Wondering if anyone can answer

[tfg]

You already know that BS is a losing proposition. A favorable situation would be if you know the dealers hole card or some how know the next card or two out of the shoe.
I will take for granted that either you will not know this or if you find it out it will be after you have already placed your bet.

But when I hear favorable situations from someone who does not count, two things that absolutely mean little or nothing seem to come up.
1. You are in a win streak and start pressing your bet. There really is no justification for this unless the composition of the remaining cards (cardcounting) would call for an increase in your bets. You won the previous hands because of good luck (variance) but that has no effect on your next hand.

2. You are in the middle of a shoe and a bunch of small cards hit the felt. You say to yourself that aces and faces are coming next, unfortunately for you the count had been highly negative before the last hand and all those small cards only brought the count to some area that is less negative. You are raising your bet now with a bigger disadvantage than you had when the shoe began.

ihate17

Kind of number two. What I've been doing is, I'll keep and eye on the shoe and if I see that a bunch of 5's and 6's have come out, especially in the last 6-8 hands, I'll kind of use a progression. I'll up my minimum bet or if my first bet doesn't hit, then I'll throw in a negative progression and go to $20 and then $40. So I basically try to take advantage of when I may get some good cards but I'm still not wagering all that much and I'm definately not going to use a full blown Martingale by any means.

 

[johndoe]

Kind of number two. What I've been doing is, I'll keep and eye on the shoe and if I see that a bunch of 5's and 6's have come out, especially in the last 6-8 hands, I'll kind of use a progression. I'll up my minimum bet or if my first bet doesn't hit, then I'll throw in a negative progression and go to $20 and then $40. So I basically try to take advantage of when I may get some good cards but I'm still not wagering all that much and I'm definately not going to use a full blown Martingale by any means.

This will almost certainly cause you to lose more than you would by flat betting basic strategy, just because it's causing you to bet more.

If you want to learn to beat the game, you can, but it's not for everyone.

 

[GeorgeD]

Unfortunately there are no short cuts in life. Since you are not willing to put up the effort to beat this game I would strongly suggest a job at McDonalds. It will guarantee you a small consistent profit and you will leave every session or shift up money.

... and a meal with every shift.

 

[ihate17]

This will mislead you often

Kind of number two. What I've been doing is, I'll keep and eye on the shoe and if I see that a bunch of 5's and 6's have come out, especially in the last 6-8 hands, I'll kind of use a progression. I'll up my minimum bet or if my first bet doesn't hit, then I'll throw in a negative progression and go to $20 and then $40. So I basically try to take advantage of when I may get some good cards but I'm still not wagering all that much and I'm definately not going to use a full blown Martingale by any means.

A non counter will often not remember that a ton of aces and faces came out during the first couple of decks of a shoe. Now after 3 or more decks have been dealt you see a hand with a bunch of little cards and you raise your bet. If this is the situation, you will lose extra. Then you compound this mistake, still thinking the big cards will come, and use a progression. This will cost you an additional amount.
If you do not plan to learn how to count, the best advice you have been given is just to flat bet.

ihate17

 

[daddybo]

A small fortune..

It's like a fellow told me one time... " It's easy to make a Small fortune in Vegas ... You just start with a Large Fortune. (Although with AP plays and a good bankroll and a LOT of time.. you can grind out some cash.

db

 

[tfg]

Allright, so the last few weeks I've been grinding away both at the tables and at practicing counting techniques. I'm getting better at it, however at the tables, I'm nowhere near good enough yet. I'm still not able to keep track of the count continuously while paying attention to everything else. Like my bet amount and so on. One time the dealer had to confirm my action when I had a 4,3 showing and I waved to stay. I corrected myself at the same time, but that just proved to me that I have a ton to go. I assume that for most people that are good at this, it is as easy as the snap decisions that are made to stay and hit using the BS.

I am however still coming away ahead most nights, using my pseudo couting mechanisms. With the 8 deck shoe, the swings are pretty severe as I experienced the other day when I sat down and proceeded to lose probably 20 out of 25 hands through 2 shoes. I wasn't even pressing any bets and the dealer was making 20 and 21's like crazy. That pretty much cleared the table, but I had enough $$ with me to buy in a little more as that was a rather drastic losing session. Sure enough through the next 3 shoes I was able to recoup all the losses and ended up a measely $15. But after basically being cleaned out, I thought that was a win. I think that's the key to a lot of this, is making sure that you're decently enough bankrolled (even for a recreational player), not chasing your losses, and patience, patience, patience.

What I've been doing is basically tracking the cards without actually counting. I'll survey the first 4-5 rounds and determine if it's been 10 heavy or low card heavy and then adjust accordingly. If I see that it's been loaded with low cards, especially 5's, I'll increase bets and if I don't hit that one I'll double the next hand. If I see the opposite, I'll just play the minimum.

