If you're an AP, have you ever considered getting a loan to finance your playing

Thunder said:
You dont think a 3 year loan would be long run enough? I'm guessing that would be the equivalent of at least 1,728,000 hands over 3 years assuming you play 60 hands an hour for forty hours a week and 240 days out of the year. Variance shouldn't be as much of a factor for that many hands.
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You need to check this math again. 60 hands an hour x 40 hours a week = 2400 hands per week. x 50 weeks a year = 120,000 hands per year. 3 years = 360,000 hands. A far cry from 1,728,000! However math aside, it's very difficult to play that much blackjack.
 
kewljason said:
You need to check this math again. 60 hands an hour x 40 hours a week = 2400 hands per week. x 50 weeks a year = 120,000 hands per year. 3 years = 360,000 hands. A far cry from 1,728,000! However math aside, it's very difficult to play that much blackjack.
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I'll tell you what.. Playing 40 hours a week is tough. My hats off to you if you can put that kind of time week in and week out. (it's physically tough... not to mention how hard it is to move around enough to keep the heat off).
 
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I'd take out a loan for 100k if I didn't have a home or any assets worth a lot outside of a retirement account (which is protected from bankruptcy).

10% isn't bad for an unsecured loan. I'd do it if you know you can count. You should be playing full time, though.

Leave the cash in a money market when you're not playing, and you should be able to get 1.5%. So that cuts the effective interest rate to below 9%.

And with a 100k bank, you should be getting flights for free. Actually, if you choose to do this, you should be living where the casinos are. Vegas would probably be the only place a 100k full-time player could get down full time.

In fact, your "overhead" might be lower doing this. Sure, you have $10,000 in interest payments a year, but if you lived in hotels you'd be saving a comparable amount in rent/mortgage and food.
I would live in the hotels, too. If you're willing to move once or twice a week, you should be able to live without any expenses besides tips at buffets. You might have an odd night where you'd need to pay $20 for a room downtown.
 
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moo321 said:
I'd take out a loan for 100k if I didn't have a home or any assets worth a lot outside of a retirement account (which is protected from bankruptcy).

10% isn't bad for an unsecured loan. I'd do it if you know you can count. You should be playing full time, though.

Leave the cash in a money market when you're not playing, and you should be able to get 1.5%. So that cuts the effective interest rate to below 9%.

And with a 100k bank, you should be getting flights for free. Actually, if you choose to do this, you should be living where the casinos are. Vegas would probably be the only place a 100k full-time player could get down full time.

In fact, your "overhead" might be lower doing this. Sure, you have $10,000 in interest payments a year, but if you lived in hotels you'd be saving a comparable amount in rent/mortgage and food.
I would live in the hotels, too. If you're willing to move once or twice a week, you should be able to live without any expenses besides tips at buffets. You might have an odd night where you'd need to pay $20 for a room downtown.
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Casinos do not give free flights or even free rooms to people that beat them on a regular basis. They might, for a week, or a month, but then you'd be toast.
 
shadroch said:
Casinos do not give free flights or even free rooms to people that beat them on a regular basis. They might, for a week, or a month, but then you'd be toast.
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That's why we rathole. I get about 2-5 junket offers a year from several companies that don't know I'm a long term loser.
 
moo321 said:
I'd take out a loan for 100k if I didn't have a home or any assets worth a lot outside of a retirement account (which is protected from bankruptcy).

10% isn't bad for an unsecured loan. I'd do it if you know you can count. You should be playing full time, though.

Leave the cash in a money market when you're not playing, and you should be able to get 1.5%. So that cuts the effective interest rate to below 9%.

And with a 100k bank, you should be getting flights for free. Actually, if you choose to do this, you should be living where the casinos are. Vegas would probably be the only place a 100k full-time player could get down full time.

In fact, your "overhead" might be lower doing this. Sure, you have $10,000 in interest payments a year, but if you lived in hotels you'd be saving a comparable amount in rent/mortgage and food.
I would live in the hotels, too. If you're willing to move once or twice a week, you should be able to live without any expenses besides tips at buffets. You might have an odd night where you'd need to pay $20 for a room downtown.
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Who's going to give anyone a $100,000 unsecured loan? The Corleones? And you're not going to have $10,000 in interest payments per year...but you will have about $35,000 in total payments per year which is going to eat up that $100,000 rather quickly. You won't be able to keep the money in any type of investment for any real length of time. And an effective interest rate of almost 9% is still way too high.
 
moo321 said:
...And with a 100k bank, you should be getting flights for free. Actually, if you choose to do this, you should be living where the casinos are. Vegas would probably be the only place a 100k full-time player could get down full time....
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I don't agree, and wouldn't get into full-time play (counting) without a $250K non-replenishable bank, unless I wanted to live in poverty while I was playing. Don't forget that you are paying your living expenses out of winnings and that dramatically increases your RoR. I'd rather play at quarter-Kelly trolling miscellaneous games around the US than living in Vegas being a bigshot.
 
Thunder Struck

kewljason said:
You need to check this math again. 60 hands an hour x 40 hours a week = 2400 hands per week. x 50 weeks a year = 120,000 hands per year. 3 years = 360,000 hands. A far cry from 1,728,000! However math aside, it's very difficult to play that much blackjack.
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Our friend Thunder has already demonstrated in this thread that he doesn't have what it takes to consider playing on margin.

Someone with sloppy math and unrealistic expectations of the game shouldn't be playing at all, let alone playing on leverage.
 
StandardDeviant said:
Our friend Thunder has already demonstrated in this thread that he doesn't have what it takes to consider playing on margin.

