Knowing when to get up...

[matt21]

the other day i landed myself in some very nice playing conditions with excellent hourly EV.

Within a short amount of time i was comfortably ahead by 60 units. The conditions prevailed and there was practically no heat. I continued playing and managed to turn my 60 unit lead into a 40 unit loss - i.e. i lost 100 units from the peak.

At the end of the session I patted myself on the back because i racked up a lot of EV (without letting my playing accuracy slip), even though i actually logged a session loss. However i made the most of some good playing conditions.

I am pretty sure that I tackled this the right way in playing and in how i view the session, but wanted to see whether some players here have different views. Comments?

 

[Pro21]

Exactly right.

 

[mjbballar23]

short term wins dont matter. Just keep racking up those EV $$$ and the variance will work itself out.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Frustrating.This has been happening to me all week- nice win to start but I end up walking out a little bit short.

Oh, except for that sitting where I was getting hammered in the beginning and walked out up over EV along with a partner....

...but most of it was given back the next day.

Just to beat a dead horse to death, after as many as 10,000 to 20,000 hands you can only expect to be up about 2/3 of the time, and this is completely normal math. There is nothing you can do about it. A few hours at the table is totally insignificant, nonetheless you wouldn't be a normal human if you didn't dislike bad sessions. But this is the price we pay in exchange for being paid to play cards.

Compare it to a great baseball player who bats .300 . 7 out of 10 times he makes an out, and he cusses a blue streak on the way back to the dugout but doesn't sit out the game because of it, no matter how bad his luck has been. A player like that only sits out when there is something wrong.

 

[creeping panther]

matt

the other day i landed myself in some very nice playing conditions with excellent hourly EV.

Within a short amount of time i was comfortably ahead by 60 units. The conditions prevailed and there was practically no heat. I continued playing and managed to turn my 60 unit lead into a 40 unit loss - i.e. i lost 100 units from the peak.

At the end of the session I patted myself on the back because i racked up a lot of EV (without letting my playing accuracy slip), even though i actually logged a session loss. However i made the most of some good playing conditions.

I am pretty sure that I tackled this the right way in playing and in how i view the session, but wanted to see whether some players here have different views. Comments?

Matt my opinion is to never accept the loss, never chalk it up to negative variance.

You must go over the game in your mind, over and over again.. to identify where you could have turned the game around, what transpired when you began the big loss, what you could have done to avert it.

Tactics and strategy. The battle of the LBH happened in 1876 but it is still studied today to avert another one from happening, although "Black Hawk Down" came real close as did La Drang Valley. At some point in that game something happened and you must take care to avert a repeat, and you can. It is up to us to make pure counting a money making experience and to approach it in a different way to alleviate the variance. We must never accept these stunning, losing events.

Let the gamblers and addicts accept "negative variance", we true AP's must not.:1st:

Approach the game as a Warrior, "A BJ Warrior". Never lick your wounds, sharpen your sword.

CP

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Matt my opinion is to never accept the loss, never chalk it up to negative variance.

You must go over the game in your mind, over and over again.. to identify where you could have turned the game around, what transpired when you began the big loss, what you could have done to avert it.

Tactics and strategy. The battle of the LBH happened in 1876 but it is still studied today to avert another one from happening, although "Black Hawk Down" came real close as did La Drang Valley. At some point in that game something happened and you must take care to avert a repeat, and you can. It is up to us to make pure counting a money making experience and to approach it in a different way to alleviate the variance. We must never accept these stunning, losing events.

Let the gamblers and addicts accept "negative variance", we true AP's must not.:1st:

Approach the game as a Warrior, "A BJ Warrior". Never lick your wounds, sharpen your sword.

CP

Sorry, but bad variance is a consequence of the same mathematics that allows us to make money. If you cannot accept one, you cannot accept the other.

It's also the only thing that allows us to keep playing. The casinos have to see us losing sometime in order to permit us to play. We can only hope they are less skilled at seeing through the short-term effects of variance than we are, and that they are more like compulsive gamblers in that they remember the times they beat us better than the times we beat them.

