Have you ever had a day where you couldn'tseem to lose?

I just got home from one. It was unbelievable!

For example, I'm playing and count goes up to +1. I have a 2U bet out and keep winning hand after hand, with count still hovering at +1. Finally, it goes negative, so I'm waiting for a loss to drop my bet back to 1U. It never happened - cut card came out with the count just below -1 and I still had the 2U out as I never lost a hand.

It is this possibility that entices ploppies to keep playing their -EV game.

Yes, but...

21forme said:

I just got home from one. It was unbelievable!

For example, I'm playing and count goes up to +1. I have a 2U bet out and keep winning hand after hand, with count still hovering at +1. Finally, it goes negative, so I'm waiting for a loss to drop my bet back to 1U. It never happened - cut card came out with the count just below -1 and I still had the 2U out as I never lost a hand.

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You must realize that it was due to nothing more than good variation. If you had left the table near -1 and tried to play a positive EV game, you may have won even more. Or maybe not but at least you would have gone to sleep that night KNOWING that you did the right thing. I've done exactly what you did a few times in my life. One time, I won A LOT of money but I wasn't fully comfortable with what I did when I went to sleep. It was undisciplined and leaning towards the brain patterns of a ploppy. Do not walk quietly into that deep, dark night.

I know it was nothing more than + variance, but it was nice to happen!

Makes up for those times when you have big money out in big counts and everyone else at the table except you wins.

EyeHeartHalves said:

If you had left the table near -1 and tried to play a positive EV game, you may have won even more.

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What does this even mean

21forme said:

I know it was nothing more than + variance, but it was nice to happen!

Makes up for those times when you have big money out in big counts and everyone else at the table except you wins.

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My most satisfying nights are the ones where I'm up a few thousand, then down a few thousand, then up, and when I finally leave the casino I'm a little bit up, but it feels like losing because of the huge upswing I gave back.

But then I do the math, and I actually made twice my session EV! That puts this all in perspective- and demonstrates how the emotions we fell when winning or losing are absolutely incompatible with the mathematical reality.

sorry

ChefJJ said:

What does this even mean

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I thought he was describing a shoe that went quickly up to a Hi-Lo TC of +1 and then down past -1 TC but he stayed with it. (This could have all been an incorrect assumption.) He was rather vague in his post and so was I with my reply. What I meant to say was that he should have stopped playing at a TC of -1 whether he won, lost or pushed the previous hand or hands.

I thought he was practicing a technique that I commonly use with Halves which is to wong-out at a TC of -1. This works well in simulated EV. In practice, you'll notice that a -1 comes quite often. It is a mental challenge to wong out of 10! shoes in a row. If you only wong-out under the condition that the TC is -1 and the previous hand was a loss or a push, you are giving back a lot of that simulated EV. Then what if the count goes back to zero? Okay to stay in, right? Wrong! Your simulation would not have accounted for this. You are now playing in a lot more 0-count-hands than the simulation calculated. Thus, you are compounding your error.

However, this all assumes too much and if betting $-0- at a Hi-Lo TC of -1 is not what he was trying to do, then I apologize to both him and ChefJJ.

I usually do wong out around -1. However, I was playing in a high roller pit so I"m a bit more camo-conscious. I wouldn't just get up and leave win after win. I was waiting to lose a hand and use that to get up or cut my bet back to 1 unit, depending on the count at the moment. My point was that loss never happened.

EyeHeartHalves said:

However, this all assumes too much and if betting $-0- at a Hi-Lo TC of -1 is not what he was trying to do, then I apologize to both him and ChefJJ.

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No need to apologize...I was just confused (which doesn't take much sometimes )

good luck

Automatic Monkey said:

My most satisfying nights are the ones where I'm up a few thousand, then down a few thousand, then up, and when I finally leave the casino I'm a little bit up, but it feels like losing because of the huge upswing I gave back.

But then I do the math, and I actually made twice my session EV! That puts this all in perspective- and demonstrates how the emotions we fell when winning or losing are absolutely incompatible with the mathematical reality.

Click to expand...

i know your right but this hotshot AP's math is hard to compute on a gut level with all that long range prognastication.
like:
$2000.00 - $4000.00 = -$2000.00
then
-$2000.00 + $4000.00 = $2000.00
then $2000.00 - some amount = up a little.
where
up a little > 2EV . all that in the here and now.
and some how cause your playing with an advantage that means in the future (Y # hands or so) you get your $2000.00 back once EV x Y ~ $2000.00 and maybe on top of that you've still got that 2EV.
so but yeah our emotions really aren't compatible with that sort of mathematical reality. at least not most peoples. related to this it's interesting that some who claim to know such things say that the brain can disagree so heavily with the body that there is a sort of state of continous warfare for individuals undergoing such irrational stress. an accumulated physical fatique from the neurobiological effect of exposure to many continouous losses. the idea being that losses go to your emotional brain, bypassing your higher cortical structures and slowly affecting the hippocampus and weakening memory. the hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. it is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings-- as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of more primordial events. the idea being you can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self.
so i guess the moral is don't worry be happy :joker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjnvSQuv-H4

Just had one also

I did not have an enourmous amount of great hands or blackjacks but what I had was "perfect timing" or a really long period of positive variance.

At one point I won five straight max bets in a shoe game, never having a hand over 14, while the count stayed basically the same and the dealer showing a bust card and then busting every hand. I followed that up, finishing the shoe with two straight blackjacks and then a split of 9,9 vs 5 that resulted in a 4 max win. That was one shoe but it was early on in the session and though I know I probably did take a small loss at some table, I do not remember doing anything but winning.

I finished up using some free play on a VP machine and within 10 minutes hit a nice royal.

I really appreciate these kind of sessions because, like most of us, I have seen the other end. Get a stiff every hand in a great count and the dealer has a paint or ace showing and you just bust and bust while your chips disappear. Then you finally get dealt a 19 and the dealer hits a 4 card 20 and follow up that with a 20 to the dealers blackjack.

ihate17

I once won a net 110 units, flat-betting $6, in a -0.1% game in 740 hands.

That was over 5000-1 and the whole time I kept thinking, why aren't I betting more? lol.

After it earlier had reached about 2000-1, I figured it's way too late to raise a bet now becasue it has to normalize. At 3000-1, way, way too late, etc lol.

Best 740 hands I can remember having and I'm pissed I didn't bet more lmao.

Does that count? :grin: