Can you have a smaller bankroll by only wonging?

WilliamJ

New Member
Am I right in thinking that you can have a smaller bankroll when you are just wonging in when the true count is +3 rather than going through the very low true counts?

I have around £300 - £500 bankroll and have found a couple casinos in London that offer £3 min bet and even £2 min bet during the day.Is my bankroll too low even for wonging in on the very high counts?

Thanks
 

blackjack avenger

Well-Known Member
little matchstick girl

You can but you would probably make more selling matchsticks. Probably less then minimum wage.

If you can add to the bank you can start playing, but again the return will be low with such a small bank.

Yes, by wonging you can have a smaller bank.
 

London Colin

Well-Known Member
WilliamJ said:
Am I right in thinking that you can have a smaller bankroll when you are just wonging in when the true count is +3 rather than going through the very low true counts?

I have around £300 - £500 bankroll and have found a couple casinos in London that offer £3 min bet and even £2 min bet during the day.Is my bankroll too low even for wonging in on the very high counts?

Thanks
Aside from the theoretical profitability issues, there is also a very practical concern -

These casinos will have just a single table open and will not be at all crowded. Backcounting to this degree is likely to make you stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.
 

Billy C1

Well-Known Member
WilliamJ said:
Am I right in thinking that you can have a smaller bankroll when you are just wonging in when the true count is +3 rather than going through the very low true counts?

I have around £300 - £500 bankroll and have found a couple casinos in London that offer £3 min bet and even £2 min bet during the day.Is my bankroll too low even for wonging in on the very high counts?

Thanks
In theory yes, but in real life------- no. Only exception is if you have tons of time to play and encounter no heat. Most of us don't see those things.

BillyC1
 

ycming

Well-Known Member
The number of table is an issue. But if you are wonging then why do you need to play at a low limit table, therefore you are not forced to play at the quite lunch time period.

IF you are willing to live with a "high" ROR, you can afford to wong aggressively then theoretical profit will rise.

Ming
 

PierceNation

Well-Known Member
If we assume a bankroll of 500 quid, you could make a bet of 3 quid safely (5% RoR) at a 1% advantage. This is obviously not practical, as that sort of adv occurs maybe once every 8-10 games.

You could increase your bet and play a higher RoR if you wish..but I wouldn't play any negative decks, you WILL get raped.

I'd save up more money or just hope for 'a bit of luck'.

Pierce
 

London Colin

Well-Known Member
ycming said:
The number of table is an issue. But if you are wonging then why do you need to play at a low limit table,
Because of the very low bankroll.

If +3 equates to roughly a 1% advantage, then a full kelly bet with a £300 bankroll is roughly £3. And full kelly is generally considered to be too much, in part due to the possibility of running into the table limits and not being able to size bets down after a run of losses. In this case we have run into the table limits even before we start.


ycming said:
therefore you are not forced to play at the quite lunch time period.

IF you are willing to live with a "high" ROR, you can afford to wong aggressively then theoretical profit will rise.

Ming
What do you mean by 'aggressive' wonging?
 

ycming

Well-Known Member
London Colin said:
Because of the very low bankroll.

If +3 equates to roughly a 1% advantage, then a full kelly bet with a £300 bankroll is roughly £3. And full kelly is generally considered to be too much, in part due to the possibility of running into the table limits and not being able to size bets down after a run of losses. In this case we have run into the table limits even before we start.



What do you mean by 'aggressive' wonging?
You really think someone with such a small bankroll could make an effectively earning per hour and keeping small ROR?

And do you really think he is going to bet £3 as his max bet so we could apply the kelly rule?

theory is good, reality is different.

By aggressive wonging, all I really mean is to take a high ROR to yield a respectable earning. That is how I done it when I first started, yes risk is high but sometimes we just need to take it. On the other hand, £300 bankroll really is just too small.

P.S - http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=23443

I think the above thread pretty much explain what i said. Focus on what KJ and Flash1296

All the best hope you get a positive swing early :)

Ming
 
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London Colin

Well-Known Member
ycming said:
You really think someone with such a small bankroll could make an effectively earning per hour and keeping small ROR?
Not really, no. That question was already dealt with by a number of people.

ycming said:
And do you really think he is going to bet £3 as his max bet so we could apply the kelly rule?
£3 wouldn't be the max bet, it would be the min. Enter the table when the TC is +3 and bet the table minimum. If the TC rises, raise your bets accordingly, if it falls wong out.


ycming said:
theory is good, reality is different.

By aggressive wonging, all I really mean is to take a high ROR to yield a respectable earning. That is how I done it when I first started, yes risk is high but sometimes we just need to take it. On the other hand, £300 bankroll really is just too small.

P.S - http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=23443

I think the above thread pretty much explain what i said. Focus on what KJ and Flash1296

All the best hope you get a positive swing early :)

Ming
I would take the phrase 'aggressive wonging' to mean strictly avoiding all negative counts (or in this case all counts below our entry point of +3), which would decrease the RoR.

The aggression you seem to be talking about, increasing the RoR, is simply the overbetting - i.e. aggressive betting while you also happen to be wonging, rather than aggressive wonging - if you see what I mean.
 

ycming

Well-Known Member
London Colin said:
Not really, no. That question was already dealt with by a number of people.


£3 wouldn't be the max bet, it would be the min. Enter the table when the TC is +3 and bet the table minimum. If the TC rises, raise your bets accordingly, if it falls wong out.




