luck

sagefr0g · Dec 14, 2008

aslan said:
I question seriously whether you are an advantage player if you play with insufficient bankroll. It is one of the foundations of advantage play. Your risk of ruin is just as important as your estimated win rate. It's like playing football without a field goal kicker. "Who knows," you say, "We may never need one." You don't have to be Glovesetc to know how that will work out--I don't care how good your offense is!

yep,
this is undoubtabley the greatest question for an AP, of them all, imho.
well maybe not, but for me it is.
and it's a decision i suspect that is likely passed off with no real understanding or much serious thought and introspection by many a AP candidate. this is something i've yet to find thoroughly treated by any of the blackjack author's i've read, except for Arnold Snyder getting close to it with his "You Won't Win" article.
risk & lifetime risk of ruin. a decision is required.
a decision that by the nature of advantage play is required. any way you look at it, that lifetime bankroll is going to represent a considerable chunk of change. this decision alone and my inability to make it is enough to insure that orthodox AP is not for me. my reluctance to follow through on other orthodox AP measures not with standing, the honest willingness to lose in full or near so a 'sufficient' lifetime bankroll is something i'm not willing to committ to.
it's strange, i once thought i could make the committment. then at the first sign that showed me just how real the possibility was to for real lose said bankroll that committment collapsed. and further i've never been able to regain the idea that i could make such a committment.
yet, i still play, i still use a sum of money as a lifetime bankroll that yields some ROR for the games i play. but really in a great sense it's a sham, just imaginary on my part, said bankroll. this imaginary bankroll, all it does is give me a number to work with, that gives me another number, ROR. numbers i can use in simulations and spreadsheets that can give me an idea of the things that can happen, goals, winrate, standard deviation, ROR, prospects for some number of rounds played, ideas about trip bankrolls and trip ROR.
all based in truth on a sham.

aslan · Dec 14, 2008

sagefr0g said:
well, i dunno even at your N0 where at one standard deviation is the same as your expectation, for that many hands played you still might have made zero dollars or on up to as much as your EV represents
but then you still have possibilities for two, three even four standard deviations. even 2xN0 you still could be losing or winning more money than your expectation in the two, three even four standard deviation points. i mean heck i'm just drawing those sort of possibilities from a game where a player has an advantage. but even a flat better playing the same game, same number of hands as the N0 for the advantage player could be ahead as much as he might be behind EV-wise if he's one standard deviation to the good.
so but i dunno what you wanna call the long run maybe just say that's the point where luck can't help you no matter what i guess.
that's what ever number of hands it would be is gonna be one heck of a lot of hands, even for a flat better. i've not seen a precise number of rounds or hands played figure for the long run ever published that i know of such as N0 has. maybe the long run is more a theoretical concept than it is a actual number you can hang your hat on sort of thing.
if anything in my hazy understanding of how it goes for luck or standard deviation in the long run is that the significance of it becomes less and less when compared to EV as more and more hands are played. like i read Sonny say anything can happen in the short term but the long run is where the advantage plays out, words to that effect. when i think about that statement, it's like to me luck is a more potent phenomenon in the short term and less potent, maybe impotent in the long term.

If luck is still a factor after x number of hands, play more. Luck goes this way and luck goes that way. Over time it all evens out, maybe not to perfection, but enough to render luck de minimis--not worth the trouble to calculate.

sagefr0g said:
no, but didn't the author in question infer that some how people should just be able to get around the normal miserable feeling one is bound to have when such an event occurs and no mention regarding fault? in essence the implication being that if people viewed such events properly they wouldn't see it as bad luck. they'd just be happy go lucky. just seems like hog wash to me. i believe most folk are hard wired more or less to suffer when the chips are down and celebrate when the chips are up, reason and rationalization be dammed the bodys chemistry rules when it comes to feelings or emotions especially i believe this is so when complex matters requiring probability to understand the matter correctly is involved. just, it's to hard to understand fully intellectually other than in abstract covouluted terms such that the body and conscious mind ends up scared sh!tless even if the situation is relatively harmless. that's where i think the author is off base and for his conclusion to hold it would be like you say below, probably would take a 1000 years of mental evolution for such a capability to take hold.

I didn't read the book, only the review in which it was said the author did not believe in luck and that luck was a matter of perception. Well, in my discussions I am buying into the first point. The second point, which I wasn't really addressing much, is more useful in developing a pragmatic approach toward living. So, if you are competing for money, it is best if you maintain a positive point of view--see yourself as lucky if only to prevent yourself from getting depressed when it seems that your opponent is getting all the breaks. In other matters, say sickness, it is always healthy to count your blessings. It would be masochistic to say, "Oh Boy, oh boy!" when you smash your finger with a hammer, but it is not long after that you realize that it could have been worse. But pain is neither lucky nor unlucky--it just is--it's a fact of life. With due care, we may limit the amount we experience, but we can never be certain of eliminating it from our lives completely. In the Christian religion, pain may even be viewed as a grace, the acceptance of which can have redemptive and healing powers. Read C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, which is the best dissertaion on the subject of pain I have ever read.

sagefr0g said:
yeah, well maybe if those dudes worked it right they could make some of those not so slick plays into the kind of street smart advantage i'm tawkin bout. do you think they could learn how to employ AP?
if they could they could take some of that money they lucked out and won and do something with it instead of continuing in their ways and squandering it all on more risky bets. i mean heck one could take the kind of money they maybe won and just flat bet some low amount a while and maybe win some fair amount of loot but at least not lose a heck of a lot trying.
but really what your saying about those guys and how they gamble, i agree that's maybe not so swift.

You can't gamble with an advantage without sufficient bankroll. The best approach, IMHO, is to save the money you would have otherwise gambled, and then when you have enough of a bankroll, to apply advantage play, if you are so inclined, A better bet might be to invest the money you saved in your own or someone else's business (stocks) or businesses (mutuals).

sagefr0g said:
thing is what i think i'm saying is that done a certain way, with knowledge and AP capability when needed, that gambling need not be such a noxious overly risky proposition and with luck, leverage (if you will taking advantage of luck) one might even come out ahead and not just in the short run.

I guarantee you that if you continue to rely on luck, and the leveraging of luck, you will end up broke, unless you die first. From my experience in life, the long run comes around frequently enough to wipe you out many times in a lifetime, at least to the extent that you are good fortune was due to luck.

sagefr0g said:
essentially luck, and random results (a more complex randomness than fits the gaussian curve for which gaussian randomness is a subset in which variance is well behaved according to the bell curve) to where the concept of luck would be tossed out of the casino and just standard deviation (the kind that fits the bell curve) in place of luck and the more complex form or randomness that allows for fat tails and black swans sort of thing.
thats a mouthful for me and i don't understand all the math but thats how i view it.
so in that sense you would be right no luck in blackjack, nada, not even in the short term, just variance and standard deviation.

Luck is so well behaved in blackjack that it is not unlikely that good and bad luck will cancel themselves out many times over in the short run.

sagefr0g said:
what that voodoo actions might skew the results on the bell curve?
maybe remove whole sections of the bell curve at one point and put it back in latter maybe.
cloud the issue so to speak, open opportunities to apply leverage?
yeah we been agreeing to disagree on that stuff i guess.
truth be known, i'm not even sure what this part of the thread is tawkin bout.:laugh:

Voodoo results work both ways.

sagefr0g said:
well i agree no magic, no voodoo (excepting in nomenclature only), no special quality that you either have or don't. but skill in dealing with luck or just say in dealing with random results yes, i'm still going there. i believe that is possible. it should only take normal observation, knowledge, decision making and thought. nothing strange or quirky like a savant or something. but i dunno maybe such strange stuff might be possible as well.

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! View attachment 1843 Where are you going? As I have said before, you cannot "lock" luck in, except for the short run, or by discontinuing your reliance on luck altogether. Law: Push your luck and it will catch up with you!

sagefr0g said:
right, thing is though it's not a point to base your dreams on random behavior,only to realize, hey it's going to happen and to take advantage of it rather than it have it's way with you.
even the bad element of randomness, take advantage of that aspect as well.
you know it's comming, be prepared, you know it's nature even to a quantifiable degree, recognize it for what it is and base your decisions on that knowledge.