 

[daddybo]

what I usually do...

I agree with most everything posted above... I have a rule of thumb I follow.

Generally when I play and am winning from the start ... I will stop at 2.5 times my max bet. That's not to say I quit playing, I just get up and go do something else for a little while. I usually spend the time going over the previous play etc. It keeps from drawing too much attention from the pit and helps to keep sharp.

When I'm losing.. I'll stop at 2.5 or 3 times my max bet and move on. See reasons above.

When I'm close to 2.5 winning and then start losing ... I get up when I'm still up 1 max bet.

I will say I don't always follow this routine... (it's hard when your really burning the table up).. But there have been many time I wish I had. And sometimes if I'm down from a previous losing session, I'll stretch it a bit..

 

[Thunder]

Call me superstitious

but I tend to change tables if I have 3 bad shoes in a row.

 

[rukus]

all that stopping when you are up by a certain amount will do is create an imbalance of winning "sessions" to losing "sessions". and the $ sizes of your losing "sessions" will be many multiple times the $ sizes of your winning ones.
you might go 10 "sessions" of $500 wins and then experience a monster $5,000 loss. i think that would hurt more psychologically than just playing an even amount every time (assuming conditions remain playable) and having more moderate swings in both directions.

when i first started playing it was tough to do what i suggest, but with enough play i became used to the swings and started trusting my skills and the math enough to not feel the need to "lock in" a win.

get the hours in. money will (hopefully :devil follow.

 

[MoneyPlays]

Tough Call?

Within a short amount of time i was comfortably ahead by 60 units. The conditions prevailed and there was practically no heat. I continued playing and managed to turn my 60 unit lead into a 40 unit loss - i.e. i lost 100 units from the peak.

Well, you could "lock up your profit" as some experts suggest. When you got up 60 you could have put away 40 and played until you lost the remaining 20, or until you doubled it.
But the question is then; If I had kept playing would I have won 150 or 200 units? I would say you never want to limit your win potential when you have a very high EV. As long as the game is good, you're there.

 

[daddybo]

all that stopping when you are up by a certain amount will do is create an imbalance of winning "sessions" to losing "sessions". and the $ sizes of your losing "sessions" will be many multiple times the $ sizes of your winning ones.
you might go 10 "sessions" of $500 wins and then experience a monster $5,000 loss. i think that would hurt more psychologically than just playing an even amount every time (assuming conditions remain playable) and having more moderate swings in both directions.

when i first started playing it was tough to do what i suggest, but with enough play i became used to the swings and started trusting my skills and the math enough to not feel the need to "lock in" a win.

get the hours in. money will (hopefully :devil follow.

I knew somebody would jump on that... I don't quit playing when I'm up or down... I just take a break for a half hour or so.. I get the time in. You are absolutely correct.. you have to get the time in. Also if I'm in the game and winning hand after hand after hand regardless of the count... believe me, I keep playing.

 

[matt21]

thanks for all the comments!

they are along the lines of what i expected to hear - the thread was in my mind as i was going through another big rollercoaster ride thru my two sessions yesterday. after going thru a couple of dozen max bets over several hours, repitive cursing, table banging, dealer-change requests, several stacks of black chips and hitting extremely lucky and unlucky streaks in two different venues i was up 20 units which was actually pretty close to my EV.

so i guess my approach is that i keep on hitting and playing like a machine unless heat is present.

thanks again for the comments - and happy counting :cool2:

 

[Automatic Monkey]

On my next trip to a venue where I expect to get backed off several times, I'm going to try leaving as a response to small losses, and when I win play as long as possible.

Maybe my memory is selective, but I can't recall a backoff when I was way up. I think the casinos believe it defeats the purpose of backoffs to send someone out of the game with their money.

 

[EasyRhino]

Barring some other deterioration (fatigue? depression?) then playing on would seem good if the EV was high and the heat was low.

Maybe my memory is selective, but I can't recall a backoff when I was way up. I think the casinos believe it defeats the purpose of backoffs to send someone out of the game with their money.

I think only one of mine was on a winning session... but I don't honestly think it would help.