This story is kind of a long and I understand that posts that have more then 3 sentences get looked over by a lot of people; so I broke my story up into segments, that way if your eyes start to cramp you can move down and not really lose track of anything
*Note* Mostly everything Italicized are my thoughts, I catagorized them by putting inner thoughts next to them... Don get confused
Well, i just recently have gotten addicted to blackjack... I went in about 2 month ago and lost 30 dollars good and quick (I know it doesnt sound like a lot but being a full time student studying Math and Computer Science, it was like shooting myself in the foot), this is when I decided I wanted to try and beat the system... The first thing I did is go home and study up on basic strategy; good thing I had a 5 hour trip to Seattle planned out which allowed me to get some good Basic Strategy skills down.
It took me about 2 weeks to get Basic Strategy down to tooth and nail; with my knowledge I have now, I finally understand the stoopid mistakes I was making, for instance, I never double downed on anything (AAH!) and I split 10's (*coughs up blood*).
I felt ready to tackle the casinos again, so I withdrew 30 dollars from my bank account and hopped on board. I sat down at my table, set aside 7 dollars so I can place dollar bets on the side bet: (*Explanation of Match Play Side Bet Incoming, Ignore If Needed*) the side bet that the casino has is called a match play, where if any of your cards match the dealers you get paid back 4 to 1, if it is a suited match you get paid back 9 to 1, if you have a pair and the dealer pulls a card that is the same as your pair then you get paid back 12 to 1 (I believe), if its the same situation as before but one card matches the dealers suit you get 18 to 1 (I believe), then if they are both suited and matching the dealers value and suit then you get back 25 to 1 (I think, for some reasons these numbers seem a bit low, if anyone cares I will be able to tell you guys the actual values tomorow). Anyways, I sat down and started playing, placing one dollar on the side bet and 3 dollars for my bet for every hand. The cards were laid infront of me and this time i wasnt sweating if I had anything showing besides a 20 and a 21 (meaning I was fully prepaired with basic strategy). I made all the correct plays, doubling when i needed to, splitting on 8's and everything that needed to be.
Well... I ended up walking out 30 dollars short again... (*Inner thought coming up*) Damn those casinos... Bah, maybe i'll go back with 35 dollars, place it all on one hand, place a 25 dollar match play on top (same thing as an additional 25 bucks), win it and go home with my 60 dollars that I handed over to the casino... Perhaps i'll even blackjack on that one hand, thus making an additional 30 dollars!!! I rolled this idea around my head for a week, feeling good about it and thinking; Yeah! and if i lose it, it's only another 35 bucks... bah who needs it, I mean i can make that money back by only working 5 to 6 hours at my 15 hour a week, minimum paid job.... I proceeded to cry (not about losing the money but about my pathetic life...)... Finally, I decided to throw that idea out because it was pretty stupid.
After thinking the previous game over I found out that I actually lost more then half of my sad pathetic bankroll to the house on just the side bets alone. I won a few of the side bets but in the process i lost way more money then what I gained. I proceeded to do a bit of probablity research on this. I found that all I was doing with the side bets was increasing the houses odds of taking my money, those bastards! (sorry for the language, delete if needed) No more side bets.
Time to get into the counting stuff!
I decided before I went back I would like a bit more of an advantage, I heard of the mythical card counters but I always thought everyone of them where MIT grads and devised complex algorithms in their heads to allow them to know which cards are coming up next. But this 31 year old guy who had a lower GPA then me in our linear algebra class told me he was able to count to cards... Off I went to the internet after hearing that.
I studied the Hi-Lo way of counting cards for about a month, I got down a pretty good rhythm and always landed on a final count of 0 after counting down a deck of cards in 18 seconds. I managed to keep track of the count even while I was talking to my girlfriend and watching TV.
Tragedy struck a couple weeks ago, while i was researching counting cards I found out about Risk of Ruin, where the best way to reduce ROR is by making your largest bet 1% of your bankroll... So lets see, minimum bet was 3 dollars and in order to make any money i would need to have bets of at most 5 units, so that is 15 dollars... 100 times 15 is... AAARRGGH 15 hundred dollars, that's twice as much as what I have in my bank account (*Shoots self in head*)... (*Inner Thought*) Maybe if i sell off my TV and my computer...
This shot down my hopes and dreams, so I stopped thinking about blackjack for a week. Then came a day when I was hungry and poor (what a concept). So I decided to use my 10 dollar comp I earned at the casino for some food. After I finished my meal I found some cash in my pocket and tipped the nice waitress with 2 dollars. I was suprised to find out that the wad of dollar bills was also storing a 10 dollar bill as well, score! Oh and look, the blackjack table is open. I figured, what the hell, all I had was 12 dollars, plus i only had to play another half hour to get a 10 dollar comp.