And I'm saying you cannot take advantage of randomness except by discontinuing your reliance on it. If you were not relying on it, and it just happens while in the course of pursuing an advantage, be assured that it will go away on its own. You can't lock it in. If you were not relying on it and it just happened, and you were not pursuing an advantage, you can of course apply your "lucky" winnings to advantage play, and by avoiding haphazard and disadvantaged behavior in the future, you can lock in your winnings. A more logical and pragmatic approach would be to avoid all haphazard and disadvantaged behavior in the first place, save your money that you would have otherwise probably squandered, and then apply the resulting "sure" savings to advantage play or better investment opportunities.

sagefr0g said:
it's like the weather. we know it's gonna rain some day but we aren't to good as to just when it's gonna rain. so but it you don't wanna get wet maybe you might want to carry an umbrella. that sort of thing, just common sense applyed to perhaps not so common knowledge.

Carrying an umbrella is equivalent to an advantage player having an adequate bankroll.

sagefr0g said:
once, i know of in my case, thank goodness over a period of a couple of years.

i'd just say, it's a simple matter of using good sense as to how you gamble, just like how an AP uses good sense to gamble on an advantage situation. just the prior case the advantage may or may not be known but the results could be held up against a yardstick so that one could understand those results in a meaninful way, so that intelligent decisions regarding those results could be made. and furthermore these sort of decisions could be made with regard to AP results or voodoo results.

If you jump in the lake, you will get wet. There is only one I know of who overcame this result and He used supernatural power. Do you possess supernatural powers? When I was seven, I used to try to walk through walls in my parents' home. I had faith. I guess I just didn't have luck. lol

sagefr0g said:
was there ever a 50 cent game? with what max bet? wowser i'd slaughter that sucker. lol
fuzzy playing, i like that but hey it could still involve counting, even other AP stuff. ok if i use the term?
i might change my tag line.

If there is a 50 cent game, you need to find it.

Why water down advantage play? Do you somehow think it is to your advantage to reduce your advantage? It sounds contradictory on the face of it to me.

sagefr0g said:
yeah hopefully he'd have the good sense to switch before it's to late.

Yes, when he receives that voooodoooo feeeeling! View attachment 1843 Simple, isn't it?

sagefr0g said:
wheww, i'm safe. lol.

The thread is safe. So are all the scam artists. Not saying you are one, but as long as there are "true bebievers" in the unscientific, fuzzy world of chance, there will be scam artists to take advantage of them. lol

sagefr0g said:
well don't try any of Zen's LSD then you might find that the chemical reactions that occur in your brain may work through physical laws that will end up applying to your mind, spirit and soul. witness what drug abuse has wrought with some of the celebraties on that TV show Intervention or worse check out some of our prisons.

I am drug free. :grin:

sagefr0g said:
but really the mind/spirit/soul wasn't the point. the point was the question of the second law of thermodynamics and living beings. is the potential there for the phenomenon of life to end as a result of the implications of the second law of thermodynamics? and if so is it possible that life can overcome such an outcome through intelligence and reason?

I suppose the second law of thermodynamics will disappear when the world ends. Our bodies will be glorified (sort of physical but not physical, lol, like Jesus appearing after his death and able to eat fish and all, but also able to walk through walls (my childhood experiment)). Maybe the "new heavens and new earth" of the Bible refers to a change in the characteristics of the physical world. Whatever, Christians believe in the resurrection of their bodies, and an eternal life in some kind of physical world or Paradise.

aslan · Dec 14, 2008

Sage, I think I have an unfair advantage in these discussions, because the laws of probabilities and the work that went into developing them have already examined the phenonomen of luck up one side and down the other and found there was nothing there. The laws describe the totality of factors, including luck, and have been tested over and over again. There is simply nothing more at the ourely human level. Now, if we up the ante to the spirit world, well then. we're talking voodoo in spades, and I'm not saying there is nothing to it.

It's funny too how different the discussion is when we discuss it from a purely human point of view, and how differently it looks when I start delving into God's point of view, that is, out of time where all is predestined in a manner of speaking.

But I have now come to view from both perspectives that there is no such thing as luck in the long run. I still recognize the influence of variance or luck on the short run, but have narrowed down its influence as based on decisions we make whether deliberate or unconsciously with regard to it. And, of course, those decisions, were foreseen by the All Seeing even before the creation of the world, and so are in some sense predestined for our benefit by the equally All Loving.

So, while I see the whole thing as based on human decision, I can also see a benevolence working through it all that allows us to make decisions that advantage ourselves (no I'm not conceding your point. lol) by the sheer timing of our development and understanding with the events transpiring before us. So it is that I won $2,500 playing at a disadvantage, but have decided never to play again. And so it was that I won a $2,000 Royal Straight Flush playing Video Poker Deuces Wild in October, which was also linked to a life decision that I made regarding that event.

I know. View attachment 1844

:grin:

sagefr0g · Dec 14, 2008

luck = potential

aslan said:
Sage, I think I have an unfair advantage in these discussions, because the laws of probabilities and the work that went into developing them have already examined the phenonomen of luck up one side and down the other and found there was nothing there. The laws describe the totality of factors, including luck, and have been tested over and over again. There is simply nothing more at the ourely human level. Now, if we up the ante to the spirit world, well then. we're talking voodoo in spades, and I'm not saying there is nothing to it.

It's funny too how different the discussion is when we discuss it from a purely human point of view, and how differently it looks when I start delving into God's point of view, that is, out of time where all is predestined in a manner of speaking.

.......

yes, man this hit home with me. i mean, heck i've only ever read a few chapters in an introductory outdated probability book. i got stuck on the very second formula the author was explaining and had to get Sonny to explain it.
if not for that i might have never figured it out myself.
there are loads of formulas more to come and complex concepts and ways of looking at things that makes my head spin when i peek ahead in the book and other more rigorous books at the things i've yet to read. and then i know that stuff is going to draw off of other complex maths areas that are beyond my knowledge. lol, just a simple small subsection of human knowledge and when you start trying to understand it, just that small area is vast and complex, lmao, how the heck can we ever hope to really know and truly relate to the whole big wide world.
and then here i am trying to argue with you about gambling.

and we've been going on so much i've lost sight of what it was in the first place we were discussing, maybe it was Zen's cat trap thingamajoby with the quantum mechanical twist. lmao.
but yes, yes and yes, on a purely human point of view with all that mind boggling complexity we are probably no farther apart than two red faced kids standing nose to nose over they forgot what.:laugh::whip:
if i was to try and sum us two up on the whole discussion it would go something like this in a nut shell.
aslan: holds position that for something like gambling one is best off using known, scientifically and mathematicallly proven techniques and must never stray from that or disaster is sure to follow.
sagefr0g: recognizes that for something like gambling aslan is correct, however sagefr0g holds forth that aslan's positon doesn't recognize the potential that may be hidden in what we don't know and might be profited from if only a little commons sense and knowledge is applyed to that potential.

aslan · Dec 14, 2008

sagefr0g said:
yes, man this hit home with me. i mean, heck i've only ever read a few chapters in an introductory outdated probability book. i got stuck on the very second formula the author was explaining and had to get Sonny to explain it.
if not for that i might have never figured it out myself.
there are loads of formulas more to come and complex concepts and ways of looking at things that makes my head spin when i peek ahead in the book and other more rigorous books at the things i've yet to read. and then i know that stuff is going to draw off of other complex maths areas that are beyond my knowledge. lol, just a simple small subsection of human knowledge and when you start trying to understand it, just that small area is vast and complex, lmao, how the heck can we ever hope to really know and truly relate to the whole big wide world.
and then here i am trying to argue with you about gambling.
and we've been going on so much i've lost sight of what it was in the first place we were discussing, maybe it was Zen's cat trap thingamajoby with the quantum mechanical twist. lmao.
but yes, yes and yes, on a purely human point of view with all that mind boggling complexity we are probably no farther apart than two red faced kids standing nose to nose over they forgot what.:laugh::whip:
if i was to try and sum us two up on the whole discussion it would go something like this in a nut shell.
aslan: holds position that for something like gambling one is best off using known, scientifically and mathematicallly proven techniques and must never stray from that or disaster is sure to follow.
sagefr0g: recognizes that for something like gambling aslan is correct, however sagefr0g holds forth that aslan's positon doesn't recognize the potential that may be hidden in what we don't know and might be profited from if only a little commons sense and knowledge is applyed to that potential.

So, you're talking about non-gambling venures, or whatever you want to call them. In the world outside of gambling, are you saying there may be ways to position yourself to catch a black swan? Okay. How do you position yourself to catch the unpredictable? Or am I being too narrow in my definition. Improbable is not the same as unpredictable. Maybe you are saying that BSs are somewhat predictable. In that case, I suppose you could increase your chances of happening upon one. Is this right?

