What Could I Be Doing Wrong?

[sagefr0g]

Well, in a way, maybe that's sort of the point lol. In one's mind, it may seem it should be a "relatively rare" event lol.
How would one mathematically define a "rare" event? Would you call 1 in 370 a "rare" event? Or a 1 in 740 chance event as "rare" or even maybe "relatively rare"?

So, expressing things in stan dev just allow one to define how "rare" any results actually are.

So like 3 ST is 99.7% - that means 3 times in 1000 one's results will be outside that range. Half of those 3 times they will be outside the range on the Luke Skywalker side, the other 1.5 times have joined the dark forces of Darth Vader.

I said 1 in 740 becasue that are the odds of finishing outside of 3 SD on the bad side.

To me 1 in 740 is not really that rare of an event and, in fact, can be counted upon to happen from time to time. You play 1500 rounds, probably one of those strings of 740 rounds will have results outside the 3 SD.

So, sure measure your results after each session and cumulatively as best as one can. But, if you finish at -2 SD 3 times in a row in equal-length sessions, your cumulative results will no doubt be approaching -3.5 to -4 SD by then.Covering risk like this is pretty much the point of choosing a roll, either lifetime or for a trip. You pick your risk vs time played and go from there.

I guess I feel 3 SD ain't really nothing because, in my internet play, on one software I was down -3.7 SD after 7500 hands but right at expected 35000 hands later. On another software, I finished +3 SD after 70000+ hands. On another I finished almost -3 SD after 8500 hands.

I don't know where one draws the line - guess that's a personal choice to some extent. At -4 SD, 1 in 32000, my paranoia kicks in a little and I see it as Divine Punishment for my sins though

ok, that finally sank in. for some reason i can never quite get that type of understanding on this standard deviation stuff. i think i keep asking the same questions about it over and over. lmao.

so ok one more question on standard deviation stuff.
how come the sigma's such as they are are always used,
i mean the 1sd 68%, 2sd 95% and 3sd 99.7% values?
is there something special about those numbers and the bell curve, or something practical about those particular numbers to use?
i mean heck why not some other number for this sigma stuff?:whip:

 

[creeping panther]

Flash

"monopoly"

You said: "I started counting cards ... August ... a loss of roughly $11,000 ... I had TCs as high as +7!"

Comments:

You lost about 22 Max bets. How many hours of play did that take ?

Unless your time spent at the tables was very short, that loss will be calculated to be completely normal (in the 'Gaussian' sense) and well within One Sigma (1 S.D.) for your spread.
Do you know the Standard Deviation for 'your' game ?
A typical S.D. for a game like yours can be as high as 40 units per hour.
That is $1,000 in a $25 game. But that is for ONE hour and for ONE Standard Deviation. Are you starting to see where this is leading?
When you get to the number of hours you played and you double or treble it to get to 2 and 3 S.D.'s with their concomitant probabilities, you will (probably) see that if you want to bet that kind of money then there is a significant element of RISk involved.
The subject of "Risk-of-Ruin" is an extremely important subject to fathom - especially as it relates to Bankroll and Bet Ramp ("spread" Considerations.

Here is the second point that really must be understood if you are going to gain maintain your emotional and financial equilibrium while you gain a more solid understanding of things beyond the fundamentals of Card Counting.

A +7 Hi-Lo True Count means that your edge over the casino was, depending on precise rules, about 1.5%. That is odds of 49.25% to 50.75% Interesting way to look at it? It is misleading in this context, because it has little o do with the probability of your winning your bets.

Off-the-top of the shoe your probability of winning a random hand is about 43%.
While you are salivating at your prospects of winning your upcoming bet of $490 with a TC = +7, your probability of winning has risen just a little. You are still an underdog to win your next bet.

The reason that you have put more money at risk is NOT because you are especially likely to win. It is solely because your bets are more effective.
You are more likely than normal to catch a Blackjack. You are more likely to receive a pair of face cards. Your Doubled Down hands are more likely than normal to be successful, as are your pair splits. The dealer's (overall) average bust probability will have hardly moved from its 'normal' figure of 28%.
These factors are important to the fundamental basis for Card Counting.

Very fine explanation.

CP

 

[Kasi]

See - leave it to the Wise One to cut thru the 7 superficial layers of reality and, after "apparent appearance", "apparent reality", maybe after "real appearance", and a few others, strive to get to "real reality".

I'd say I've apparently given you the "apparent appearance" that for some reason I'd know about "real reality" lmao.

I just take it as axiomic, like 2 parallel lines will never intersect even if no body can prove it lol.

But, if pressed, I'd say it does have to do with the properties of a "bell-shaped curve". All it's trying to do, I think, is measure how dispersed the values that actually occur are from the "mean" or average value of all the values that actually occur.

Record the age of death of the last 5000000 people who died. Add all those ages up and divide by 5000000. That's the average age they died. Alot of the people may have actually died at that age. Some may have died at 110 and some at 1. Say the avg turns out to be 75. If 4000000 of the people actually died at 75 it's a steep bell shaped curve with most data points clustered around 75. If 2000000 died at 110 and 2000000 at 1 it will be a shallow bell-shaped curve.

All stan dev says is that 68% of the data-points will be within 1 SD. If it's a steep bell curve, 68% of the data points will be a narrow range. If it's a shallow bell curve, 68% of the data-points will be a wider range.

And, somewhere, somehow, I think smart guys with all that squaring of the difference of values that deviate from the average value, (so neg values will always be positive) actually "proved" 68% of the data-points will be 1 SD (after-all before SD there was variance).

Even if they didn't "prove" it, which I think maybe they did even if I don't understand exactly how, I just accept by definition that 1 SD means 68% of the total data-points will fall within that range. If you play 100 hands, 68% of the data-points when one only plays 100 hands is whatever. Play 1000000 hands it's a larger dollar range, naturally, but it's still just as likely your results will fall within that larger dollar range after that many hands so what do you care? By then your expected (average) value is higher too.

So I never understand this stuff about, apparently, somehow playing longer increases risk or something just because the dollar amount of 1 SD increases. Of course the dollar amount of 1 SD increases over hands played but so does one's avg (expected) value also increase.

The whole point is one's EV in units per round can be calced by multiplying number of rounds played by that number. Whereas one's SD per round in units is multiplied by the square root of the number of rounds played. In other words, EV increases faster per round than SD. It's the ratio of EV in units/rd vs variance or SD/rd that defines everything. That's it. That's everything. That's the whole ball of wax.

Betting optimally gives you the best ratio. The better the ratio, the better the game. Crappy ratio, crappy SCORE, crappy game.

So, the practical value is just that, - the ability to put a %age of how often results will deviate from expected result, how often, ie how likely it is, you will have died at 1 or may die at 110.

Not to mention that just because 5000000 died at an avg age of 75 doesn't mean you would get the same avg number if you recorded deaths of 5000 people or 5000000000 people lol.

So, in some sense, with BJ anyway, that average or "expected" value is a moving target anyway and we never get to "real reality" anyway - 'nother subject - lmao. All that "satndard error" stuff which I also don't really understand except that smaller is better lol.

 

[monopoly]

First and foremost I apologize for not updating this thread in such a long time, life got in the way.

Secondly, I would like to thank all of you for the very detailed and passionate responses, especially FLASH1296 and Kasi (for simplifying what SD is).

FLASH1296, to answer your question. The rules for the game I'm playing are:
8 decks, S17, DAS, No Surrender, Peek, 75%-80% pen.

I'd also like to add that this loss occurred over the course of three days, roughly 24 hours of game play.

During my absence from the forum, I've been able to go to the casino during the weekends. The advice to split my betting spreads into two hands was very helpful as many of the times one hand would save the other. Also, the advice to camo the bets drew less heat and was fun actually. Overall, I've been winning more often slowly but surely, and I have you to thank for this.

I noticed many of you suggested that I play or look into other games because of my being forced to play at 8-deck tables. I was wondering what exactly do you mean by this? Are there other beatable games aside from blackjack?

 

[Katweezel]

Variance

"monopoly"

You said: "I started counting cards ... August ... a loss of roughly $11,000 ... I had TCs as high as +7!"

Comments:

You lost about 22 Max bets. How many hours of play did that take ?

Unless your time spent at the tables was very short, that loss will be calculated to be completely normal (in the 'Gaussian' sense) and well within One Sigma (1 S.D.) for your spread.
Do you know the Standard Deviation for 'your' game ?
A typical S.D. for a game like yours can be as high as 40 units per hour.
That is $1,000 in a $25 game. But that is for ONE hour and for ONE Standard Deviation. Are you starting to see where this is leading?
When you get to the number of hours you played and you double or treble it to get to 2 and 3 S.D.'s with their concomitant probabilities, you will (probably) see that if you want to bet that kind of money then there is a significant element of RISk involved.
The subject of "Risk-of-Ruin" is an extremely important subject to fathom - especially as it relates to Bankroll and Bet Ramp ("spread" Considerations.

