How do you beat a 6-deck game?
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sagefr0g
Well-Known Member
lol
ok but let's just not throw the baby out with the bath water lol
i would enjoy seeing a more rigorous discourse on the subject of 'mistakes'.
far longer? well maybe. sure the mistake free counter is less likely to tap out but my point is that it can and does happen.
sure you'll enjoy the book it is a good read. i believe and accept your antecdotal evidence lol about how often mistakes are made by counters who are genuinely giving it a go. i'd expect about 13% error rate.
zengrifter
Banned
Casual counting (ie, fuzy indices and higher freq of errors) probably costs an otherwise proficient practitioner about 25% of his edge. zg
nightspirit
Well-Known Member
Do we at least agree alltogether here that we do our best to prevent and avoid mistakes at the table? When I realized that I made an mistake during my practice sessions (which always drove me nuts!) I tried to set up the same situation over and over again until I knew that this doesn't happen again. It's my hard earned money i bet and it would be against my nature only to hope I do everything right. Mistakes and money doesn't match, that simple.
None in real life that I know of, that keep their ROR under 5%. Play how you want man its your money, thats what it comes down too. Sounds like the same sh*t you guys preach to the so called ploppies at the table. Hmmm... very interesting.
Automatic Monkey
Banned
"Your best friends won't tell you..."
Understood, but I think you need to know that the math does not support an inordinate fear of counting errors. And as far as I'm concerned, if the math doesn't support something, I'm not interested in it.
You're right that your emotions can get the best of you in this game. Believe me when I tell you that when it does, it's because you're overbetting and no other reason. Losing 100 units is a laugh when you have 2000 units in your pocket.
You can very easily lead yourself into superstition by neglecting to keep the quantitative aspect of every element of the game in perspective. Yes, missing a card causes loss rather than profit, but how much loss? Did you know that when we split 10's, it really does hurt the table? On this shoe and usually on the next one too? And that you really can get an advantage in some games by playing a progression? It's true! All these things are supported by the math , if you consider a 0.01% change in advantage to be worth investigating. These are all things commonly recognized as superstition that someone might think was viable strategy if I didn't say how small these effects are, and believing that avoiding all counting mistakes can provide a worthwhile benefit to the game is also, sorry to disappoint anyone, a superstition.
Regarding the title of this post, some of the discussion here reminds me of some old mouthwash ads stating "Your best friends won't tell you," referring to having bad breath. We can't tell when we have bad breath, and most people will not tell another person that they have it. So upon seeing this ad, some people would be tormented by the fear that they themselves may have bad breath and they have no way of knowing, so they go out and buy the mouthwash.
The simile that I'm trying to get at is that if someone were trying to sell you a product supposed to prevent you from making counting errors, they will oversell the effect of these errors ("You will be secretly hated if you have bad breath!"), convince you that you have no way of knowing that you make the errors ("Your best friends won't tell you!") and then offer you a solution.
Understood, but I think you need to know that the math does not support an inordinate fear of counting errors. And as far as I'm concerned, if the math doesn't support something, I'm not interested in it.
You're right that your emotions can get the best of you in this game. Believe me when I tell you that when it does, it's because you're overbetting and no other reason. Losing 100 units is a laugh when you have 2000 units in your pocket.
You can very easily lead yourself into superstition by neglecting to keep the quantitative aspect of every element of the game in perspective. Yes, missing a card causes loss rather than profit, but how much loss? Did you know that when we split 10's, it really does hurt the table? On this shoe and usually on the next one too? And that you really can get an advantage in some games by playing a progression? It's true! All these things are supported by the math , if you consider a 0.01% change in advantage to be worth investigating. These are all things commonly recognized as superstition that someone might think was viable strategy if I didn't say how small these effects are, and believing that avoiding all counting mistakes can provide a worthwhile benefit to the game is also, sorry to disappoint anyone, a superstition.
Regarding the title of this post, some of the discussion here reminds me of some old mouthwash ads stating "Your best friends won't tell you," referring to having bad breath. We can't tell when we have bad breath, and most people will not tell another person that they have it. So upon seeing this ad, some people would be tormented by the fear that they themselves may have bad breath and they have no way of knowing, so they go out and buy the mouthwash.