Do you name the kind of BS beforehand? I mean a certain kinds of BS may be over here but not likely over there, so you would position yourself over here. Or are you trying to postition yourself for all possible BSs of any type whatsoever? In that case, are there places where generic BSs might favor over others? Do you have any examples?

sagefr0g · Dec 15, 2008

Bs

aslan said:
So, you're talking about non-gambling venures, or whatever you want to call them. In the world outside of gambling, are you saying there may be ways to position yourself to catch a black swan? Okay. How do you position yourself to catch the unpredictable? Or am I being too narrow in my definition. Improbable is not the same as unpredictable. Maybe you are saying that BSs are somewhat predictable. In that case, I suppose you could increase your chances of happening upon one. Is this right?

Do you name the kind of BS beforehand? I mean a certain kinds of BS may be over here but not likely over there, so you would position yourself over here. Or are you trying to postition yourself for all possible BSs of any type whatsoever? In that case, are there places where generic BSs might favor over others? Do you have any examples?

hmm, lmao. no actually when i wrote the above, casino stuff was on my mind.
me, i have this fantasy in my dreams of casino's having mini-black swans. i don't think the big juicey ones are in casino's. who knows, by definiton you really can't be sure.lol. but the BS author Taleb makes a point of saying there are'nt any in casino's, essentially because casino meisters have washed casino's clean of them. you know when a game of chance is created, the creator is gonna try and make sure of stuff like that. ca'pice?
.......
.........
............
on the black swan thing, outside the casino walls sorta thing, non-gambling venues.... just could give my take on it, probably best to read the book, i'm going to again. but i'll give it a shot.

first a black swan is a random, unpredictable event or chain of events, the consequences of which are monumentaly life changing (way off the scale of normal expectations or of standard deviations) and they can be for good or bad. by definition they are unknowable, essentially until it's to late.

so that puts us in a hopeless situation regarding them, right? wrong. well, maybe wrong.

so, accept this or not. it's usual human psychology to not accept it, but consider the following.
after a black swan wreaks havoc in peoples lives, most people say they saw it comming all along, but in truth they didn't. nobody saw it comming and infact could not. so please, just play along and don't take a position in debate about this that you would of known, could have known or should have known. it's by definition that you wouldn't.

ok, so now the prelim's are out of the way. so if it's not hopeless, why isn't it and what are we gonna do to either protect against or profit from a black swan?

it's not hopeless, because we know black swans can and do happen. that alone is something that hardly anyone knows.
let me put it less delicately. now that we know what we know about black swans, we know that we don't know anything when it comes to extremely important things, hardly anyone else is aware of their own ignorance, at least we are. now that this has been said please don't take the position that you already knew you was dumb as a box of rocks. we can all say that, but it would be missing the point entirely.

protecting and profiting from a black swan:
don't do anything you don't understand, especially when investing. don't follow anyone's advice with respect to investing, when it comes to black swans they haven't a clue (by definition).
90% - 95% of your assets you want absolutely (within reason lol) secure.
10% - 5% you wanna leave open to the risk or reward of a black swan.
so how does this help? your 90%-95% isn't going to suffer major damage by a bad black swan so you should survive should one swoop down outa no where.
but if a good black swan swoops down outa no where, your 10%-5% should pay off big time (since that's what good black swans do).

now where or what to put the 90%-95% and the 10%-5% in.
i a'int gonna say because you aren't supposed to follow anyones advice when it comes to investing.

sagefr0g · Dec 15, 2008

aslan said:
...
Why water down advantage play? Do you somehow think it is to your advantage to reduce your advantage? It sounds contradictory on the face of it to me.
....

yes, it does sound contradictory but i think there is a sort of 'street smart' advantage (if you recall me ranting about that) to by choice temporarily and alternatingly reducing the 'maths theory' advantage as long as you don't lose all of that AP edge in the long run and make decisions using knowledge of AP stuff according to your short term results.
if you are lucky (and yes it's a short term phenomenon cancelled out later in the long term if you employ a consistant action) then your results can be significantly accelerated (just means better results faster) as compared to an AP using orthodox methods in the short run.

aslan · Dec 15, 2008

sagefr0g said:
yes, it does sound contradictory but i think there is a sort of 'street smart' advantage (if you recall me ranting about that) to by choice temporarily and alternatingly reducing the 'maths theory' advantage as long as you don't lose all of that AP edge in the long run and make decisions using knowledge of AP stuff according to your short term results.
if you are lucky (and yes it's a short term phenomenon cancelled out later in the long term if you employ a consistant action) then your results can be significantly accelerated (just means better results faster) as compared to an AP using orthodox methods in the short run.

Just don't lose your shirt searching for that lucky windfall that will allow you to then apply advantage play. lol Don't forget, the only real advantage you have is advantage play. On the other hand, if you are really street smart, I suggest you avoid non-advantage play altogether. Hope I wasn't too confusing. lol

aslan · Dec 15, 2008

sagefr0g said:
hmm, lmao. no actually when i wrote the above, casino stuff was on my mind.
me, i have this fantasy in my dreams of casino's having mini-black swans. i don't think the big juicey ones are in casino's. who knows, by definiton you really can't be sure.lol. but the BS author Taleb makes a point of saying there are'nt any in casino's, essentially because casino meisters have washed casino's clean of them. you know when a game of chance is created, the creator is gonna try and make sure of stuff like that. ca'pice?
.......
.........
............
on the black swan thing, outside the casino walls sorta thing, non-gambling venues.... just could give my take on it, probably best to read the book, i'm going to again. but i'll give it a shot.

first a black swan is a random, unpredictable event or chain of events, the consequences of which are monumentaly life changing (way off the scale of normal expectations or of standard deviations) and they can be for good or bad. by definition they are unknowable, essentially until it's to late.

so that puts us in a hopeless situation regarding them, right? wrong. well, maybe wrong.

so, accept this or not. it's usual human psychology to not accept it, but consider the following.
after a black swan wreaks havoc in peoples lives, most people say they saw it comming all along, but in truth they didn't. nobody saw it comming and infact could not. so please, just play along and don't take a position in debate about this that you would of known, could have known or should have known. it's by definition that you wouldn't.

ok, so now the prelim's are out of the way. so if it's not hopeless, why isn't it and what are we gonna do to either protect against or profit from a black swan?

it's not hopeless, because we know black swans can and do happen. that alone is something that hardly anyone knows.
let me put it less delicately. now that we know what we know about black swans, we know that we don't know anything when it comes to extremely important things, hardly anyone else is aware of their own ignorance, at least we are. now that this has been said please don't take the position that you already knew you was dumb as a box of rocks. we can all say that, but it would be missing the point entirely.

protecting and profiting from a black swan:
don't do anything you don't understand, especially when investing. don't follow anyone's advice with respect to investing, when it comes to black swans they haven't a clue (by definition).
90% - 95% of your assets you want absolutely (within reason lol) secure.
10% - 5% you wanna leave open to the risk or reward of a black swan.
so how does this help? your 90%-95% isn't going to suffer major damage by a bad black swan so you should survive should one swoop down outa no where.
but if a good black swan swoops down outa no where, your 10%-5% should pay off big time (since that's what good black swans do).

now where or what to put the 90%-95% and the 10%-5% in.
i a'int gonna say because you aren't supposed to follow anyones advice when it comes to investing.

So, if I am not prepared in the ways described above, I may get wiped out. Hmmm! The compensating factor. however, seems to be that if I am not prepared, I will receive 100% of the good black swan should she decide to swoop down as opposed to being prepared and only receiving 5% to 10%. Maybe, I'll just take my chances. After all, neither are likely to happen to begin with.

Another question--what is safe when dealing with the unknown? I bury my money in the backyard in mason jars, and don't cha know, they declare my neighborhood an ancient burial ground and prohibit all future digging. Or I put my money into gold bullion, and don't cha know, it's the year before they discover that there is a simple way to convert lead into gold. On the other hand, I put my money into the bank and lo and behold, the US becomes the strongest economy on earth and my money multiplies faster than snowflakes in Buffalo in wintertime.

sagefr0g · Dec 15, 2008

aslan said:
So, if I am not prepared in the ways described above, I may get wiped out. Hmmm! The compensating factor. however, seems to be that if I am not prepared, I will receive 100% of the good black swan should she decide to swoop down as opposed to being prepared and only receiving 5% to 10%. Maybe, I'll just take my chances. After all, neither are likely to happen to begin with.

nope not likely to happen, just virtually guaranteed sooner or later, judging by history. but you can't time swans by history. i suppose it's possible there will never be anymore, doubt it though. lol it's your money, go ahead and do what you want with it and best to ya.. i'm just tryin to explain in my limited understanding what the book was saying. and in just a few sentences compared to the books length.

but just don't forget all that stuff you was telling me about how luck works in the long run. i'm pretty sure it doesn't have to be so even handed plus or minus some expected advantage like in blackjack.

