imaginary count imaginary bankroll |i| = 1 ?

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#1
this thread and some other one got my feverish brain to thinking:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=11068
it's no big deal. just some things maybe a recreational player might consider if for one reason or another they find orthodox counting a bit much but maybe they still play blackjack often enough to have hopes of making a buck or two or at least breaking even or at least not losing so much money over time that their activity would verge upon the specter of reckless gambling.
there is a downside to the idea. you might still have to really do some orthodox counting and you'd still be advised to have a good understanding of how counting works. you'd also need to practice to develope a skill level of fuzzy counting. then too there is an element of more of a gamble because your even more uncertain of what's going on than you are when counting orthodox. or you could make it more of a gamble and not even try to assess the hi/lo ratio of the pack to be dealt and just play basic strategy. but you still need to have the skill of a card counter and be able to do it.

so anyway the fuzzy count thing was what i started with. one of probably many problems with the approach is that you can't simulate it. so you have no way to measure how you've been doing. that's where this imaginary count and imaginary bankroll come in. point being an orthodox counter can have a yard stick to measure his results. an orthodox counter has for a given game and game plan an expectation as far as ev and standard deviation at any given moment in time relative to his play. the idea being say if your just using fuzzy counting or heck really maybe counting and fuzzy betting or maybe even just basic strategy at what ever bet level that you can hold your results at some given time (number of hands) and compare your results to that which a orthodox counter would expect. so you can use simulations and a spread sheet like Kasi's that we use in the weekend warriors and use them as a yard stick as the 'ideal' against your 'fuzzy' play. really when you think about it probably even a seasoned pro's play is a bit fuzzy when held up against a billion round simulation. just the vagories of casino conditions alone can contribute to such fuzzyness.

so but anyway an example would be:
you play some game. you know the parameters of orthodox play for that game. you have a good idea of the ev for an hour's orthodox play and the various levels of standard deviation for an hour's orthodox play. that's your imaginary count.
so what you really do is just fuzzy count or count and fuzzy bet or maybe just basic strategy and screwing around with the bets in some way.
so now say you 'luck out' and win some amount in say an hour or less or what ever.
so now you can hold up the yard stick of your imaginary count and say wow i'm at the expectation of a pro counter, or wow i'm one standard deviation or what ever above some pro counter. then you can decide to do what ever. stop play, go on and gamble some more, play orthodox what ever. then repeat the imaginary yard stick comparison.
so the biggest problem as i see it is when things don't go so well. the part that's gonna happen ie. you lose money.
thing is you can still hold that imaginary yard stick up against your results and time played or hands played. you can say well this sucks i'm below a pro's expectation or i'm into one standard deviation of a pro's negative fluctuation. so it's a problem but not the end of the world. the remedy being to go ahead and play orthodox for a while. yeah you may continue to lose but that's just a part of orthodox expectations. just maybe keep grinding a while and hopefully dig out of the hole. and you could do this over sessions or in a session what ever it takes.

then the other idea is instead of maybe having some humongous bankroll maybe one could have an imaginary bankroll. the idea that you don't have to set in stone really what your lifetime bankroll is. really in a sense you don't even have to really have the money. lol.
just set some lifetime bankroll size that's reasonable to you in your mind. some amount that if you had it you'd think it wouldn't be life changing if you was to lose it as opposed to the value of maybe winning over time. keep track of what your winning and losing by sessions or trips. one can assess a risk of ruin and probabilities of doubling an imaginary bankroll just as easily as one can do so with a real bankroll.
so but of course you want to make sure the rents being payed, there is food on the table, babies got new shoes, savings are built up with in reason all that sort of thing.
so but in that sense you could more or less just play with what ever trip roll against an imaginary lifetime bankroll. just really watching the bottom line as you go along.

so all that is really just some ideas. maybe it's all off the wall pie in the sky.
lemme know which..... lmao.
i know it all probably needs some tweaking. maybe throw it all out with the bath water. :)

lol i'm still trying to make parondo's pardox work in a casino.
 

Attachments

#5
Great post thread - this is what the Voodoo forum is really all about.

"Imaginary Count
Trumps Fuzzy Count
When Used With
Lifetime Imaginary BR!"

FractalClump look out! zg
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#6
zengrifter said:
Great post thread - this is what the Voodoo forum is really all about.

"Imaginary Count
Trumps Fuzzy Count
When Used With
Lifetime Imaginary BR!"

FractalClump look out! zg
thanks, i think :confused::eek::rolleyes:
i'll go with the fractals if i could understand them.
but the clump :whip:
well i say clump :whip: but i don't really understand the clump idea. it's supposed to be just as invalid as some of the stuff i'm talkin bout. lmao
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#8
creating order out of chaos

ok here's a real life play synopsis according to my imaginary ideal game for a real life game where i used fuzzy counting instead of orthodox hi/lo counting a couple of days ago.
uhmm instead of seven players (which was a parameter of the sim) as expected it turned out me one on one with the dealer then two other guys jumped in. oh and this particular joint didn't have late surrender (which was a parameter of the sim). i got off to a poor start losing $35 almost immeadiately. then i worked my way back up to even and when i hit $7.50 above my buy in i ran for the hills. temporarily locking in $5.50 above the imaginary exepected ev of $2.00 . not trying to say 'locking' in any amount of money or that losing any amount of money is significant. however if luck would have it that such locking could be replicated enough times (ie. where your bankroll builds significantly) then one could construe such luck as an advantage in the sense that "an advantage player for whom the house didn't get him early so they probably won't get him" (aka Schlesinger) sort of thing.
just an anectdotal example not meant to be evidence of validity of the idea of imaginary counting.

58 hands
up $7.50
 

Attachments

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#9
sagefr0g said:
then the other idea is instead of maybe having some humongous bankroll maybe one could have an imaginary bankroll. the idea that you don't have to set in stone really what your lifetime bankroll is. really in a sense you don't even have to really have the money.
Alot of counters maybe bet to a roll they don't have at the moment they are betting to it. Nothing wrong with that.

Replenishable rolls, trip rolls, hail mary rolls.

What was your lowest $ point as a weekend warrior? You're betting to a $100K roll but so far it turns out you could likely be in the same place now with a lot less of a roll.

Even if you actually only had $20K and bet to the imaginary other $80K, you could reach a $5K profit 7 times out of 8. Once you made the $5K and now have $25K, you'll win your next $5K 9 times out of 10.

Or maybe betting to an imaginary roll is another way of saying the roll you actually have might have a high ROR lol. But still, often overlooked maybe, is the chances of reaching a goal may be alot higher than one would think despite the high ROR.
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#10
sagefr0g said:
then i worked my way back up to even and when i hit $7.50 above my buy in i ran for the hills. temporarily locking in $5.50 above the imaginary exepected ev of $2.00 . not trying to say 'locking' in any amount of money or that losing any amount of money is significant. however if luck would have it that such locking could be replicated enough times (ie. where your bankroll builds significantly) then58 handsup $7.50
What was your bankroll or buy-in amount?
 
#11
Kasi said:
Even if you actually only had $20K and bet to the imaginary other $80K, you could reach a $5K profit 7 times out of 8. Once you made the $5K and now have $25K, you'll win your next $5K 9 times out of 10.
We need a fact checker on aisle five, please. zg
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#14
zengrifter said:
We need a fact checker on aisle five, please. zg
Oh ye of little faith.

If your disbelieving it, thanks for making my point.

In this case, the guy would be spreading $25-$600 with an 800 unit ($20K)roll with an ROR of 43% in a play-all 6D game with no index use.

Despite the high ROR he will reach $25K, 7 out of 8 times.

This is child's play for Weekend Warriors. Download the sheet for details. You'll have to change roll to $20K and goal to $25K though.