I sat down thinking I was only going to be there for 8 minutes; 2 minutes a hand because there were 2 other old people sitting next to me. I actually ended up playing for a good 20 minutes and found out to my suprise that I was ahead 10 dollars and a new shoe was coming up (*6 deck shoe, dealer hits on soft 17, double down on anything, double down after split, split up to 4 times). That's when I decided to sit back and watch the hands play out, and to try out my new acquainted counting skills. After about 5 hands or so, I noticed that TC was a pretty high positive, out goes my 5 dollars and I get a 10,10 which beats the busted dealer. The TC was still positive but it had gone down 1 number, out went 4 dollars. I get another 10,10 dealer gets a 17. WoW! I thought to my self, it is working (but i also knew I was still getting pretty lucky). I kept playing till the count went back down to 0 and into the negatives so I decided to pull out then saying I didnt like the shoe, the dealer responded, "But you have been doing pretty well", in which my retort was, "I have been losing more then what I gained", obviously lieing... Near the very end of the shoe the count went positive again so I put out another 5 and low and behold I blackjacked... The dealer leaned in and told me I was counting cards, I tried to keep my cool by laughing hysterically and saying, "No way, besides if I was counting cards it would only increase my odds of winning by a very small percentage, so I could have lost the 5 dollars almost as easily as winning another 5 or 7 dollars." (I was technically right btw) She told me that she really didnt care at all if I was counting because I was playing with such low increments of money and the pit really wouldnt notice much either, then she called me a dork for researching this stuff (gah). I breathed easier after she said that, getting caught so soon would have sucked.
The games continued, and the dealers didnt seem to notice or rather care about me sitting out, letting all the other people run down the deck for me and jumping in when the deck was only extremely positive. I was there for an hour and a half and I ended up turning 12 dollars into almost 80 bucks. I was so proud of my self I decided to skip home and log on to this message and tell everyone of my success story.
Im not really considering my winning as a success story, more of the fact that I was able to utilize a good counting system (except for spreading my bets). I realize it was all basicaly luck that helped me out, more so then how well I counted. But I figure some day, I'll be able to walk in and with a good bet spread and very low ROR, turn blackjack odds to my side.
Thanks btw; Zengrifter your interview was very entertaining.
*Note* Mostly everything Italicized are my thoughts, I catagorized them by putting inner thoughts next to them... Don get confused
Well, i just recently have gotten addicted to blackjack... I went in about 2 month ago and lost 30 dollars good and quick (I know it doesnt sound like a lot but being a full time student studying Math and Computer Science, it was like shooting myself in the foot), this is when I decided I wanted to try and beat the system... The first thing I did is go home and study up on basic strategy; good thing I had a 5 hour trip to Seattle planned out which allowed me to get some good Basic Strategy skills down.
It took me about 2 weeks to get Basic Strategy down to tooth and nail; with my knowledge I have now, I finally understand the stoopid mistakes I was making, for instance, I never double downed on anything (AAH!) and I split 10's (*coughs up blood*).
I felt ready to tackle the casinos again, so I withdrew 30 dollars from my bank account and hopped on board. I sat down at my table, set aside 7 dollars so I can place dollar bets on the side bet: (*Explanation of Match Play Side Bet Incoming, Ignore If Needed*) the side bet that the casino has is called a match play, where if any of your cards match the dealers you get paid back 4 to 1, if it is a suited match you get paid back 9 to 1, if you have a pair and the dealer pulls a card that is the same as your pair then you get paid back 12 to 1 (I believe), if its the same situation as before but one card matches the dealers suit you get 18 to 1 (I believe), then if they are both suited and matching the dealers value and suit then you get back 25 to 1 (I think, for some reasons these numbers seem a bit low, if anyone cares I will be able to tell you guys the actual values tomorow). Anyways, I sat down and started playing, placing one dollar on the side bet and 3 dollars for my bet for every hand. The cards were laid infront of me and this time i wasnt sweating if I had anything showing besides a 20 and a 21 (meaning I was fully prepaired with basic strategy). I made all the correct plays, doubling when i needed to, splitting on 8's and everything that needed to be.