Another question--what is safe when dealing with the unknown? I bury my money in the backyard in mason jars, and don't cha know, they declare my neighborhood an ancient burial ground and prohibit all future digging. Or I put my money into gold bullion, and don't cha know, it's the year before they discover that there is a simple way to convert lead into gold. On the other hand, I put my money into the bank and lo and behold, the US becomes the strongest economy on earth and my money multiplies faster than snowflakes in Buffalo in wintertime.

well the rule is don't go by anyones advice on that stuff. figure it out for your self.
like hell i don't know either but i got some ideas on it. i know one thing, right now far as my stock holdings and mutal fund holding those snowflakes are melting like they got licked in the butt by the fires hell eternal.

and according to Taleb he doesn't even think this current situation is a black swan. sure feels like one to me.

:devil::whip:

sagefr0g · Dec 15, 2008

all beaten up but back on my feet

aslan said:
If luck is still a factor after x number of hands, play more. Luck goes this way and luck goes that way. Over time it all evens out, maybe not to perfection, but enough to render luck de minimis--not worth the trouble to calculate.

it all evens out if you let it.
luck, good and bad happens in the short run. if you've had a string of short term sessions, wouldn't the results of that luck be additive? if you took the chance and that happened it's not written in stone that one must take further such chances. one could play AP afterward till they were blue in the face if they wanted to, maybe get lucky while doing that, maybe decide to take a calculated risk with those proceeds, ect., ect. ect., just would depend, we have brains why not use them? that's been my question about AP ever since i started learning about it. just seems a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

You can't gamble with an advantage without sufficient bankroll. The best approach, IMHO, is to save the money you would have otherwise gambled, and then when you have enough of a bankroll, to apply advantage play, if you are so inclined, A better bet might be to invest the money you saved in your own or someone else's business (stocks) or businesses (mutuals).

hail Mary, brother.

business, stocks and mutuals. yeah, well i'm either too old or lazy for all that now. besides if i wanted to i could lay out a decent bankroll. just, i know myself, like i posted before, i'm unwilling to make the commitment to lose said bankroll.
for me, as far as bankroll, it's just an imaginary sort of la, la world lol. i'm willing to take a stab at blackjack on a day by day basis only. see how it goes sort of thing. sufficient is the evil of today, tomorrow will take care of it's self.:angel::whip:

I guarantee you that if you continue to rely on luck, and the leveraging of luck, you will end up broke, unless you die first. From my experience in life, the long run comes around frequently enough to wipe you out many times in a lifetime, at least to the extent that you are good fortune was due to luck

.
i'd take you up on a bet on that if i didn't like you so much my friend.
long as you let me stick some AP stuff in there as needed.

Luck is so well behaved in blackjack that it is not unlikely that good and bad luck will cancel themselves out many times over in the short run.

Voodoo results work both ways.

isn't that stuff sort of the reason why we have a brain and not just a computer to deal with just about anything?

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! View attachment 1843 Where are you going? As I have said before, you cannot "lock" luck in, except for the short run, or by discontinuing your reliance on luck altogether. Law: Push your luck and it will catch up with you!

whoa ah there, how is it that if you experience luck and then discontinue reliance on luck, that said luck would not be locked in?

And I'm saying you cannot take advantage of randomness except by discontinuing your reliance on it. If you were not relying on it, and it just happens while in the course of pursuing an advantage, be assured that it will go away on its own. You can't lock it in. If you were not relying on it and it just happened, and you were not pursuing an advantage, you can of course apply your "lucky" winnings to advantage play, and by avoiding haphazard and disadvantaged behavior in the future, you can lock in your winnings. A more logical and pragmatic approach would be to avoid all haphazard and disadvantaged behavior in the first place, save your money that you would have otherwise probably squandered, and then apply the resulting "sure" savings to advantage play or better investment opportunities.

sorry i just don't buy that. your making a subjective statement for which one size doesn't fit all. i'll agree if we are talking about a pro, then yeah i'm way out of line. me i'm a recreational player looking to not suffer a change of life experience, maybe make some chump change and have some fun.

Carrying an umbrella is equivalent to an advantage player having an adequate bankroll.

yes, and dealing with risk as far as i'm concerned in ways other than just throwing money at a problem. again with the brain thing. decisions & judgement, thought. something beyond the idea of ok, here i got this wad of cash and i don't care if i lose it or not.

If you jump in the lake, you will get wet. There is only one I know of who overcame this result and He used supernatural power. Do you possess supernatural powers? When I was seven, I used to try to walk through walls in my parents' home. I had faith. I guess I just didn't have luck. lol

you should have used quantum mechanical tunneling, that's probably how Jesus managed it.

If there is a 50 cent game, you need to find it.

we could all use a good 50 cent game. :cat:

Yes, when he receives that voooodoooo feeeeling! View attachment 1843 Simple, isn't it?

not voodoo feeling, simple awareness of a calculated AP knowledge based bottom line.

I am drug free. :grin:

well, then you don't need to worry about drugs and the physical manifestation they could wreak on your physical, mental and spiritual well being during your all too short gracious presence in the universe.
now, just things like stress to deal with. that's plenty.

I suppose the second law of thermodynamics will disappear when the world ends. Our bodies will be glorified (sort of physical but not physical, lol, like Jesus appearing after his death and able to eat fish and all, but also able to walk through walls (my childhood experiment)). Maybe the "new heavens and new earth" of the Bible refers to a change in the characteristics of the physical world. Whatever, Christians believe in the resurrection of their bodies, and an eternal life in some kind of physical world or Paradise.

interesting, and yes if mankind doesn't find a way to overcome the second law of thermodynamics it's quite likely that if God doesn't end the world before then that he won't have to bother. so just in case (in the spirit of Pascal) imho it would be prudent to seek a way to deal with that stubborn little problem. and besides all this falling apart of everything all the time that is i guess entropy driven just pisses me off.

everytime something goes wrong i try and fix it just out of spite for if nothing else, entropy will do.

:whip:

aslan · Dec 16, 2008

sagefr0g said:
...

I think all our disagreement boils down to one simple concept. That is whether or not you can lock luck in by making a judgement to switch to advantage play upon receiving a lucky windfall. That's it in a nutshell.

My answer is, of course you can--one time for sure. (If you are not so unlucky as to never get ahead of the curve even once in your lifetime.)

The problem I have with your argument is that you think you can some how sneak back and get another lucky windfall, and another, and another, and by your wise decision to switch to advantage play, you are continually locking in your luck.

The problem I have with your notion is that you can't "sneak" back repeatedly. The decision to use this as a repeatable operation puts you in the mode of winding up loser due to repeated gambling at a disadvantage. While you are playing for luck, with a decided house advantage against you, you are exposing your underbelly. You will more often encounter a loss while looking for luck, not a windfall. Those losses will overwhelm your lucky windfalls. On top of that, you are not guaranteed to convert your lucky windfalls into greater winnings by switching to advantage play.

It is the repeating it over and over that makes it an untenable proposition. I know without a doubt that if I continue to play roulette without an advantage, even though I will use winnings to sponsor advantage play, I will go broke. That's why I intend never to play again and thereby lock in my winnings forever. The only differences between your situation and my roulette situation are (1) the amount of money wagered, (2) the amount of house edge. In principle it will work out precisely the same, only your lesser money amount and lesser house edge will allow you to survive longer.

It's exactly the same as those who play with basic strategy sans counting. They can play a long time and they can win many consecutive times, but they are only prolonging the agony. The end result will put them in the loser column. You have succeeded in stringing it out a bit longer by switching to advantage play. It does not make sense that you will play at an advantage only when you first get lucky. Surely that lucky windfall cannot give you the size of bankroll that makes counting a near sure thing. If it does, then you must already have close to the required banroll. It would make more sense to play advantaged with slightly less than the optimal bankroll than to risk your entire bankroll at a disadvantage while seeking a lucky break.