Or, go plug in 1000,800,4.266,89.688 into Norm's ROR with goal but no time constraint calculator.

I'm just using the same formula his calculator uses so you should get the same results.
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#15
Kasi said:
Oh ye of little faith.

If your disbelieving it, thanks for making my point.

In this case, the guy would be spreading $25-$600 with an 800 unit ($20K)roll with an ROR of 43% in a play-all 6D game with no index use.

Despite the high ROR he will reach $25K, 7 out of 8 times.

This is child's play for Weekend Warriors. Download the sheet for details. You'll have to change roll to $20K and goal to $25K though.

Or, go plug in 1000,800,4.266,89.688 into Norm's ROR with goal but no time constraint calculator.

I'm just using the same formula his calculator uses so you should get the same results.
say no more it's done. fact finding mission complete:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=94107&postcount=12
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#16
Kasi said:
Alot of counters maybe bet to a roll they don't have at the moment they are betting to it. Nothing wrong with that.

Replenishable rolls, trip rolls, hail mary rolls.

.....
right. the thing is about an imaginary lifetime bankroll for me is it's just a guide line sort of thing. frankly and i guess it's each to his own but i don't want to commit any money to a lifetime bankroll. so the imaginary lifetime bankroll is just a whimsical tool to set some maybe guideline that would keep me thinking if i lost that much that i wouldn't be a degenerate gambler.
i really prefer to go it one trip bankroll at a time with the imaginary lifetime bankroll just kept in mind while watching the bottom line as things go along sort of thing.
heck i dunno whats going to happen far as my financial future five minutes from now much less the rest of my life's blackjack play. it's as far as i can make it out just a guess and a personal guess at that. the really only reason i used five grand was because that's close to what i've got left of my blackjack winnings since i've started ever playing. to me if i lost that i'd be depressed about it for a while but at least it wouldn't be dipping into my budget or savings related to other financial matters. so but far as i know even that vantage point outlook could change. thing is though at least i have a number to work from when i create a simulation that i want to set up as some ideal game plan. some imaginary game plan that maybe in reality i might not even choose to live up to. but that gives one at least a yardstick to measure one's goals and play and results against. and it's my prerogative to decide what ideal imaginary game for some imaginary lifetime bank would yeild a satisfactory result. how i might happen to achieve the result is also of little consequence to me. i'll be just as happy to achieve the result of the ideal play whether it's from playing according to the ideal game plan or playing below that standard. in this case the ends justify the means as far as i'm concerned to where like they say " it's all good". lmao. but that's not to say that if i decided i wanted to i couldn't knuckle down and play according to the ideal game plan if i should so decide that action is warranted. so i hardly worry one way or the other about the long run. i either enjoy the short run trip by trip or suffer the consequences of it. but i'm still mainly watching my bottom line according to my own judgement and gauging it all against that imaginary lifetime bankroll, concomitant ROR and the expected results of some imaginary ideal gameplan.
so but i just know that i can expect say if i play around 10,000 hands of my normal games that i encounter playing perfect basic strategy and flat betting that i can expect to lose say from $150 to maybe $1,800 . lol ten thousand hands at the rate i normally play as of late is going to take probably a hundred trips or more. sort of worse case that's losing $18 a trip.
or maybe if i really count and bet a 1:5 spread i might win from $300 to maybe lose $3,000 in ten thousand hands. really no big deal. but i can have a lot of fun over that time.
and heck with luck i might win a grand or so over that time. heck it could happen just playing basic strategy. or heck i might get really brave and hike my spread back up to 1:8 and really count and really win a little or lose a little more, maybe even get lucky and win a little more.
edit: heck i only started playing around three years ago with $300 dollars in my pocket and made as much as $7000 only ever max betting $60 and that was rare (think i steam bet $100 once and won) but anyway i still got $5,730 left. so if don't go hog wild i might last a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2B3x4vA-ZM&feature=related
 
Top