The simile that I'm trying to get at is that if someone were trying to sell you a product supposed to prevent you from making counting errors, they will oversell the effect of these errors ("You will be secretly hated if you have bad breath!"), convince you that you have no way of knowing that you make the errors ("Your best friends won't tell you!") and then offer you a solution.
I'm sorry AM, but some of this is just ridiculous. Even the most conservative of players rarely has a total of 2000 units in their entire bankroll, so what are you doing with it jangling around in your pocket? If that's a session bankroll, you've been so over conservative with your unit sizing that you would need a bankroll in the 6 figure region just to play a $25 table and if that's your entire bankroll - well firstly it should never all be in the one place, but assuming that was just a figure of speech, you are only the 2nd player i've ever heard of using a ROR of only 0.125%. Even the MIT teams that were notorious for their obsessive views about their ROR being low never went that far.
I do find it interesting that someone who's involved in engineering (isn't that what you've indicated in the past?) can't detach simulation from reality. You of all people should know that it rarely works quite the way the simulation show in reality and that you always have to make some adjustment and fine tuning when you put theory into practice.
I do also have to ask the question, who's selling what? Don't mince words or dance around - rather than hinting at something that everybody here's already bored of hearing you use as a defense, just come out with it.
RJT.
sagefr0g
Well-Known Member
brings up a question about ROR. when we play at a given risk of ruin we have an idea of how likely it is that we will lose our entire bankroll in the long run. that begs the question for the nature of the percent for which the entire bankroll is not lost but there is no gain and infact some loss in the long run.
any idea of the percentages involved in such a scenerio.
lol, i guess the better question would be what is the risk of staying even or risk of some loss.... unmm when considering a perfect player's game in the long haul.
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sagefr0g
Well-Known Member
yes we all agree on the virtue of not making mistakes. but perhaps if you knew what those mistakes actually cost, then you might not be driven nuts by the fear of them.
Sonny
Well-Known Member
Sure. The probability of staying even or suffering a loss is the opposite of the probability of being ahead. Once you know the probability of being ahead:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?p=28936
you just subtract that from 1 to find the probability of breaking even or losing. Subtracting your ROR from that should give you the probability of ending up here: 0 < X < Bankroll
-Sonny-
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Automatic Monkey
Banned
It depends. This weekend I was using a 1-40 spread, do you think 2000 units is excessive in that situation? This was in a place where an MIT boy might soil his trousers, and not from fear of ruin either.
"Units" isn't a meaningful term except as a comparative number. What I mean is losing 5% of your bankroll isn't emotionally challenging, while losing 50% is, for anyone.
When you are dealing with discrete and quantized variables, you can do an excellent job with a simulation. I can do a simulation of the outcome of two randomly thrown dice, or the sum of a set of random cards, and I don't have to account for temperature changes, stray capacitance, or the gravitational attraction of Uranus. In counting we assume all cards are randomly drawn from a finite set, so a simulation works perfectly. Unless you want to get into card clumping, table rhythms, etc.
Who's selling what? I don't know, I haven't bought anything. Have you?
Strange then that you pluck out of the air the idea that someone who has other ideas about accuracy than you must be trying to generate superstition to sell a product to reduce errors. Seems like an odd conclusion to draw and actually leads me to quote another part of that email i spoke about earlier in this thread -
"Reaching Bizarre Conclusions Without Any
Explaination:
Example: The car won't start. I'm certain the spark
plugs have been stolen by rogue clowns. "
lol.
As to it, a great number of experts - yes from the MIT team, but not exclusively - would agree with me here. I define them as experts as they've actually had the success that people here only talk about.
You see they've been through the entire learning curve, starting way back and trying to run a team trying to apply the same sorts of standards that you talk about, and guess what - it didn't work. So they went back to the drawing boards went through everything they'd experienced and adjusted their training techniques. Each time they found a weakness in their system they'd go back and and adjust their training methods to try and compensate for this weakness eventually coming to the standards that they have today.