I'm guesing that the lucky windfall doesn't really give you enough to play advantage. Maybe you're thinking you're using the house's money to play advantage. If so, you aren't counting all the money you lost playing at a disadvantage while seeking your lucky windfall, plus all the money you lost while playing at an advantage.

The more we discuss this, the more it sounds like pure voodoo disguised as something more viable. It sounds like a stategy for limiting one's losses by playing mostly basic strategy, and occasionally, advantage play using winnings that occur from time to time. If you don't play often, the downside may not hit you. I'd say that if you played as much as I did this past year, you'd find yourself in the losers column. I'm not saying it's a bad strategy. It will accrue comps that will mitigate the house edge. It's a conservative approach that will allow you to do something you enjoy while limiting losses over the long run.

sagefr0g · Dec 16, 2008

aslan said:
I think all our disagreement boils down to one simple concept. That is whether or not you can lock luck in by making a judgement to switch to advantage play upon receiving a lucky windfall. That's it in a nutshell.

My answer is, of course you can--one time for sure. (If you are not so unlucky as to never get ahead of the curve even once in your lifetime.)

The problem I have with your argument is that you think you can some how sneak back and get another lucky windfall, and another, and another, and by your wise decision to switch to advantage play, you are continually locking in your luck.

The problem I have with your notion is that you can't "sneak" back repeatedly. The decision to use this as a repeatable operation puts you in the mode of winding up loser due to repeated gambling at a disadvantage. While you are playing for luck, with a decided house advantage against you, you are exposing your underbelly. You will more often encounter a loss while looking for luck, not a windfall. Those losses will overwhelm your lucky windfalls. On top of that, you are not guaranteed to convert your lucky windfalls into greater winnings by switching to advantage play.

It is the repeating it over and over that makes it an untenable proposition. I know without a doubt that if I continue to play roulette without an advantage, even though I will use winnings to sponsor advantage play, I will go broke. That's why I intend never to play again and thereby lock in my winnings forever. The only differences between your situation and my roulette situation are (1) the amount of money wagered, (2) the amount of house edge. In principle it will work out precisely the same, only your lesser money amount and lesser house edge will allow you to survive longer.

It's exactly the same as those who play with basic strategy sans counting. They can play a long time and they can win many consecutive times, but they are only prolonging the agony. The end result will put them in the loser column. You have succeeded in stringing it out a bit longer by switching to advantage play. It does not make sense that you will play at an advantage only when you first get lucky. Surely that lucky windfall cannot give you the size of bankroll that makes counting a near sure thing. If it does, then you must already have close to the required banroll. It would make more sense to play advantaged with slightly less than the optimal bankroll than to risk your entire bankroll at a disadvantage while seeking a lucky break.

I'm guesing that the lucky windfall doesn't really give you enough to play advantage. Maybe you're thinking you're using the house's money to play advantage. If so, you aren't counting all the money you lost playing at a disadvantage while seeking your lucky windfall, plus all the money you lost while playing at an advantage.

The more we discuss this, the more it sounds like pure voodoo disguised as something more viable. It sounds like a stategy for limiting one's losses by playing mostly basic strategy, and occasionally, advantage play using winnings that occur from time to time. If you don't play often, the downside may not hit you. I'd say that if you played as much as I did this past year, you'd find yourself in the losers column. I'm not saying it's a bad strategy. It will accrue comps that will mitigate the house edge. It's a conservative approach that will allow you to do something you enjoy while limiting losses over the long run.

huh, maybe your right, but if i said something to make it seem like i was seeking a lucky windfall then i was lost within my murky mind or it was part of this ever evolving voodooism that i've been fooling with. (voodooism meant only as a term meaning unproven methods other than orthodox AP, not some mystic sort of thing). but looking back i guess i have expressed interests in profiting from standard deviation, ect.
so let me grow a little right here right now and refine this stuff a bit.
point being, the idea of 'seeking a lucky windfall' isn't the goal at all (it would be nice but not too likely) as far as what my rants are about. more so i'd rather put it, having a more cognizant attitude toward the fact that luck happens, and additionally exploring and tinkering around with the manifestations of luck in ways that may transform into advantage (that non-maths non-rigorous street smart sort of advantage) or protection from risk.
mainly my goal is survive above all else and hopefully come out ahead while having fun without having to undergo what for me are unpleasant rigors of counting. that's why i try and fuzzy count, fuzzy bet, fuzzy play where i try and mimic what an ideal counter would do. an analogy might be a basketball player practicing free throw shots trying to approach the accuracy of a robot that can hit that shwish everytime. i practice on my computer, a lot, a real lot. trying to make a skill of it.
i guess doing that sort of thing and then reading that Black Swan book where i became interested in luck, it just sort of came natural to look at manifestations of luck in relation to the results a perfect counter could expect to attain. then when i got Kasi's spread sheet and saw how you can precisely identify degrees of expectation and standard deviation for number of rounds played it got me thinking about ways of foolin around with luck lol.
and you played a part as well by being willing to discuss this stuff with me and that story you told (which i've oft refered to http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=99031&postcount=1) :devil::whip:
lemme give an example of what i've been doing lately. maybe it's a bit idealized from really what i've been doing but a little poetic license never hurt anyone.
i sit down at a table, wait till a fresh shoe is ready. i just fuzzy count and start out flat betting, if in my fuzzy appraisal of the count i think it's time i bet up trying to mimic the ramp and spread of a perfect counter. say i get ahead right off the bat maybe two units, three or four even. and however i did it, fuzzy counting, basic strategy flat betting or maybe a fuzzy bet. what ever if i'm up two, three, four units or so and i think that count is anything but positive, then i bail. to me, i figure this shoe is likely crap, a losing prospect. it's gonna be crap circa 70% of the time in the long run. but maybe it took me 15 minutes, maybe an hour (i really don't care, its fun for me) and i made two, three, four units what ever. and part of this is for me i usually haven't an interest in spending more than three hours playing for any given trip. so hey the games i play, a perfect counter making the spread i use is only gonna expect to make four units anyway in three hours. so maybe i go home, maybe i stay and try another shoe, same deal until i want to go home.
and then there is unfortunately the flip side of the coin. those loser streaks, even when your orthodox counting. this is tricky (for me), i've discovered a chink in my armor of psychology. if i get behind, i've discovered that in my fevor to get out of the hole i'll start trying to get in as many hands as i can (not bad, good actually if your paying with an advantage) but my problem is trying to do that play all. not good, cause your playing through so much negative count crap it a'int funny. so, i've become a reformed player in that regard, i'll try a shoe maybe orthodox counting or maybe still using the fuzzy stuff, but win or loss if that shoe is negative i'm bailing out. to heck with it if it takes twenty minutes or what ever to get another seat and another shot at getting out of the hole. i've become a heavy duty wong out sort of player.
long as you give a shoe the right chance to have a positive count prospect then getting out of dodge is a good thing when the time is right (aka. Schlesinger Blackjack Attack chapt. 13 sort of thing). and heck even once in a great while i might wong in on a shoe. and yes because of my fuzzy approach i might be messing up some, missing some positive shoes or parts of a shoe. but heck it can't be all that often when you figure long run 70% of what is presented is disadvantageous.
but i guess the controversial part of all this (besides the fuzzy stuff lmao, dam i'm a bad boy a'int i?) is the part where i'm so likely to call it a day once i make that four units or more regardless of how i made it, luck or as a result of skill. :cat::whip:
so but anyway that last paragraph you wrote above is pretty accurate as to what i'm up to i guess. unfortunately i'm not getting much in comps, probably cause i don't spend a heck of a lot of time playing for the most part, well i don't really care that much about that aspect anyway. some how i do every so often get room offers and free play tickets and meals.