The other thing that I've noticed that I like to do is play 1st base, for a number of reasons. If the last 2 or 3 rounds there's been a ton of low cards, there has to be an increase that some of the next cards are going to have some 10's and I'll increase. Since I'm the first one to get the next card, I can try to catch a couple 10's especially if the dealer just had a 4 or 5 card hand with a lot of straight small cards. Also, if it's a packed table, the person at 1st base gets pushed way to the right almost as far back as the dealer. This has allowed me to on numerous occasions, see the last couple cards that are in the shoe, because the cards will fall forward and the yellow card that they put at the bottom will not. Also, when shuffling you can get a glimpse at the deck. Not bigtime advantages, but if you see an ace at the bottom of the shoe, you know you're only going to be playing that shoe with 31 aces, and same thing if it's a 5.

I'll also keep track of the aces. If I don't see many of them in the first rounds I'll press the betting a little. I guess this is a dumbed down version of the Ace/10 front count or Ace/Five count. I guess I've got to start somewhere. Even though I'm not a professional, I still like to play and even recreationally if I can, I'm going to try to play with a little advantage or at least cut down the disadvantage while I try to improve my skills. This at the very least has allowed me to minimize my losing sessions, while allowing me to get some extra cash.

 

[sagefr0g]

it's hard to know what the heck the advantage is

Allright, so the last few weeks I've been grinding away both at the tables and at practicing counting techniques. I'm getting better at it, however at the tables, I'm nowhere near good enough yet. I'm still not able to keep track of the count continuously while paying attention to everything else. Like my bet amount and so on. One time the dealer had to confirm my action when I had a 4,3 showing and I waved to stay. I corrected myself at the same time, but that just proved to me that I have a ton to go. I assume that for most people that are good at this, it is as easy as the snap decisions that are made to stay and hit using the BS.

I am however still coming away ahead most nights, using my pseudo couting mechanisms. With the 8 deck shoe, the swings are pretty severe as I experienced the other day when I sat down and proceeded to lose probably 20 out of 25 hands through 2 shoes. I wasn't even pressing any bets and the dealer was making 20 and 21's like crazy. That pretty much cleared the table, but I had enough $$ with me to buy in a little more as that was a rather drastic losing session. Sure enough through the next 3 shoes I was able to recoup all the losses and ended up a measely $15. But after basically being cleaned out, I thought that was a win. I think that's the key to a lot of this, is making sure that you're decently enough bankrolled (even for a recreational player), not chasing your losses, and patience, patience, patience.

What I've been doing is basically tracking the cards without actually counting. I'll survey the first 4-5 rounds and determine if it's been 10 heavy or low card heavy and then adjust accordingly. If I see that it's been loaded with low cards, especially 5's, I'll increase bets and if I don't hit that one I'll double the next hand. If I see the opposite, I'll just play the minimum.

The other thing that I've noticed that I like to do is play 1st base, for a number of reasons. If the last 2 or 3 rounds there's been a ton of low cards, there has to be an increase that some of the next cards are going to have some 10's and I'll increase. Since I'm the first one to get the next card, I can try to catch a couple 10's especially if the dealer just had a 4 or 5 card hand with a lot of straight small cards. Also, if it's a packed table, the person at 1st base gets pushed way to the right almost as far back as the dealer. This has allowed me to on numerous occasions, see the last couple cards that are in the shoe, because the cards will fall forward and the yellow card that they put at the bottom will not. Also, when shuffling you can get a glimpse at the deck. Not bigtime advantages, but if you see an ace at the bottom of the shoe, you know you're only going to be playing that shoe with 31 aces, and same thing if it's a 5.

I'll also keep track of the aces. If I don't see many of them in the first rounds I'll press the betting a little. I guess this is a dumbed down version of the Ace/10 front count or Ace/Five count. I guess I've got to start somewhere. Even though I'm not a professional, I still like to play and even recreationally if I can, I'm going to try to play with a little advantage or at least cut down the disadvantage while I try to improve my skills. This at the very least has allowed me to minimize my losing sessions, while allowing me to get some extra cash.

