losing streaks

I have now endured 3 months of losing. In fairness 4 of those weeks, I did not play while recoving from a medical situation, but am down 276 units (nearly 7K) over 280 hours or what I estimate to be 25,000+ hands. I am fairly confident at some point this trend will turn around, but this represents the longest negative slide I have encountered (I know I've probably been lucky in this aspect) and am growing a little frustrated.

While I know this slide is probably minor compared to what some of you have encountered, I would be very interested in hearing your war stories. Perhaps, your previous experiences with brighten my day.

Hang in there buddy. Sometimes it helps to just change tables or take a prolonged break. I know just the other day I got my ass handed to me at one joint. I was down to my last $100 for the trip and decided to go check out another joint. For the next 2 hours, it was like no matter how bad the table was, I couldn't lose a hand and I made back everything I lost and then some.

Yowch.

If it makes you feel any better, last month I lost $6k in a single day. Then a couple of weeks later, made it all back and then some on a subsequent trip.

No dis here but if it is all math a long break or table change would have no effect.

sorry to hear about that kewljason

my worst streak was a loss of 438 units over 126 hours.

Once I lost 110 units in 4 hours, and once 119 units in 4.5 hours. In one month this year I lost 258 units in 36 hours.

I felt like **** on those days and during those streaks.

variance is real dumm.

have you worked out your standard deviations to figure 'how unlucky' you currently are?

hang in there, it will come around. and make sure you continue to stick to ALL of your rules, and that you dont start to gamble at any point in time.

You have clocked so many counting hours so a streak like this will of course hit you sooner or later.

Matt

47%

Recently lost 47% of my bankroll on my worst streak ever. It was over a rather short period. Don't worry though, play correctly and you'll be back up and over in no time just like what happened with me.

That's it?

Now mind you my back ground is machines. But whenever i went on a losing streak i always riduculed myself. Hey Dummy, go get a job if you hate this so much, or Hey where did that nice big juicy bankroll come from in the first place? Yea this sucks, the boss won't give ya a break huh? Or hey moron look at this idiot next to you, he hasn't a clue, poor bstrd, wonder what he does during the week for a living, i bet his life sucks more.!!!!!!!!!
Or, i remember when i was clueless. Or if it was easy and there was no flux, everybody could do it.
Then after a while it gets better. Numbers don't lie.
Breaks are always nice when you have been running hard. Go spend a lttle of that hard, hard , earned money on something that will amuse you.

My 1 cent Take Care All

Machinist

lost

My record is 200 units in 1 hour, good luck next game

shooooooooooot. what a coincidence to find this post. I just came back from a weekend in vegas, and I seem to be $3000 lighter. I even started the weekend up $2000. With the way I play, I have session stop losses, because there is absolutely no way that I should be losing. Huge variance yes, but after 1 hour, I should be up somewhere, whether big or small. I was in quite a crappy mood for the day, but I looked at the environmental variables and dissected them. I'm still newbie, and this was only my second trip to vegas, first time as a black chip player. All I have to say is that Vegas is the big time. I've been playing in various backwoods spots around the country with just awful dealers. Ones that can't count up the total they have, or that the players have, shorting or paying out extra, standing on S17 when the rules are H17. But you don’t get that in Vegas. That was my $3k lesson. Most of them don’t care about the players unless you tip well. Which looks like that’s why I was doing so well in the beginning. I play DD and after I stopped tipping, the dealers would automatically cut short and deal out about 40 cards. I never noticed until my $3k turndown. I guess I took for granted the bad dealers that I usually play with that vary too much when it comes to cut card placement. So my advice is, which is pretty funny coming from a newbie, is to start analyzing yourself and your play. Were you under the influence? Is this a casino you regularly frequent? Do you suspect cheating? Did you notice every detail about your surroundings that are vital to your play, i.e., is the dealer putting the cut card in too short? I have my session and trip stop losses and I if I hit them, it means something is wrong. I know everyone talks about just having these long and huge losing streaks, but I don’t know if they really exist. I think I’ve run enough simulations, and have a good amount of casino time to say that. So if you’re running into a losing streak, stop and figure out what’s going on. At least that’s the way I handle these bad runs. It’s a Monday, and I’m already planning my next attack on Vegas. I’d like to hear what other players think about Vegas these days, the game, their deterrence tactics, and ways to get around them.

