Kasi said:
I couldn't agree with you more. A BS player flat-betting $200 without counting for 16700 hands would still be well within 1 SD and make $5K.
I would love to know what system can show an EV of $30/hr and still lose 5K in 2 hours. What's that mean - your avg bet was $30 with a 1% adv?
To be frank, this is becoming slightly annoying. There can be
individual sessions where someone flat betting $200 can win or lose $5000, because I've had online sessions where flat-betting $20 has caused swings of greater than $500. Hell, just last month, over
400 hands of $10 BJ, I had a balance whipsaw from $400, up to $600, down to $200, and back to $400 before I was done. Add a zero to the bets, and you're talking some significant swings.
Sometimes I wonder if you've
really played all those online hands of bonus-whoring blackjack that you talk about.
Just for shits and giggles, let's break down a recent session of mine:
2D game, H17 DAS, no surrender. Using
reko with indices. Bet ramp was $50-$100-$150-$200-$300. Penetration is assumed to be 66% (because a dealer told me that policy was to cut off 35 cards at this place, and my eyes guessed the pen was at least that good).
Plug all that into powersim, with a $36000 bankroll (which would have been my bankroll
at that moment) and you get a win rate of $93 per 100 hands, a score of 39.9, and a ROR of 4.6%.
I played for one hour and 40 minutes. My tip rate is about $20 / 100 hands, although that session I think I tipped $20 during the entire session.
Great, that's the chalkboard version, but here's where reality enters the fray and confuses the issue:
- Playing some heads up, and some with one other player, how does that affect the speed?
- Game slowdown from flirting with the dealer and BS'ing with the floorman.
- The unknown effect of mistakes. I mean, I didn't catch myself making any mistakes, but that's always hard to do, isn't it?
-
Sometimes not lowering my bet after a win, and
sometimes betting bigger off the top (especially if the last shoe ended with a big bet win).
- The effect of other players at the table on penetration and betting cover (not an issue this particular session due to light crowding).
- Effect of spreading to multiple hands (not an issue this session)
- Three bathroom/phone breaks during negative counts.
- Played a couple of obvious negative indices (13v2, 12v4) when called for.
- Once in a rare while "chipping up" bets in a super high count, only after a win.
- Split tens at least once.
-
Sometimes tipping less if a BJ is a min bet, or if I end up taking even money on it.
- Doubled down 10v10 on at least two occasions when it wasn't called for, as well as several instances of standing 16v10.
- A single interaction play with another player at the table.
None of these things are readiliy quantifiable, at least not to me. And I'm okay with that. But if I subtract the tipping expense, and subtract for cover and mistakes, and assume 100 hands/hour, then $30/hour felt like a nice conservative estimate for a win rate. Plus, a lot of the other local DD games have bad penetration. But still, it's more than I make in my day job, so that ain't too shabby.