Here is the second point that really must be understood if you are going to gain maintain your emotional and financial equilibrium while you gain a more solid understanding of things beyond the fundamentals of Card Counting.

A +7 Hi-Lo True Count means that your edge over the casino was, depending on precise rules, about 1.5%. That is odds of 49.25% to 50.75% Interesting way to look at it? It is misleading in this context, because it has little o do with the probability of your winning your bets.

Off-the-top of the shoe your probability of winning a random hand is about 43%.
While you are salivating at your prospects of winning your upcoming bet of $490 with a TC = +7, your probability of winning has risen just a little. You are still an underdog to win your next bet.

The reason that you have put more money at risk is NOT because you are especially likely to win. It is solely because your bets are more effective.
You are more likely than normal to catch a Blackjack. You are more likely to receive a pair of face cards. Your Doubled Down hands are more likely than normal to be successful, as are your pair splits. The dealer's (overall) average bust probability will have hardly moved from its 'normal' figure of 28%.
These factors are important to the fundamental basis for Card Counting.

I agree with Panther. This is an outstanding post, Flash... and for me, it helps illuminate some more of the big BJ puzzle. Thank you. Now I notice you said: "...more likely to..." That is relative, is it not? Like down here, we can play ONLY 6 or mostly, 8 decks. So presumably, the relativity is more against an 8-deck player, correct? I think Voltaire could have been referring to 8-deck players when he wrote this in the 1700s: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one."

Which brings me to my question, which is about variance. I've seen many posts here retelling horror stories of taking severe hammerings on strong positive counts. I've read formulae for calculating variance. (How can a formula work when 2 decks are cut off?) I noted some confuse luck with variance. There does not appear to be an abundance of deep understanding of this dreaded V-word. Usually, we just have to accept it as 'part of the game'.

In an 8-deck shoe with 75% pen, (about normal here) there are two decks cut off and of course, we never know what's in the cut decks. If there are many 10s hiding in the cut-offs, we could still get a (temporary) high count, (and be taking a beating) because of all those hidden 10s, right? That could be one explanation for V, I guess. I'd like to get your thoughts on that, and especially yours on enlightening the V-word's operations. (I just cannot say it!) :cat:

 

[kewljason]

"monopoly"

Comments:
A +7 Hi-Lo True Count means that your edge over the casino was, depending on precise rules, about 1.5%. That is odds of 49.25% to 50.75% Interesting way to look at it? It is misleading in this context, because it has little o do with the probability of your winning your bets.

It's going to take some uncommonly bad rules to only have a 1.5% advantage at a hi-lo true count of +7. Even with hit17 the advantage should be 3.0%

 

[FLASH1296]

sorry

My apologies are in order here.

Sorry. I was thinking in terms of Hi-OptII / ZEN

In Hi-Lo, +7 would be a player advantage of about 3%

 

[monopoly]

I thought I should update this thread for all those who remember the horrible phase I was in when I posted it.

I'd like to share the great news that I was able to make all the money back back and am actually up $10,000 now... it was not easy... especially emotionally... but I did it... and I'm very sure to not become cocky...

Your insight, data, encouragement, and advice really helped.

For all those reading, I hope this serves as a morale booster if you're experiencing some trouble

P.S: I'm about to go on my first card-counting trip out of my city tomorrow, and I feel confident having learned what I did here!

 

[Finn Dog]

Monopoly,

You are now one of the Negative Variance Kings of the board!

A very inspirational story!

Congratulations!

:celebrate

By the way, did you make up all your ground on that same 8-deck battlefield or seek more fertile ground?

Best regards,

FD

 

[monopoly]

Finn Dog, thanks very much

I'm no king, the true kings are here on this board who helped me and explained to me the reality of this.

I made it all back and more at the same 8-deck battleground! On a personal level, I wouldn't want it any other way. It felt damn good!

I'm currently in 'the new city', and reviewing the surrenders (which is new to me) and the new betting spread according to the new deck-count and am about to go in for the kill.

I'll post a brand new thread about that trip, and will report on the results... so stay tuned

Cheers all!