I would take the phrase 'aggressive wonging' to mean strictly avoiding all negative counts (or in this case all counts below our entry point of +3), which would decrease the RoR.

The aggression you seem to be talking about, increasing the RoR, is simply the overbetting - i.e. aggressive betting while you also happen to be wonging, rather than aggressive wonging - if you see what I mean.
So you think is possible to keep a low ROR with £300, wonging out ALL negative count and make more than say 1-2 units / hour?

If so, I would like to learn that :)

How do you define over betting?

If I know my ROR (say a high of 30-40%) with the bet spread I am using before I went into the casino and stick to exactly that spread, am I overbetting?

As for the max bet, I believe with fully kelly and at a 2% advantage he would be betting £6. So i still don't think someone with £300 should apply a full kelly

Ming
 
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London Colin

Well-Known Member
ycming said:
So you think is possible to keep a low ROR with £300, wonging out ALL negative count and make more than say 1-2 units / hour?

If so, I would like to learn that :)
You seem determined to misunderstand me!

£300 is not enough. Everyone is in agreement on that.

The alternatives are -

  1. Don't play at all until you have a much bigger BR.
  2. Gamble aggressively with the £300, accepting that there is a very high risk that you will lose it all.
  3. Attempt to play with the lowest possible RoR for the £300 by wonging like crazy and only playing the lowest limit tables. (And still face an overly large RoR). This will give a miserly rate of return unless you happen to get lucky early on and go through repeated cycles of BR-growth and bet upsizing. It will also be next to impossible for the practical reasons I mentioned in my first post.
My preference would be for option 1.


ycming said:
How do you define over betting?

If I know my ROR (say a high of 30-40%) with the bet spread I am using before I went into the casino and stick to exactly that spread, am I overbetting?
The term 'overbetting' was not meant to be a pejorative one. Yes a 30-40% RoR is overbetting. But if it's a deliberate, informed choice, then that's fair enough.

I was just confused by what you meant by 'aggressive wonging' and needed clarification that what you meant was an aggressive bet size. I'm not trying to start an argument, just get past any language barriers.

ycming said:
As for the max bet, I believe with fully kelly and at a 2% advantage he would be betting £6. So i still don't think someone with £300 should apply a full kelly
Again, I don't really know what you mean by that, and suspect that you may have misunderstood me in some way.

Wonging in at +3 would mean a 1% advantage, so the £3 table-minimum bet corresponds to a full Kelly bet. If the TC rises to +5 (and thus the advantage rises to 2%) then you could argue that the bet should then rise to £6, and so on.

However it can also be argued that full-Kelly betting is too high to begin with. (Even with a large BR it's not usual to bet that high a fraction. And when you can't resize your bets downwards after losses there's an added incentive not to bet that high.)

The wong-in point could have been delayed even later than +3 so that the risk would be lower, but that would mean playing even fewer hands than is already the case with +3. So a compromise would be to still start at +3, but not raise your bets so early.


Now I'm not putting any of this forward as a practical or worthwhile proposition. It's really just an exercise in showing exactly how and why £300 is not enough to begin with.
 

blackjack avenger

Well-Known Member
terminology

With a fixed ror, 5%, 48%. The ror is just that. Overbetting probably a subjective term.

When we talk of Kelly resize betting:
Bet over double Kelly bank shrinks
Bet double Kelly no long term growth
Betting 1.5 compared to .75 has the same growth rate, but 1. 5 has much more variance. So anything over Kelly is objectively, mathematically overbetting! Given real world considerations the above is why many pros bet from .5 to .25 or even smaller fractions of kelly.

Aggressive wonging, playing only positive hands.
 

London Colin

Well-Known Member
Thanks for that useful summary, bja. I think many of the most heated arguments on this and every other internet forum turn out to be because people have different ideas about what particular words mean! :grin:

In this particular scenario, if we take the £300 (or even £500) to be a non-replenishable bankroll, then we are potentially looking at overbetting in both the objective and subjective senses.

I believe Ming's idea is to go for a speedy result of either busting out or growing the BR to a more healthy size, after which (in the latter case) the betting can be more in line with what is needed for long term growth.
 

ycming

Well-Known Member
Fair enough Colin, wasn't arguing just putting my point across and how I would do it.

Yeah that is my thinking, if all he has is £300-£500. Then he needs to accept the high ROR and hope for the positive swing.speedy growth. IF he is determined to play then I believe that is the only way.

I am in agreement that £300-£500 is way too small to start off with, as I stated in my previous post.

Blackjack Avenger, IS ROR really independent to the mathematical term "over betting" / Kelly? From what I know us that the ROR formula, it considers your EV and your EV is dependent on your bet spread?

So one must relate to each other? My theory is if he accepts the ROR, then he has already considered his bet spread.

And yes agree with your explaining of Aggressive Wonging.

Ming
 

blackjack avenger

Well-Known Member
thimk im right

ycming said:
Blackjack Avenger, IS ROR really independent to the mathematical term "over betting" / Kelly? From what I know us that the ROR formula, it considers your EV and your EV is dependent on your bet spread?
Ming
What does a fixed ror mean?
If 100 players play with a 5% ror, 5 will go broke.
If 100 players play with a 50% ror, 50 will go broke.
Who overbet? It's just the risk.

Looking back at the Kelly resizing rules:
Everyone betting over double Kelly will have bank decline.
Everyone betting double Kelly will see no growth.
So given the above one can overbet.
 
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