anyone you can lose 20 straight hands, one each on 20 different tables, but still...

So I am kicking around some things that seem unscientific here, but I've always had a notion that streak betting could somehow be exploitable. Blackjack can be a very streaky game as we all know.

I have several trips coming up at great places to play (Vegas x 2, Biloxi, Tunica). I always get free lodging, food per diem, and mileage or free airfare through my work. My situation could not be more ideal, but another 180 unit loss on a trip would be difficult to stomach (and finance), hence the money management ideas I am kicking around.

I appreciate any comments about the money management topic, even to include the unscientific topic of the science of streak betting. I'm not into voodoo stuff though. Any solid book references would also be great.

I know that some will say "you just have to play through it", but I'm always looking to improve my game. I play mostly quality DD games, almost full KO matrix with some true count enhancements.

sorry to hear about the down results Knox.
i'm with most around here in believing that it just isn't possible to fortell when those downward streaks or upward streaks are going to strike.
you could consider lowering your ROR. i think that would help the severity of your swings.

the thing about setting targets or stop loss, stop win targets is i think it reduces the number of hands you can get in. so it can lower your win rate some. interesting link below:
http://www.blackjackincolor.com/useless1.htm

Knox, out of curiosity, are you playing with a fixed or semi-fixed bankroll? You've been metioning the units that you're "up", but is that on top of a base bankroll of XXX units? Or are you pretty much just using a string of trip bankrolls?

Careful, you may not be thinking ploppy thoughts, but you're using ploppy language. There only place where this makes sense is if you're playing at a high enough level at the same places enough to where you need to purchase playing cover to make your bets look like a progression system (increasing only on wins or losses).

But, if you're not raising the bets in a high count when you're in a "bear market", then you're making a mistake, and basically pissing away any advantage to be gained by counting. More emphatically, you're not counting anymore, you're just a flat-betting basic strategy player.

I like Norm's graph on this one. The cardinal rule is to never leave a table when the count is high (modified by the AutoMonkey Corrolary, leave when the amount of security personnel is higher than the true count).

But, as long as you at least play out the high counts, Then I don't think it will really matter. Setting a stop loss will result in smaller losing sessions, but you'll probably have more of them. (Just like a win target would result in more, smaller, wins).

On bankroll size, I am replenishable but I am willing to accept the ROR associated with 100 units of a max bet of $125, about $12.5-k. So I am well within statistical realm of reason down 80 units. I just had always played on house money before, so the concept of playing from behind is a new and unhappy one.

I agree that you obviously should not walk away from a good count, so you need to have sufficient $ to buy in at that point if necessary. Then if you walk away at the end of the deck you have not lost anything. Also, quitting on negative counts is the best way to go out.

Probably what I will do is get a bit more aggressive with my wong outs, even to the point of absurdity. I'm just not patient enough to wong into 6D games and DD games it is not as important. I also will take any quality lower stakes game I can find, for example I have had nice success with $10-$75 spreads on DD games compared to the roller coaster of $25-$125.

I also typically spread to two hands and sometimes increase my max bet up as much as 50%, e.g. 2 x $75 on a $25 min. Since I am not in the mood for more losses, 2 x $60-$65 might help me to reduce any bad streaks in the short-term.

I guess the main thing you have to fight off is the boredom and potential burnout associated with a run of bad luck.

I received a PM about self assessment and I agree, we should always be open to that. I think my play is fine but maybe I need to switch to a high PE system since I play so much DD? Is it really worth it though in terms of EV? Most of the gain in counting comes from bet variation, and KO has a rock solid betting correlation.

Let me guess: the PM was from someone who knows someone who has a program which will give you an opportunity to improve your game... for a price.

Really, you need to just accept the variance built into the game. There's a reason we're expected to have 1000+ units available and that's because it's very easy to lose that much and there's nothing you can do about it. It's built right into the game, and no super count, extra indices etc. can change that. It took me a while to accept that, that working harder or smarter or anything else can't help you when your fate is completely linked to the turn of a card. All you can do is make sure you understand the math behind what you are doing, and keep doing it.