Someone with sloppy math and unrealistic expectations of the game shouldn't be playing at all, let alone playing on leverage.
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Well, I think Thunder, was just throwing out an idea for discussion purposes and screwed up the math a bit, rather than was seriously considering this option. At least I hope. Increasing one debt is the last thing I would recommend before starting a full time venture. A better option is to reduce your expenses to the bare minimum and go from there. Sell of the house, rent out the wife and kids and pay off the car, so you own it outright. (you may need to live in it...lol)
 
loan on losing?

I'm no expert nor even a person to be taken seriously when it comes to the math of this problem. I don't see why the question of team play did not come up if bankroll was the question. We all hypothasized the question with math and oppinion but non on the answer. I don't see why if your abilities are such that you don't query investors into your venue?
 
Automatic Monkey said:
I don't agree, and wouldn't get into full-time play (counting) without a $250K non-replenishable bank, unless I wanted to live in poverty while I was playing. Don't forget that you are paying your living expenses out of winnings and that dramatically increases your RoR. I'd rather play at quarter-Kelly trolling miscellaneous games around the US than living in Vegas being a bigshot.
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Well, if you have a $100k bank, it's not hard to live off of comps.

Even if you assume he's got to pay $20 a night for rooms (not hard in Vegas) That's about $600 a month for food. Add in maybe $400 for other miscelaneous stuff (phone, car, etc.). And then about $900 in interest payments.

So you have a $2000 nut. Shouldn't be too hard to make $100 an hour back-counting, and it shouldn't be hard to play for 20 hours a week.

I'm not saying I recommend it, I'm just saying it's definitely a livable lifestyle.
 
My buddy Wiley said he:

Got a second mortgage on his previously paid for home for 120K, put house in his beloved daughter's name, borrowed another 60 grand unsecured, and went out to the casinos for the next two years. Trying his best not to lose more than 2 social security checks in any given month. Playing 21 most the time but with some poker.

Figured if his own credit went to hell it wouldn't matter. Heck he didn't even use his own credit card to travel around the country. Just kept making the payments on it. Didn't tell me whose credit card it was! Probably a family member.

I'm not sure if everything he did was legal but perhaps I'm missing something. Then again there are probably some things he's not telling me. He had read "Donny Brasco" or something and decided the best thing to do was a creative accounting like the mobsters do; Put everything in someones else's name and try and get his personal, on paper self worth down to zero.
 
And another thing...

The problem with the "loan thing" is that leverage serves to magnify volatility as a percentage of initial equity. The volatility in BJ is bad enough when leverage is zero. Leverage magnifies volatility in direct proportion to the size of the loan divided by the starting equity before the loan.

Imagine joy of looking at your results for a given period and realizing that you've lost twice (or more than) what you're worth....
 
StandardDeviant said:
The problem with the "loan thing" is that leverage serves to magnify volatility as a percentage of initial equity. The volatility in BJ is bad enough when leverage is zero. Leverage magnifies volatility in direct proportion to the size of the loan divided by the starting equity before the loan.

Imagine joy of looking at your results for a given period and realizing that you've lost twice (or more than) what you're worth....
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When you lose even One Cent more than your worth... it no longer matters.
 
StandardDeviant said:
Our friend Thunder has already demonstrated in this thread that he doesn't have what it takes to consider playing on margin.

Someone with sloppy math and unrealistic expectations of the game shouldn't be playing at all, let alone playing on leverage.
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Standard Deviant, is this how you treat everyone who makes a simple math mistake one time out thousands? Do you judge people based on one event? For someone who preaches understanding the concept of variance and other things which affect blackjack performance, I find it highly ironic.You obviously have no clue what I do for a living as demonstrated by your remark lol. Let's just say I deal with margin every single day so the last person you should be lecturing about it to, is me. Margin is a double edged sword and is only to be used by professionals who seek more leverage. If my expectations are unrealistic, please point out what I said that was so unrealistic. Your remarks are quite out of line.
 
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Complete calculation

Ok now I'm going to get into the real nitty gritty of the math. Assuming that all of your food expenses are covered by comps and assuming that you have a $100,000 loan at 10% APR for 3 years, here is what I come up with for a list of expenses:

Your monthly payment will be $3226.72. Total interest will be $16,161.87.
Rent $500/month (sharing with one other person)
Utilities $100
Health Insurance $200
Car insurance $80
(Clothes, Doc visits, gas, car repairs, other misc) $200/month
Total : $1080 (If I'm missing anything big let me know)
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Total expenses including monthly loan payments $4306.72
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Income -

With 1% edge and 1% ROR over the course of 240 days playing 8 hours a day average here is what I get with that bankroll

1 unit =$58
average bet = 2.9676 units = $172.12

betting $172.12/hand average and 60 hands/hr. = ($172.12*60 hands *.01 (edge)*1920 hours (total hours played during year) = $198,283 /year =$16,523.60/month


$16,523.60 - $4306.72 (expenses) = $12,216.90 profit per month

This leaves you with $12,216.90 in case you don't do as well that month as you'd expect. Even if you do have a horrible month and lose money, you can still recover. I think though that over the course of 115,200 hands a year, variance shouldn't be that big of an issue and you should easily be within 1 SD. Other things to note. I think the 1% edge could be higher and it's possible to play more than 60 hands/hr. So I consider this to be a conservative estimate. IF you feel there are things missing from my calculations, feel free to let me know what they are and I'll adjust it.
 
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Are you in Vegas for the execution of the plan?

Your plan has you playing light black. Are you going to be able to escape surv playing 40 hours a week?

Playing 40 hours a week means you are working maybe 60 hrs a week since you have to include shoe time between tables.

Kinda of a meaningless grind too don't you think?
 
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