aslan · Dec 16, 2008

sagefr0g said:
huh, maybe your right, but if i said something to make it seem like i was seeking a lucky windfall then i was lost within my murky mind or it was part of this ever evolving voodooism that i've been fooling with. (voodooism meant only as a term meaning unproven methods other than orthodox AP, not some mystic sort of thing). but looking back i guess i have expressed interests in profiting from standard deviation, ect.
so let me grow a little right here right now and refine this stuff a bit.
point being, the idea of 'seeking a lucky windfall' isn't the goal at all (it would be nice but not too likely) as far as what my rants are about. more so i'd rather put it, having a more cognizant attitude toward the fact that luck happens, and additionally exploring and tinkering around with the manifestations of luck in ways that may transform into advantage (that non-maths non-rigorous street smart sort of advantage) or protection from risk.
mainly my goal is survive above all else and hopefully come out ahead while having fun without having to undergo what for me are unpleasant rigors of counting. that's why i try and fuzzy count, fuzzy bet, fuzzy play where i try and mimic what an ideal counter would do. an analogy might be a basketball player practicing free throw shots trying to approach the accuracy of a robot that can hit that shwish everytime. i practice on my computer, a lot, a real lot. trying to make a skill of it.
i guess doing that sort of thing and then reading that Black Swan book where i became interested in luck, it just sort of came natural to look at manifestations of luck in relation to the results a perfect counter could expect to attain. then when i got Kasi's spread sheet and saw how you can precisely identify degrees of expectation and standard deviation for number of rounds played it got me thinking about ways of foolin around with luck lol.
and you played a part as well by being willing to discuss this stuff with me and that story you told (which i've oft refered to http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=99031&postcount=1) :devil::whip:
lemme give an example of what i've been doing lately. maybe it's a bit idealized from really what i've been doing but a little poetic license never hurt anyone.
i sit down at a table, wait till a fresh shoe is ready. i just fuzzy count and start out flat betting, if in my fuzzy appraisal of the count i think it's time i bet up trying to mimic the ramp and spread of a perfect counter. say i get ahead right off the bat maybe two units, three or four even. and however i did it, fuzzy counting, basic strategy flat betting or maybe a fuzzy bet. what ever if i'm up two, three, four units or so and i think that count is anything but positive, then i bail. to me, i figure this shoe is likely crap, a losing prospect. it's gonna be crap circa 70% of the time in the long run. but maybe it took me 15 minutes, maybe an hour (i really don't care, its fun for me) and i made two, three, four units what ever. and part of this is for me i usually haven't an interest in spending more than three hours playing for any given trip. so hey the games i play, a perfect counter making the spread i use is only gonna expect to make four units anyway in three hours. so maybe i go home, maybe i stay and try another shoe, same deal until i want to go home.
and then there is unfortunately the flip side of the coin. those loser streaks, even when your orthodox counting. this is tricky (for me), i've discovered a chink in my armor of psychology. if i get behind, i've discovered that in my fevor to get out of the hole i'll start trying to get in as many hands as i can (not bad, good actually if your paying with an advantage) but my problem is trying to do that play all. not good, cause your playing through so much negative count crap it a'int funny. so, i've become a reformed player in that regard, i'll try a shoe maybe orthodox counting or maybe still using the fuzzy stuff, but win or loss if that shoe is negative i'm bailing out. to heck with it if it takes twenty minutes or what ever to get another seat and another shot at getting out of the hole. i've become a heavy duty wong out sort of player.
long as you give a shoe the right chance to have a positive count prospect then getting out of dodge is a good thing when the time is right (aka. Schlesinger Blackjack Attack chapt. 13 sort of thing). and heck even once in a great while i might wong in on a shoe. and yes because of my fuzzy approach i might be messing up some, missing some positive shoes or parts of a shoe. but heck it can't be all that often when you figure long run 70% of what is presented is disadvantageous.
but i guess the controversial part of all this (besides the fuzzy stuff lmao, dam i'm a bad boy a'int i?) is the part where i'm so likely to call it a day once i make that four units or more regardless of how i made it, luck or as a result of skill. :cat::whip:
so but anyway that last paragraph you wrote above is pretty accurate as to what i'm up to i guess. unfortunately i'm not getting much in comps, probably cause i don't spend a heck of a lot of time playing for the most part, well i don't really care that much about that aspect anyway. some how i do every so often get room offers and free play tickets and meals.

I'm glad you mentioned my attempt to "lock in" profits on one of my trips. It only works in the short run. It has to do woth what will satisfy me for the trip at hand, not what is good for me for the long haul. If the same scenario would play out each and every trip, wow, I would be cooking on high octane gas. But you have to remember, it is a strategy when you are looking backwards, not forward, when you can't lose cause you're about to quit winners, when you are not willing to go to the long run becasue you're too wrapped up in going home winners right now, in the short run. It's a strategy that more often than not cuts back my winnings, not my losings. It's a strategy that may be preventing me from winning the really big one as frequently as I should. So, I agree that it is locking in, but it is locking in for the short run, because it is not possible to lock anything in for the long run, other than the fruits of playing with an advantage, pure and simple.

By fuzzy, I am getting the impression more and more that it should be called lazy, not to cast aspersions, my friend. But you don't seem to know exactly where you are or what you are doing when you do it. It's like an educated guess at an already approximate playing skill. The compound effect of guessing somewhat in the ballfield and the inexactitude of counting itself is not so forgiving as you have supposed I think. No, I believe that because of the inexactitude of probability matters, one must be very careful to observe the finest detail of the advantage technique, else find oneself up a fuzzy creek without the fuzziest idea of how you got yourself there. The fuzzy nature of counting itself demands the clearest most precise application of counting principles, not the other way around. That's my take on it anyway.

When I get into a fuzzy place where I am not exactly sure what the count is but I know I am in the close vicinity, I subtract a point in my count to play it on the safe side, so that if I do reach the promised land of positive count I will not be jacking up the bet before I actually step across the Jordan so to speak. I always play it conservatively when in doubt. In just the same way, if I enter a fairly new shoe, and I did not back count, I start at the initial running count, which is valid from any entry point. The worst that can happen in a play all mode, when you take a conservative approach, is that you miss out on the full extent of a positive count, the point being that you have prevented yourself from erroneously playing a negative count with ramped up betting which will get you deep in debt in short order more often than not.

sagefr0g · Dec 16, 2008

just for fun

aslan said:
By fuzzy, I am getting the impression more and more that it should be called lazy, not to cast aspersions, my friend.

yeah, so i'll respond to some of your other stuff in your post in a bit, in another post.
just get this part out of the way. but not because of any aspersion, really, but maybe a little bit lol, but no big deal. in part maybe, i'll single it out cause your not the only one, lmao. it's part of why mostly i post in the voodoo section anymore, i think one guy pointed out in the orthodox threads how he was erhh, emm (my words) a bit 'disgruntled' how the forum had been slipping into less rigor, ie. the real deal stuff. i suspect, probably even though he didn't say so that some of what i'd written fostered his complaint. so me, well i try and read all the posts and all, but i would just say after however long i've had the pleasure of joining in on this site, well this AP stuff as far as counting goes, the stuff to know and talk about in a rigorous sense, if it was a dead horse, well by now it woulda pretty much been mince meat. not to much new under the sun, so to speak. so yeah that guy with the rigor complaint i can appreciate, i just wonder if he can relate to my yearning where in i feel as if yeah that stuff is all good, now tell me something i don't know. not that there isn't one heck of a lot of stuff that i don't know, or that is mis-understood by me but i'm just not learning much lately. that said, i am infact learning new stuff, and having my errors fixed and all still in those orthodox forums. like i hate to leave anyone out but i'll just mention the bullet chaser and the enigmatic one. those two and others make it obvious there is still much to learn.
so but, in not finding much else, for now what i'm busying myself with is in my own humble way a qwest for creativity, tinkering, thoughtfulness, philosophy and research in the realm of gambling along with my own blabbering on about it all. it's for me been an epiphany to realize the richness that abounds just in the area of philosophy pertaining to gambling. for me i feel it's a step beyond naivety with regard to gambing pursuits.
so, the lazy thing, i've left myself open for that aspersion not that it's been made directly by anyone other than myself. honestly, having refered to my self as lazy, i do it in jest mainly and jesting is a difficult trick to pull off on a internet message board, so i've dug my hole and just have to live with it sort of thing, no big deal. i'll just say, i practice what i'm trying to do a lot, read a lot and think a lot. nuff said. as my wife says, i'm still a turkey.
my real interests in the tacts that i've been practicing and exploring has to do with efficiency, and personal goals. a personal utility function if you will, not something set up by some disinterested genius if you will.
so any way, lazy maybe, but it's more in terms of the idea in physics of levers and pulleys sort of thing. how can i pick that big heavy rock up with out breaking my back sort of thing. when it comes to my case, what i'm doing to make my blackjack experience more palatable is perhaps off base and strange. what ever, it's a process in evolution, futile as it may be, i'm tinkering with it, happy as a lark.

sagefr0g · Dec 16, 2008

aslan said:
I'm glad you mentioned my attempt to "lock in" profits on one of my trips. It only works in the short run.

so your action in some blackjack game tomorrow and the next day and the next day is some how dependent on your action yesterday and today? sorry, i don't get that. well, maybe how some nebulous ROR implication is viewed maybe? but advantage is advantage when you play accordingly, no? and not when you don't, yes?
that sounds like that, blackjack is all one big long game sort of idea. and yeah i guess it is if you play exactly the same way every time. thing is your attempt to "lock in" profits wouldn't fit that scenerio of consistant AP play. it's voodoo, lmao. simm that. NOT. maybe your logic is flawless, but your ability to predict the future is still in doubt, as mine most certainly is as well.
point being perhaps neither of us know is that profit locked in or not.