The only thing that strikes me, and who knows if it matters, but you always mention units as if they are the same. Yet it sounds like you play 6D, DD, maybe sometimes wong-out of exactly which games I'm not sure.

Like I guess you're comfortable with the risk of that 25-125 spread being the 1% max bet but sometimes you spread 10-75 and apparently had success with it. I don't even know if that's the same game, but that's not a 1 % max bet. The first is a 500 min unit roll and the second is a 1250 min unit roll. That's not the same either. Not that that means either is necessarily way out of line.

Is that 180 units you're worried about losing 180*10 or 180*25?

Surely, you'll have different unit sizes for some of these games? Won't you change how you bet even in the same DD game if pen gets better or worse? Or maybe you feel heat and decide to switch to a smaller spread for a while - will you change anything?

Have you ever sat down and maybe figured more exactly what's going on for the way you play all/any of the these games you actually play? Do you at least have an idea of win rates and risk?

Do you jump bets alot? Bet bigger off the top? Play indexes? Do DD rules change? Do you lose many trip bankrolls?

It just sounds like a possibility you may be playing at very different risks with different win rates at different times. Doesn't mean any of them are necessarily unreasonable. As long as you have a pretty good idea, great.

I'd start with double-checking the game you play most often and the way(s) you play it.

Just things to maybe at least think about a little bit. If there is any problem, and I'm not saying there is, after all I guess you're only down a little for the year, I doubt if it's with your playing of the cards or knowing the count. If anything, it's changing, or not changing, bets and ramps and ramp points under constantly changing conditions.

So I don't think switching counts would make much of a difference.

Good luck out there.

Yep, it's a drag!

OK, got my 80 unis back here on my latest LV trip so feeling a bit better. As stated on the other thread, going to check the lingerie and potentially weak dealers at Planet Hollywood now. Low stakes planned for the final day as it has been a good trip and I am satisfied. Damn I hated dropping that $4500 last trip though, the counts were great all the while!

PM me if you want a trip report, I'll have some decent tidbits on Vegas.

What Knox described are SMALL swings. Swings are good. zg

limiting your spread during negative variance?

To kind of point out the obvious here: This works if you know you are in a period of negative variance and since you must bet before the cards to the next hand are dealt, you just do not know. So you are simply reducing your spread overall and reducing your win rate, but you know this.

It is one of those human nature problems that effects our ability to beat this game. When that negative variance appears in a high count and we lose several max bet hands, we review and might say, "if I only had not bet as much as I did." This taken far enough will create a cardcounter who easily can become a lifetime loser because he never gets enough money on the felt.

ihate17

Thanks for the advice guys. I just wrapped up my LV trip with a 120 unit win, so officially back to playing on house money. I played conservatively with smaller bet spreads and highly unscientific progression betting that I at least correlated to the count. I also used the foolish technique of win targets (OK I got $500, time to go, that kind of thing). I also prayed a lot. I figure God would rather have me stick it to the man than stick it to me, hehe.

Off to MS next week, this was my best trip ever at this bet level.

:grin:

Playing on house money?

When does this house money become playing on your money?
Now if I get promo chips that can not be cashed but must be played in exchange for real chips, I can consider that as house money but if regular chips are in front of me, they are all My Money!

Now if you are ahead for the year, month, session, lifetime or whatever arbitrary time period you have chosen, I understand what you are saying but make sure it does not confuse the reality of the game you are playing.

I could say I have been playing with the house's money for the past 28 years (it took me 3 years to get ahead for good) but I still have had the occassion of having a losing year and though I will never play high enough to lose what I have won from the house lifetime, every single time I do lose, I consider it my money lost and not theirs.

In looking at a typical ploppy thought process:
Bet much higher when ahead because you are playing with the house's money.
Play more conservative when losing because you are playing with your money.

