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"Get yourself a basic strategy card." Holy shit, he might as well have given you a rose, some chocolate and some money for a cab ride home.
edit: 110 units isn't very much by the way, and especially with not many hours logged I wouldn't be concerned. I think losing 110 units is probably close to 50/50. It depends on the conditions of the game, of course, but 110 units really isn't much at all in terms of standard deviation.
 
You MUST look at it from the perspective of max bets. how many max bets you lost? If it is less than 20 max. bets , you ain't got hit by bad variance. I had multiple times of losing 20 to 20 plus max bets in a single shoe or consecutive shoes. It is not that rare. I had dropped my bankroll to 50% to over 50 % twice and basically tapped out with only 5% left ! . Keep learning , good luck.
 
You just lose little pieces of clay. Seriously, as long as you are emotionally attached to your money you will find this endeavor too stressful. You have to expect big losses. There is no way around that. You have to watch the slow bleeding you give the casino in order to get tooth good situations. The good situations will have wild swings but will create a nice profit in the long run. Giving too much back with the slow bleeding at small disadvantage bets can really cut into your profits. You might only give a few hundred here and a few hundred there but that becomes thousands of dollars pretty quick.
 
"A characteristic of card-counting is moderately heavy losing
streaks then followed by winning streaks of dazzling brilliance."
-- Ed Thorp, Beat the Dealer​
 
Badbeat,

My only question is why talk to the pit boss? I can relate to the bad variance however, after 3 straight losing sessions. Nothing worse than having a great count, then getting 16s and 15s while the dealer is always showing a face card.

I will say this about variance; I think I previously had seriously underestimated it in my other gambling endeavors. I had a great MLB season in 2016, winning nearly 50 units. Then came 2017 and the juiced baseballs. I ended the season down 5 units, but that was after being down as much as 26 units in June of last year. While I feel good about my handicapping approach, positive variance definitely played a role in 2016, while it was negative variance in May and June of last year. The only difference is in blackjack, the variance is more clear cut.
 
I recently had a five figure loss on an opportunity with a much larger edge than standard card counting. Before my trip ended due to time constraints I got more than half of it back in dramatic fashion but unfortunately still left town in the hole a few thousand on a game that’s “hard” to lose at. Shit happens.

Here’s the thing though. Common wisdom is to just “understand the math and keep playing.” Another common reaction is to try and figure out just how bad your luck was. These are not the best reactions. What you should do after a heavy loss (or any other time, really) is to examine your game and what you think went right and what went wrong. Were there leaks in your game? Are you sure you did everything correctly. I went home after this loss, reflected, and will do research to see how I can take advantage of my opportunity even more. I am pretty sure I can improve on the edge I already had. I didn’t go home and sulk on how bad my luck was or try to figure out how many sigma I was down. That information won’t do me any good.

James Grosjean wrote an excellent article a few years back regarding the attitude toward losing. It changed my perspective and it should change yours.

https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gam...ve-variance-juicy-count-games-and-ishniae-sp/
 
stopgambling said:
You MUST look at it from the perspective of max bets. how many max bets you lost? If it is less than 20 max. bets , you ain't got hit by bad variance. I had multiple times of losing 20 to 20 plus max bets in a single shoe or consecutive shoes. It is not that rare. I had dropped my bankroll to 50% to over 50 % twice and basically tapped out with only 5% left ! . Keep learning , good luck.
Click to expand...


I'm down about 25 max bets for the the last 12 months. Represents 10% of my bankroll. I won't resize until it hits the 20% trigger.
 
hitthat16 said:
I recently had a five figure loss on an opportunity with a much larger edge than standard card counting. Before my trip ended due to time constraints I got more than half of it back in dramatic fashion but unfortunately still left town in the hole a few thousand on a game that’s “hard” to lose at. Shit happens.

