How many hours per year should a serious player play?
- Thread starter Ace007
- Start date
If you play to an N0 of 18,000 rounds then to have a 97.5% chance of being at break-even or ahead at the end of the year you will need to play 720 hours at the same basic unit size. If you can get most of your play down heads up or are very good about table hopping then you can probably accomplish the same feat in 400 hours or play.
jaygruden
Well-Known Member
I play part-time for about 7 months out of the year. My work schedule does not allow me to play at all for 4 months. For this calendar year (Jan-July) I played for 213 hours. Average about 7 1/2 hours per week over 28 weeks. Nearest store is an hour drive, have 3 more within 90 minutes and two that are 2 hours away. This is about as much as I can manage on a part time basis while still working a full time job and travel considerations.
desertwolf
Member
I only play part-time a few hours a week supplementing my retirement, but I did spend some time this past year with a professional player that played many hours a week. I don't know exactly how many but surely more than a 40 hour work week. I would think most players don't play this amount.
blackjackomaha
Well-Known Member
Before I temporarily reallocated my BJ bankroll, I was playing 10-20 hours a week, in addition to my full time job. It was a nice income supplement!
For the next few months I'm on a hiatus while I rebuild my BR to a safe level. At that point, I'll probably won't be able to play more than 5-10 hours a week until I finish grad school.
For the next few months I'm on a hiatus while I rebuild my BR to a safe level. At that point, I'll probably won't be able to play more than 5-10 hours a week until I finish grad school.
blackjack avenger
Well-Known Member
emphasis
The above is to be even or ahead. Also, I believe the above is for fixed bets?, if you resize your bets, then the 3 SD N0 goes up * 9.
Begs the ?s
Number of hands to have a 97.5% chance of 50% EV
&
Number of hands to have a 97.5% chance of 100% EV
The above is to be even or ahead. Also, I believe the above is for fixed bets?, if you resize your bets, then the 3 SD N0 goes up * 9.
Begs the ?s
Number of hands to have a 97.5% chance of 50% EV
&
Number of hands to have a 97.5% chance of 100% EV
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97.5% is two SD's (the entire bell curve minus the 2.5% bottom losing tail). 3SD's (9*N0) would be 99.85% chance of being at breakeven or ahead. You are correct sir that resizing your bets or using a variety of unit sizes and top bets extends your long run. For tax reasons if you can you should probably try to limit resizing your bankroll to the start of your tax year...although table games and the nature of a cash income does allow for certain creative liberties that may be illegal but carry no moral penalty (since the tax code is immorally stacked against people in our professions). Not that I'm recommending anything...just saying...
The other two questions about EV are very interesting ones...97.5% chance of at least 50% of EV and 97.5% chance of at least 100% of EV. You should post these over on BJ21 and see if one of the theoreticians can give an answer.
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You sure about that? I read in blackjack attack that you have around a 1/9 chance of being down after 40,000 hands (roughly 400 hrs of play). Going by this number, you probably have around a 1/4 chance of being down after 20,000 hands (roughly 200 hrs).
This number correlates highly with the deck penetration which is the biggest factor in determining the N0 - so maybe Don S. was talking about barely tolerable games (6 deckers with average pen or no late surrender)
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I overloaded my blackjack play this month with over 100 hours of play. I ran slightly above EV and had a lot of winning sessions clumped together. I'm not sure whether or not my approach or calculations are correct, but the google document below should explain a bit. I use a very pseudo version of a fractional kelly, so I am unsure what my average bet was for the month. I went from spreading upto $100 in the beginning to spreading upto $175 in the end. I wong out very aggressively and seldom use cover play. I also pull very long sessions or play in the same casino again the next day.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...E5WLXRnQzZJN2RvZDZ6Y1VsbHVvNmc&hl=en_US#gid=0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...E5WLXRnQzZJN2RvZDZ6Y1VsbHVvNmc&hl=en_US#gid=0
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Nynefingers
Well-Known Member
For 50% of EV or better, the number of hands works required for some specified chance of doing that well or better works out to:
hands = 4 * N0 * Z^2
For a 97.5% chance, the Z statistic is about 1.96, so the number of hands required to have a 97.5% chance of being at or above 50% of your EV is about 15.4*N0, or using N0=18000 hands (as you used previously), it would require 276,600 hands.
For the question on being at or ahead of 100% of your EV, there is no solution. As soon as you have a sufficiently large number of trials for the results to behave normally, you'll always have a 50/50 chance of being above or below your EV. In effect, as you ask the question about numbers closer and closer to 100% of EV, the number of hands required approaches infinity. For illustration, the number of hands required to have a 97.5% chance of being at or above X% of your EV are:
50% 276,600
60% 432,200
70% 768,300
80% 1,729,000
90% 6,915,000
95% 27,660,000
98% 172,900,000
99% 691,500,000