Do not do this unless you are resizing your bets based upon bankroll.

ihate17

small swings well i guess that's relative lol.
but yes it seems that swings are good but i'm not really sure how it is so.
i suppose that swings are representative of the potential advantage a game has. such as how single deck has such active variance of advantage and disadvantage compared to multiple deck. but then thats not the same thing as actual variance of results such as the negative fluctuation that we encounter in positive advantage situations. i wonder about negative and positive fluctuation results encountered in positive advantage situations for various games. that is are fluctuations in results more severe for good games than poor games?
but then i think swings can also represent how good of a count we are using and how well we may or may not be employing the count as well. those types of swings perhaps may not be so good of course. where for example the ace/ten front count has greater swings result wise than say the hi/lo count or ko count for example.
but for the long run i really think it is that the swings aren't really so important as the advantage or disadvantage one is playing at accerts it's self.

so maybe swings with an advantage undelying it all are sort of like this?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080208/tc_nf/58279 (Archive copy)

Firstoff I can't say I really understand it either lol.

But I think if one flat-betted every hand the variance wouldn't change that much at all whether the count was -10 or +10.

Take a 4.5/6 AC game. Maybe if you played all hands you would have a 1000 units in your bankroll and spread 1-16 or $10-$160. Maybe your stan deviation is $500 for an hour's play. So that's 50 min-bet units, maybe 20 average bet units and a little over 3 max-bet units.

Maybe you backcount the same game and only spread 1-2. But now that might mean $100-$200. Maybe now a stan dev would be $600 for an hour's play. But now that's only 6 min-bet units, 4 avg-bet units and 3 max-bet units.

Same game, same rules, same pen, same bankroll, same ROR, just different ways of playing it that maybe gives diff win rates/hr. But would you have 20%more dollars in a stan dev for a win rate 100% greater?

And what would these ranges look like after 1000 hands instead of a 100 or be if they were 2 stan dev instead of 1?

All 1 stan dev means, after all, is that your results will fall in that range, whatever it is, ~68% of the time.

So, no offense to anyone, but when someone says they won or lost x units, if that's all I know, I really can't say if it's a small swing or not. Were they min-units and how long did he play? Was his bankroll 100 units or 1000? If it was different games, it's likely even more meaningless like if unit sizes or spread ranges changed.

So to me the swings can be much more important than the EV of a game. What good does it do me to be playing a great game with a 50 unit bankroll if I can expect a 50 unit low-point quite often in the next 1000 hands?

And, like you say, underlying it all are all the usual suspects like what, if any indices are we using, are we using cover or jumping bets, how much we bet when, what count are we using, did the pen change alot, do we play multiple hands, how many players at the table, etc etc. each of which changes things a bit.

So, I guess real life tends to make it all a big guess anyway

well all that above that is represented by the ........... was an excellent analysis IMHO or at the very least makes one think and understand what ever.
and like you say winning the $20-40/hr is fine just not the losing at that rate lol. and that is where i don't understand Zen's comment that swings are good unless the fact is that swings are somehow representative of advantage potential ....... which is what i suspect. i mean take Niagra Falls for example. it would be a terrible ride going over in a barrel but hook a turbine up to it and you can light up a lot of light bulbs.
and yah a big guess is just what i think it is. i mean you might think you know something but do you really? negative and positive fluctuation points towards a lesson that certainty is maybe just out of reach even when we count. thats where i believe probably just knowing and putting into practice the idea of never over betting may just be as important a concept as any other when it comes to advantage play......... not just for your day to day sessions but for what ever you guess might be your long haul prospects as well.
here is an example of what (i think) overbetting can do to you. the graph shows a series of fuzzy count sessions where i was doing pretty well. then note the point where the TC and RC got very high and apparently i hit some negative fluctuation in a positive advantage situation. lost some of my winning but then got PO'd and started overbetting. and this is just a practice game lol.

Frog: If you are not TCing your KO you should start doing that.

Ihate: I was talking lifetime, which for me is not much more than a year. I think that 3 years would probably get me ahead for the long term too, but that all depends on rate of increase to my bet level I suppose. Anyway, I thought about you several times when I got a 17 this week.

I did well in Biloxi and have now recovered my $4500 on the dismal holiday Vegas trip + 150 bucks. Not too bad for a ploppy eh?

thank you Knox but i'm not using KO. my main problem with what happended in that graph was i lost my cool when i had my cool and was betting properly (more or less) and then hit some negative fluctuation in a positive advantage situation. and then i got upset about it and started overbetting with the obviously disasterous results. and that was just a practice game in CVBJ........
scary to think if one did that in a real casino.