.. But you have to remember, it is a strategy when you are looking backwards, not forward, when you can't lose cause you're about to quit winners, when you are not willing to go to the long run becasue you're too wrapped up in going home winners right now, in the short run. ...

i love that 'strategy when you are looking backwards', comment, very true and i'd have to admitt that's definately got me standing on shakey ground.

lmao, omg, yes how very true, sort of like playing a baseball game, being ahead in the 1st inning, taking your ball and bat home and claiming your the winner.

hmm, that reminds me of a passage in Warren Weaver's Lady Luck The Theory of Probability, page 51. ......
Pascal also solved a much harder and more significant problem also provided to him by de Mere. This second problem was an old and famous one, which had been debated many times, but which had never been correctly solved. It was called the probleme des parties, or as it is usully called in English, the division problem, or the problem of points. In general terms, the question is: How should the prize money be divided among the contestants if for some reason it proves necessary to call off a game, a contest, or a tournament before it is completed, and when the contestants have only "partial" scores?
Pascal introduced the very important idea that the amount of the prize any contestant deserved, in a partial game, should depend on the probability that this particular player would win the game, were it carried through to it's conclusion. And Pascal worked out in detail, for several examples, how the probability of winning could be calculated from a knowledge of the nature of the game and the partial score of each contestant.

... It's like an educated guess at an already approximate playing skill. The compound effect of guessing somewhat in the ballfield and the inexactitude of counting itself is not so forgiving as you have supposed I think. No, I believe that because of the inexactitude of probability matters, one must be very careful to observe the finest detail of the advantage technique, else find oneself up a fuzzy creek without the fuzziest idea of how you got yourself there. The fuzzy nature of counting itself demands the clearest most precise application of counting principles, not the other way around. That's my take on it anyway.

i see it just the opposite. i see the fuzzyness of probability as an opportunity for luck and a warning flag with respect to risk. a fuzzy uknown area within some expected parameters for which one has some wiggle room. just enough wiggle room to allow for thought and judgement even if those actions predicated on those thoughts and judgements turn out wrong.

When I get into a fuzzy place where I am not exactly sure what the count is but I know I am in the close vicinity, I subtract a point in my count to play it on the safe side, so that if I do reach the promised land of positive count I will not be jacking up the bet before I actually step across the Jordan so to speak. I always play it conservatively when in doubt. In just the same way, if I enter a fairly new shoe, and I did not back count, I start at the initial running count, which is valid from any entry point. The worst that can happen in a play all mode, when you take a conservative approach, is that you miss out on the full extent of a positive count, the point being that you have prevented yourself from erroneously playing a negative count with ramped up betting which will get you deep in debt in short order more often than not.

probably ok, thing is i guess one wants to be sure and bet enough in a positive count, else that the consequences may be the advantage goes out the window, since everything else your doing according to 'Hoyle' so to speak and that advantage is all intertwined and working together sort of thing. point being your either playing according to a game plan or your not, your actions fit the recomendations of a sim or they don't. in essence, thats a bit of a fuzzy approach. apparently, aslan, even you make decisions, use thought, i'll stop short of calling it voodoo.

:whip:

aslan · Dec 17, 2008

sagefr0g said:
yeah, so i'll respond to some of your other stuff in your post in a bit, in another post.
just get this part out of the way. but not because of any aspersion, really, but maybe a little bit lol, but no big deal. in part maybe, i'll single it out cause your not the only one, lmao. it's part of why mostly i post in the voodoo section anymore, i think one guy pointed out in the orthodox threads how he was erhh, emm (my words) a bit 'disgruntled' how the forum had been slipping into less rigor, ie. the real deal stuff. i suspect, probably even though he didn't say so that some of what i'd written fostered his complaint. so me, well i try and read all the posts and all, but i would just say after however long i've had the pleasure of joining in on this site, well this AP stuff as far as counting goes, the stuff to know and talk about in a rigorous sense, if it was a dead horse, well by now it woulda pretty much been mince meat. not to much new under the sun, so to speak. so yeah that guy with the rigor complaint i can appreciate, i just wonder if he can relate to my yearning where in i feel as if yeah that stuff is all good, now tell me something i don't know. not that there isn't one heck of a lot of stuff that i don't know, or that is mis-understood by me but i'm just not learning much lately. that said, i am infact learning new stuff, and having my errors fixed and all still in those orthodox forums. like i hate to leave anyone out but i'll just mention the bullet chaser and the enigmatic one. those two and others make it obvious there is still much to learn.
so but, in not finding much else, for now what i'm busying myself with is in my own humble way a qwest for creativity, tinkering, thoughtfulness, philosophy and research in the realm of gambling along with my own blabbering on about it all. it's for me been an epiphany to realize the richness that abounds just in the area of philosophy pertaining to gambling. for me i feel it's a step beyond naivety with regard to gambing pursuits.
so, the lazy thing, i've left myself open for that aspersion not that it's been made directly by anyone other than myself. honestly, having refered to my self as lazy, i do it in jest mainly and jesting is a difficult trick to pull off on a internet message board, so i've dug my hole and just have to live with it sort of thing, no big deal. i'll just say, i practice what i'm trying to do a lot, read a lot and think a lot. nuff said. as my wife says, i'm still a turkey.
my real interests in the tacts that i've been practicing and exploring has to do with efficiency, and personal goals. a personal utility function if you will, not something set up by some disinterested genius if you will.
so any way, lazy maybe, but it's more in terms of the idea in physics of levers and pulleys sort of thing. how can i pick that big heavy rock up with out breaking my back sort of thing. when it comes to my case, what i'm doing to make my blackjack experience more palatable is perhaps off base and strange. what ever, it's a process in evolution, futile as it may be, i'm tinkering with it, happy as a lark.

Well, I certainly did not mean you are lazy in the sense of anything but your application of advantage play, and that coming not from the sin of slothfulness, but more from a dislike of counting itself, not just the rigor, but also the rules that say you must wong in and wong out and bet this much in this situation, etc, and so you are looking for some way to the same end that is more in keeping with your desired style of play and willingness to put up but a certain amount of bankroll (you have better things to do with your money) and bet only a certain amount depending on the circumstances of the moment. All of these things have not been lost on me, and I have tried myself to avoid doing everything just so and only so. But I believe in the final analysis, due to the long run perfect symmetry of good and bad luck, that it is a hopeless though gallant quest. I wish it were not so, and the same part of me that says it can't be so, would welcome it with open arms if the opposite were true. I want a way around. The only thing I have seen that mixes it up a bit are the different approaches that have been developed to take advantage of the very same discovery that the changing content of a shoe of cards can be taken advantage of to the advantage of the advantage player (that's four uses of the word advantage in one sentence). But you know what I mean. One could for example count only fives and aces and still derive some decrease in house advantage or maybe even advantage over the house, and I am sure there are still undiscovered ways to count the cards to determine an advantageous time to increase one's betting, but the ways that we know about now are state of the art, and the other methods have been left in the dust. I would not mind discovering a new never before tried way to take advantage of the changing content of the shoe, but it still leaves one depending on the only way anyone has ever discovered to shift the odds. The long and the short of it is that I do not believe that any other way exists to increase one's advantage, not in the short run and not in the long run. One may fall into a run of luck, but will just as easily fall into a run of bad luck. It all evens out and cannot be used to anyone's advantage except to the extent that if you get lucky you can go out and spend the money. Or if you prefer, you can rebet it, either at an advantage or using only bs, or using any kind of voodoo on earth, but i do not think you can derive an advantage in the way we talk about what an advantage means by any method based on luck or what we do with our luck. If we take lucky money and apply advantage play, the advantage has nothing to do with the luck, you might just as well borrow the money from the bank, but everything to do with the use of advantage play. It's just a stretch the way you phrase it to attribute an advantage to a decision to switch modes of play. The only advantage ever is in the use of advantage play irregardless whether you are switching from luck or simply staying with advantage play all along. If you can figure out what I just said, I might need you to explain it to me, but I knew what I meant when I wrote it. lol