Well... I ended up walking out 30 dollars short again... (*Inner thought coming up*) Damn those casinos... Bah, maybe i'll go back with 35 dollars, place it all on one hand, place a 25 dollar match play on top (same thing as an additional 25 bucks), win it and go home with my 60 dollars that I handed over to the casino... Perhaps i'll even blackjack on that one hand, thus making an additional 30 dollars!!! I rolled this idea around my head for a week, feeling good about it and thinking; Yeah! and if i lose it, it's only another 35 bucks... bah who needs it, I mean i can make that money back by only working 5 to 6 hours at my 15 hour a week, minimum paid job.... I proceeded to cry (not about losing the money but about my pathetic life...)... Finally, I decided to throw that idea out because it was pretty stupid.
After thinking the previous game over I found out that I actually lost more then half of my sad pathetic bankroll to the house on just the side bets alone. I won a few of the side bets but in the process i lost way more money then what I gained. I proceeded to do a bit of probablity research on this. I found that all I was doing with the side bets was increasing the houses odds of taking my money, those bastards! (sorry for the language, delete if needed) No more side bets.
Time to get into the counting stuff!
I decided before I went back I would like a bit more of an advantage, I heard of the mythical card counters but I always thought everyone of them where MIT grads and devised complex algorithms in their heads to allow them to know which cards are coming up next. But this 31 year old guy who had a lower GPA then me in our linear algebra class told me he was able to count to cards... Off I went to the internet after hearing that.
I studied the Hi-Lo way of counting cards for about a month, I got down a pretty good rhythm and always landed on a final count of 0 after counting down a deck of cards in 18 seconds. I managed to keep track of the count even while I was talking to my girlfriend and watching TV.
Tragedy struck a couple weeks ago, while i was researching counting cards I found out about Risk of Ruin, where the best way to reduce ROR is by making your largest bet 1% of your bankroll... So lets see, minimum bet was 3 dollars and in order to make any money i would need to have bets of at most 5 units, so that is 15 dollars... 100 times 15 is... AAARRGGH 15 hundred dollars, that's twice as much as what I have in my bank account (*Shoots self in head*)... (*Inner Thought*) Maybe if i sell off my TV and my computer...
This shot down my hopes and dreams, so I stopped thinking about blackjack for a week. Then came a day when I was hungry and poor (what a concept). So I decided to use my 10 dollar comp I earned at the casino for some food. After I finished my meal I found some cash in my pocket and tipped the nice waitress with 2 dollars. I was suprised to find out that the wad of dollar bills was also storing a 10 dollar bill as well, score! Oh and look, the blackjack table is open. I figured, what the hell, all I had was 12 dollars, plus i only had to play another half hour to get a 10 dollar comp.
I sat down thinking I was only going to be there for 8 minutes; 2 minutes a hand because there were 2 other old people sitting next to me. I actually ended up playing for a good 20 minutes and found out to my suprise that I was ahead 10 dollars and a new shoe was coming up (*6 deck shoe, dealer hits on soft 17, double down on anything, double down after split, split up to 4 times). That's when I decided to sit back and watch the hands play out, and to try out my new acquainted counting skills. After about 5 hands or so, I noticed that TC was a pretty high positive, out goes my 5 dollars and I get a 10,10 which beats the busted dealer. The TC was still positive but it had gone down 1 number, out went 4 dollars. I get another 10,10 dealer gets a 17. WoW! I thought to my self, it is working (but i also knew I was still getting pretty lucky). I kept playing till the count went back down to 0 and into the negatives so I decided to pull out then saying I didnt like the shoe, the dealer responded, "But you have been doing pretty well", in which my retort was, "I have been losing more then what I gained", obviously lieing... Near the very end of the shoe the count went positive again so I put out another 5 and low and behold I blackjacked... The dealer leaned in and told me I was counting cards, I tried to keep my cool by laughing hysterically and saying, "No way, besides if I was counting cards it would only increase my odds of winning by a very small percentage, so I could have lost the 5 dollars almost as easily as winning another 5 or 7 dollars." (I was technically right btw) She told me that she really didnt care at all if I was counting because I was playing with such low increments of money and the pit really wouldnt notice much either, then she called me a dork for researching this stuff (gah). I breathed easier after she said that, getting caught so soon would have sucked.
The games continued, and the dealers didnt seem to notice or rather care about me sitting out, letting all the other people run down the deck for me and jumping in when the deck was only extremely positive. I was there for an hour and a half and I ended up turning 12 dollars into almost 80 bucks. I was so proud of my self I decided to skip home and log on to this message and tell everyone of my success story.
Im not really considering my winning as a success story, more of the fact that I was able to utilize a good counting system (except for spreading my bets). I realize it was all basicaly luck that helped me out, more so then how well I counted. But I figure some day, I'll be able to walk in and with a good bet spread and very low ROR, turn blackjack odds to my side.
Thanks btw; Zengrifter your interview was very entertaining.