BTW, I lost that $3k in 2 hours. Ouch.

Kewl J

I feel your pain.

Having played over 400 hrs year to date, after being up 573 units in the first 6 months of the year, since June I have been on a relentless slide down giving back 527 units.

I'm beginning to see the light, my last two sessions have been positive.

BJC

Jack_Black said:

BTW, I lost that $3k in 2 hours. Ouch.

Click to expand...

Not at all abnormal playing DD black.

johndoe said:

Yowch.

If it makes you feel any better, last month I lost $6k in a single day. Then a couple of weeks later, made it all back and then some on a subsequent trip.

Click to expand...

Yes, winning back 276 units in a day is very doable. I don't think I've done quite that much, but I've come close. A downswing of that magnitude is totally normal.

Jack_Black said:

With the way I play, I have session stop losses, because there is absolutely no way that I should be losing. Huge variance yes, but after 1 hour, I should be up somewhere, whether big or small.

Click to expand...

Then you must be using some really advanced AP techniques, giving you edges well into the double digits. This statement is so far from being true if all you are doing is straight counting.

sabre said:

Then you must be using some really advanced AP techniques, giving you edges well into the double digits. This statement is so far from being true if all you are doing is straight counting.

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Right you are Sabre! For anyone to say after 1 hour they will absolutely be winning flies in the face of logic and statistics.

I was playing with a similar question yesterday, and made this post:

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=15710

It takes thousands of hours of play to get to the point where one can be "certain" of winning, and even then, certainty is an approximation, because it is always possible that one will be subject to a "Black Swan" event that is 4, 5, 6 or more standard deviations away from the expected results. This is rare, but it does happen.

A quick examination of Mr Blacks twenty previous posts will tell you all you need to know. It's not pretty.

Streaks both ways

I'm thinking Jack Black hasn't logged many hours of play. Those of us that have can certainly recall "long and huge" losing streaks and "long and huge" winning streaks (should be more of the latter for good AP).

BillyC1

Wow, is there a bad case of losing spreading around these parts? If it makes you feel any better, kewlj, I lost exactly 300 units this past weekend in Atlantic City . . . in four hours

You all can believe what you want. I don't need to prove to you how much I win or lose. but if you all must know, I did state that I should be somewhere in the positive after an hour of play. most likely small gains, but always positive. and I did state that there is huge variance, but still in an upward trend. Mind you, this is DD. I will agree that swings are bigger when I was playing 6D. losing streaks most definitely happened more frequently playing shoe. Especially my comment about being up in an hour, I can see how that doesn't apply to 6 or 8D.

I also did state that I am a noob. But I've logged 150 hours of casino play on one specific play situation and run countless simulations. CVCX, and CVData is what I use. and the exact situation that i look for, or should look for is nothing but the prime of DD games. 1-8 spread, H or S17 DAS, Double on any card, resplit 4 times, at least 60% penetration. this last weekend in vegas, I played outside of that prime game situation and got no DAS, 40% pen, fixed cut card slot, was getting heat for the 1-8 spread, and so I dropped down to 1-4. I ran a sim on this play condition, and it did take out a huge edge.(well obviously)

Well thanx for the encouragement guys. Several of you have mentions big losses in one session or over a few hours. That's not really what i was referring to. Horrible shoes or sessions are fairly routine. That's very short-term. And in the short term anything can and will happen. I was speaking more about playing hundreds of hours, tens of thousands of hands while steadily losing. That's very frustrating! Now of course hundreds of hours and 25,000 hands is still short term as well, but I hope to begin to at least see some kind of turnaround soon. At least see the lines on the chart begin to head north.

A couple of you like username and Matt21 and I'm sure many other that chose not to post, have recently gone through similar downtrends and rebounded, and it appears BJcount is also currently experiencing a similar even worse negative run. Hopefully he and I will both turn it around by the end of the year.

My particular losing streak is not devastating. I am still up almost exatly 40K for the year. It is however the longest significant losing period I have yet endured. Anyway, many thanx everyone for sharing.