Here’s the thing though. Common wisdom is to just “understand the math and keep playing.” Another common reaction is to try and figure out just how bad your luck was. These are not the best reactions. What you should do after a heavy loss (or any other time, really) is to examine your game and what you think went right and what went wrong. Were there leaks in your game? Are you sure you did everything correctly. I went home after this loss, reflected, and will do research to see how I can take advantage of my opportunity even more. I am pretty sure I can improve on the edge I already had. I didn’t go home and sulk on how bad my luck was or try to figure out how many sigma I was down. That information won’t do me any good.

James Grosjean wrote an excellent article a few years back regarding the attitude toward losing. It changed my perspective and it should change yours.

https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gam...ve-variance-juicy-count-games-and-ishniae-sp/
Click to expand...

Great article by Grosjean. Love the line "back in the day we didn't call it negative variance; we called it losing." I have been gambling for years and never heard of the word variance until I heard it at work maybe 10 years ago. When I think of the great handicapping works of authors like Andy Beyer and Steve Davidowitz, there was NO mention of the word variance.
 
Badbeat said:
I know I’m small time on this forum but I just had a losing session of 70 units preceded by a losing session of 40 units. I’m now in the hole. I have logged very few hours so it doesn’t mean a whole lot. I had a big loss early on and dug myself out. It’s after these losses I understand why so many fail at this. The swings are unbelievable. I’m truly impressed by those who do this for a living. You have to be a very unique individual to be able to handle these swings when your livelihood depends on it.
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you have to know you should go in with a 100 max bets most people on here go in with 200 max bets

you also have to know those who do this for a living have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-60 grand so if they lose 1/2 they can half there spread from 1-20 to 1-10 it recovers there losses big time and shrinks their RoR

and finally those who do it for a living have many stores to gamble it in case they get banned they are mobile and rarely stay one spot for more than 45min

i don't find it impressive for those who can do it, it just takes 60 grand followed by no bills or responsibilites, no kids and being mobile if you have all those and a good act your good to go gamble for gamble
 
Badbeat said:
It’s not a steady or predictable income year over year.
Click to expand...

you are very wrong, after you have logged a thousand to 2k hours in card counting and assuming you did everything right you are making income and yes it is income year after year

after the 2.,000 hour you should have double the roll and no longer gambling with your money but the houses money

and what evidence do i have? simulations, real life players, casino banning players. and ,much more
 
Badbeat said:
Do people actually play 2000 hours per year? I would think 500 hours is more realistic. There’s people on this forum who have made posts about big loses and having to play 300 hours to break even.
Click to expand...

It's not the number of yearly hours that matter. It's the number of hours invested in high quality games. Most of my playing hours are devoted to games with .046 house edges.
 
yes 300 hours is too tiny in card counting, one can even win money in a 98% game video poker with just 300 hours logged,

no you need to push out 2khr or a year and Don says even then you could still fall in that 1% crack of ruin, that why it is wise to go in with 60k or more if one loses 1/2 his BR just spread down to 1-10 until recovery, thats what Ken Uston did in million dollar blackjack. i think you would feel different about it if you had a larger roll to work with , and with that roll you can play until your hearts content. my sims show me i can easily lose 5k grand cold cash with a 1-10 spread bet min being 15$, but again if you truly think about 5k is nada compared to 60k just a drop in the bucket
 
It's about rounds played and n-zero, not about hours played. If you are selective about what you play you can get in a lot of rounds in a short time. If you use a top system n-zero can be greatly reduced.
 
JJP said:
Great article by Grosjean. Love the line "back in the day we didn't call it negative variance; we called it losing." I have been gambling for years and never heard of the word variance until I heard it at work maybe 10 years ago. When I think of the great handicapping works of authors like Andy Beyer and Steve Davidowitz, there was NO mention of the word variance.
Click to expand...

I agree with your comments and loved the article too. Thanks for posting it hithat16. This brings up another one of my pet peeves with APs. Instead of saying "good luck", they like to say "good variance" or something to that effect. I get what they mean but it's done to show their smarter than the average guy. I have a good AP friend and we always say "good luck" when we go to a casino. Skill is important but it also helps to have some luck too....or in mainstream AP lingo "positive variance". Lol.
 
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