ihate17 was telling it like it is, far as how it goes trying this sort of thing. you really if your going to try and do this stuff need to try to keep a good handle on the previous rounds.
so but what your describing is a lot like what i've been trying to do. like i counted the orthodox way for a few years or so and still do some times. i'd just say if you want to try and do a 'fuzzy' count sort of thing that having had some experience as an orthodox counter might be a help. you at least then have an idea of how it goes in an experiential sort of way.
one thing that i do is practice one heck of a lot with cvbj. it's good because you can go back and examine your cvbj logs and see how well your bets correlate with the actual true counts. i can tell you, that at least in my case i'm pretty darn far off count wise from what i think the count should be and from what the true count actually is. unfortunately i find that it's not all that infrequent that i've been betting up into a negative count .
so, but anyway, what i try to do is i'll run a simulation for the particular game i'm going to play. i'll determine the standard deviation, expectation and probable range of results for a given number of hands that a perfect card counter can expect betting a certain way so as to attain the risk of ruin and expectation that is acceptable to me. then i'll play my fuzzy count voodoo stuff trying my best to mimic the play of that perfect card counter with out really counting but just mainly intuitively trying to keep a handle on how rich or poor the pack to be dealt is in high cards.
probably i guess stop loss play, and having goal targets is something that most orthodox counters would ignore. well, imho a 'fuzzy' counter should have stop loss's and goal targets. like in my case, say maybe i lose about one standard deviation worth of units over some number of hands, i might just abandon the 'fuzzy' stuff and try and count orthodox, alternatively if i manage to reach expectation or one standard deviation to the good i'll probably quit for the day or at least stop play for a while since i realize i've just some how managed to do as well for the time being as a perfect card counter, lol.
one thing that can help you keep a handle on how the count may be going is by keeping track of situational hands in combination with 'leaning'.
leaning is just the sort of thing you was describing, watching out for those time when a lot of low cards present, while hopefully keeping a mental note of how the previous rounds went. situational hands are the particular types of hands that you, the dealer and other players may have in a given round. when you and or the other players are doing a lot of splitting, splitting and then doubling down or just doubling down on hard hands, then it likely that the count is rising. splitting aces is usually not good news for the count. doubling soft hands is not such good news as making hard doubles. to a lesser extent it is also likely that the count is rising when you and the dealer or the other players and the dealer have a number of cards that add up to seven or more cards.
well all this said, lmao, don't try this stuff in the casino, do it at home on cvbj.
oh and where you was hoping to make $200 or so on a consistent basis, well this wouldn't be the way. me so far i've been just breaking even after a year or so.

 

[tfg]

ihate17 was telling it like it is, far as how it goes trying this sort of thing. you really if your going to try and do this stuff need to try to keep a good handle on the previous rounds.
so but what your describing is a lot like what i've been trying to do. like i counted the orthodox way for a few years or so and still do some times. i'd just say if you want to try and do a 'fuzzy' count sort of thing that having had some experience as an orthodox counter might be a help. you at least then have an idea of how it goes in an experiential sort of way.
one thing that i do is practice one heck of a lot with cvbj. it's good because you can go back and examine your cvbj logs and see how well your bets correlate with the actual true counts. i can tell you, that at least in my case i'm pretty darn far off count wise from what i think the count should be and from what the true count actually is. unfortunately i find that it's not all that infrequent that i've been betting up into a negative count .
so, but anyway, what i try to do is i'll run a simulation for the particular game i'm going to play. i'll determine the standard deviation, expectation and probable range of results for a given number of hands that a perfect card counter can expect betting a certain way so as to attain the risk of ruin and expectation that is acceptable to me. then i'll play my fuzzy count voodoo stuff trying my best to mimic the play of that perfect card counter with out really counting but just mainly intuitively trying to keep a handle on how rich or poor the pack to be dealt is in high cards.
probably i guess stop loss play, and having goal targets is something that most orthodox counters would ignore. well, imho a 'fuzzy' counter should have stop loss's and goal targets. like in my case, say maybe i lose about one standard deviation worth of units over some number of hands, i might just abandon the 'fuzzy' stuff and try and count orthodox, alternatively if i manage to reach expectation or one standard deviation to the good i'll probably quit for the day or at least stop play for a while since i realize i've just some how managed to do as well for the time being as a perfect card counter, lol.
one thing that can help you keep a handle on how the count may be going is by keeping track of situational hands in combination with 'leaning'.
leaning is just the sort of thing you was describing, watching out for those time when a lot of low cards present, while hopefully keeping a mental note of how the previous rounds went. situational hands are the particular types of hands that you, the dealer and other players may have in a given round. when you and or the other players are doing a lot of splitting, splitting and then doubling down or just doubling down on hard hands, then it likely that the count is rising. splitting aces is usually not good news for the count. doubling soft hands is not such good news as making hard doubles. to a lesser extent it is also likely that the count is rising when you and the dealer or the other players and the dealer have a number of cards that add up to seven or more cards.
well all this said, lmao, don't try this stuff in the casino, do it at home on cvbj.
oh and where you was hoping to make $200 or so on a consistent basis, well this wouldn't be the way. me so far i've been just breaking even after a year or so.

Cool I'll keep this in mind. I'm going to continue to hone my skills while still enjoying playing with my other methods as just a recreational player.