For me that qualifies them as experts. Not writing a book on the theory of the game, actually achieving. You can spout all of the stats that you like but unfortunately your stats just don't coincide with what the real experts have found through years of putting theory into practice. Which leads me to another quote from the 'You are wrong because' email
"Ignoring the Advice of Experts Without a Good
Reason:
Example: Sure, the experts think you shouldn't ride
your bicycle into the eye of a hurricane, but I have
my own theory. "
You just keep peddling as hard as you can :joker:
RJT.
"Reaching Bizarre Conclusions Without Any
Explaination:
Example: The car won't start. I'm certain the spark
plugs have been stolen by rogue clowns. "
lol.
As to it, a great number of experts - yes from the MIT team, but not exclusively - would agree with me here. I define them as experts as they've actually had the success that people here only talk about.
You see they've been through the entire learning curve, starting way back and trying to run a team trying to apply the same sorts of standards that you talk about, and guess what - it didn't work. So they went back to the drawing boards went through everything they'd experienced and adjusted their training techniques. Each time they found a weakness in their system they'd go back and and adjust their training methods to try and compensate for this weakness eventually coming to the standards that they have today.
For me that qualifies them as experts. Not writing a book on the theory of the game, actually achieving. You can spout all of the stats that you like but unfortunately your stats just don't coincide with what the real experts have found through years of putting theory into practice. Which leads me to another quote from the 'You are wrong because' email
"Ignoring the Advice of Experts Without a Good
Reason:
Example: Sure, the experts think you shouldn't ride
your bicycle into the eye of a hurricane, but I have
my own theory. "
You just keep peddling as hard as you can :joker:
RJT.
Automatic Monkey
Banned
Oh? You don't say- "people here," are we, and all we do is talk about our successes? I'll have you know there are quite a few "people here" who have had tremendous successes in blackjack, and I'm one of them. I make my EV, and that's the only achievement in the game one can honestly take credit for. In fact my biggest impediment to success is not always having enough time to play.
sagefr0g
Well-Known Member
seems a properly crafted bankroll and spread would make up for that.
A lot of things in life seem like they should work out, but the reality turns out different to the idea.
RJT.
EasyRhino
Well-Known Member
You know, a distinction that I think needs to be made is that there's a difference between making multiple minor counting errors while playing a shoe, and being a total ****up.
And while I haven't had the pleasure of playing on a team, is seems that recruiting a team of more than 5 people triggers a fairly high risk that at least one of them will be a total ****up. Strenuous training and checkout procedures would seem to be a great way to reduce this risk.
And while I haven't had the pleasure of playing on a team, is seems that recruiting a team of more than 5 people triggers a fairly high risk that at least one of them will be a total ****up. Strenuous training and checkout procedures would seem to be a great way to reduce this risk.
sagefr0g
Well-Known Member
Why? It seems people will work so hard to weaken their game but still try to turn whatever profits are left, instead of putting forth that effort to maximize gain. I can't understand this thinking. So much has been said about still making profits even with mistakes even if it decreases them slightly. That just sounds stupid to me. I would rather maximize my time at anything I do than settle for what being lazy will hand me. And regardless what others say, if you settle for 1 mistake you will settle for 2 and so on. From there starts a phsycological effect that doesn't really effect strong counters of, how bad can I actually be without it getting away from me. At that point you will never know because you will lose sight of how to tell. The only way a sim can tell you about your game is if you feed it accurate info. If you don't really know how you're playing then neither will your sim.
Listen, I say play as you want. I have seen whats good and also whats bad. I have not seen too many bad players make money, as a matter of fact the casinos will welcome you. But if you say you are making money playing in a style which allows mistakes and isn't in need of real accuracy, to you sagefrog, automatic monkey, more power to you. My thinking is different, as is most successful players I associate with. But Monkey if you say you are reaching your EV, great. It's of no importance to me if its the truth or not. As long as you know and can live with it. I'm quite sure I could not have lived and played any way other than the best I possibly could all these years. So I will squeeze out as much as I can from the game by trying to be perfect. If it only means pennies so be it, but the character it takes to do it is priceless.
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