sagefr0g · Dec 17, 2008

aslan said:
Well, I certainly did not mean you are lazy in the sense of anything but your application of advantage play, and that coming not from the sin of slothfulness, but more from a dislike of counting itself, not just the rigor, but also the rules that say you must wong in and wong out and bet this much in this situation, etc, and so you are looking for some way to the same end that is more in keeping with your desired style of play and willingness to put up but a certain amount of bankroll (you have better things to do with your money) and bet only a certain amount depending on the circumstances of the moment. All of these things have not been lost on me, and I have tried myself to avoid doing everything just so and only so. But I believe in the final analysis, due to the long run perfect symmetry of good and bad luck, that it is a hopeless though gallant quest. I wish it were not so, and the same part of me that says it can't be so, would welcome it with open arms if the opposite were true. I want a way around. The only thing I have seen that mixes it up a bit are the different approaches that have been developed to take advantage of the very same discovery that the changing content of a shoe of cards can be taken advantage of to the advantage of the advantage player (that's four uses of the word advantage in one sentence). But you know what I mean. One could for example count only fives and aces and still derive some decrease in house advantage or maybe even advantage over the house, and I am sure there are still undiscovered ways to count the cards to determine an advantageous time to increase one's betting, but the ways that we know about now are state of the art, and the other methods have been left in the dust. I would not mind discovering a new never before tried way to take advantage of the changing content of the shoe, but it still leaves one depending on the only way anyone has ever discovered to shift the odds. The long and the short of it is that I do not believe that any other way exists to increase one's advantage, not in the short run and not in the long run. One may fall into a run of luck, but will just as easily fall into a run of bad luck. It all evens out and cannot be used to anyone's advantage except to the extent that if you get lucky you can go out and spend the money. Or if you prefer, you can rebet it, either at an advantage or using only bs, or using any kind of voodoo on earth, but i do not think you can derive an advantage in the way we talk about what an advantage means by any method based on luck or what we do with our luck. If we take lucky money and apply advantage play, the advantage has nothing to do with the luck, you might just as well borrow the money from the bank, but everything to do with the use of advantage play. It's just a stretch the way you phrase it to attribute an advantage to a decision to switch modes of play. The only advantage ever is in the use of advantage play irregardless whether you are switching from luck or simply staying with advantage play all along. If you can figure out what I just said, I might need you to explain it to me, but I knew what I meant when I wrote it. lol

ya know what, i think in essence the only really thing we don't agree on and it's not really a disagreement, it's just a personal preference and that is the difference based on our different utility theories which are in essence subjective in nature. i'm not sure what your utility theory outlook is but i think you deal with risk almost entirely on the ROR stuff and Kelly. me, i pay attention to ROR stuff and Kelly, while as far as my utility theory, well it's not fully developed (but i'm working on it) but i'm sure of one thing i'm a scarty cat. :cat::whip:

aslan · Dec 17, 2008

sagefr0g said:
so your action in some blackjack game tomorrow and the next day and the next day is some how dependent on your action yesterday and today? sorry, i don't get that. well, maybe how some nebulous ROR implication is viewed maybe? but advantage is advantage when you play accordingly, no? and not when you don't, yes?
that sounds like that, blackjack is all one big long game sort of idea. and yeah i guess it is if you play exactly the same way every time. thing is your attempt to "lock in" profits wouldn't fit that scenerio of consistant AP play. it's voodoo, lmao. simm that. NOT. maybe your logic is flawless, but your ability to predict the future is still in doubt, as mine most certainly is as well.
point being perhaps neither of us know is that profit locked in or not.

What I mean by locking it in in the short run is that it is only locked in until you return to the tables. then it is up for grabs again. I only meant that you could go home saying that you won x number of dollars on the trip. But seeing that you do not intend to quit playing forever, you really didn't lock in anything. It's all a sham of words. It's simlpy a delaying mechanism that in truth is robbing one of some otherwise profits in the long run, because, if you remember what I did, I bet less than the prescribed amount under perfect advantage play. So you are absolutely right in the final analysis, it is voooooodoooooo!

sagefr0g said:
i love that 'strategy when you are looking backwards', comment, very true and i'd have to admitt that's definately got me standing on shakey ground.

lmao, omg, yes how very true, sort of like playing a baseball game, being ahead in the 1st inning, taking your ball and bat home and claiming your the winner.
hmm, that reminds me of a passage in Warren Weaver's Lady Luck The Theory of Probability, page 51. ......
Pascal also solved a much harder and more significant problem also provided to him by de Mere. This second problem was an old and famous one, which had been debated many times, but which had never been correctly solved. It was called the probleme des parties, or as it is usully called in English, the division problem, or the problem of points. In general terms, the question is: How should the prize money be divided among the contestants if for some reason it proves necessary to call off a game, a contest, or a tournament before it is completed, and when the contestants have only "partial" scores?
Pascal introduced the very important idea that the amount of the prize any contestant deserved, in a partial game, should depend on the probability that this particular player would win the game, were it carried through to it's conclusion. And Pascal worked out in detail, for several examples, how the probability of winning could be calculated from a knowledge of the nature of the game and the partial score of each contestant.

That's a cool concept, easy for us to see now, but probably next to impossible in his day.

sagefr0g said:
i see it just the opposite. i see the fuzzyness of probability as an opportunity for luck and a warning flag with respect to risk. a fuzzy uknown area within some expected parameters for which one has some wiggle room. just enough wiggle room to allow for thought and judgement even if those actions predicated on those thoughts and judgements turn out wrong.

Probability fuzzy? Naw naw naw It is very precise. It isnot a predicter of future details in point of time, but of future outcome as a percentage over time. It's like hitting a bullseye with a bullet. No two bullseyes are exactly the same. One is a little to the right. One hit is a little bit high but still inside the bullseye. Another is to the left and down some. No one quibbles over whether the shots are bullseyes or not. No one cares that they are all slightly different bullseyes. They are all bullseyes. I submit that probability is the same. It gets you in the bullseye, but a maybe a little different each time. But to say that a bullseye is not precise--naw naw that is making something out of nothing that is important in the real and practical world.

sagefr0g said:
probably ok, thing is i guess one wants to be sure and bet enough in a positive count, else that the consequences may be the advantage goes out the window, since everything else your doing according to 'Hoyle' so to speak and that advantage is all intertwined and working together sort of thing. point being your either playing according to a game plan or your not, your actions fit the recomendations of a sim or they don't. in essence, thats a bit of a fuzzy approach. apparently, aslan, even you make decisions, use thought, i'll stop short of calling it voodoo.:whip:

As I said before, when I lower my bet so as not to risk losing my profit up to that point in time, because I don't want to experience the psychological downer from losing it all at the last minute, I am not really aplying voodoo, I am just deciding to play at less of an advantage, which will cost me money in the long run. I just don't want it to cost me money in the short run, although I might very well be putting myself into the position of winning less in the short run than I otherwise would have. I don't abandon advantage play in total, I just lessen my advantage by underbetting the the count. Comforting in the short run--stupid in the long run. lol I guess I am somewhat adverse to pain.

aslan · Dec 17, 2008

sagefr0g said:
ya know what, i think in essence the only really thing we don't agree on and it's not really a disagreement, it's just a personal preference and that is the difference based on our different utility theories which are in essence subjective in nature. i'm not sure what your utility theory outlook is but i think you deal with risk almost entirely on the ROR stuff and Kelly. me, i pay attention to ROR stuff and Kelly, while as far as my utility theory, well it's not fully developed (but i'm working on it) but i'm sure of one thing i'm a scarty cat. :cat::whip:

I'm a scarty cat, too--although because of years of gambling I have been willing to step out there, sometimes much to my chagrin truth being known. Yes, I do ascribe to RoR and Kelly because they are scientifically verifiable. Who wants to chance losing? Like I said, I'm a scarty cat (your spelling lmao). I hate to lose. But then when I have the proper br, I don't get any charge out of playing. It's like flipping coins for a dollar when you have $100,000 in you pocket, not that I have ever experienced that. lol It just doesn't seem like you're getting much return on your investment. I am at the point where I'd rather get a job, and I'm not about to do that!!!! I do like the pleasure derived from beating the house. But I hate the fact that I am giving the house a chance to win my money. And sometimes they will, even if I count perfect.

luck

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