Bailing out?

[blackchipjim]

Afternoon gentlemen, just a quick question to the general counters. I just got back from getting my arse kicked again. Once again the counts were going really going but not for me. The cards were coming out just like they should of but, not to me.The question has come out time and time again about when to leave and ror and but sheesh I was having a horrible session. The people at the tables ( I switched quite a few times) noticed my poor luck and felt bad.I geuss I need some emotional support and advice. blackchipjim:cry:

 

[golfnut101]

whats going on ?

Are you objectively analyzing your play after each session ? Are you razor sharp
with your skills ? And finally, this game, I am learning on a constant basis, is not for the faint of heart. If you really believe we have the advantage, then get back on the horse, practice your ass off, and stay the course.

good luck

 

[shadroch]

There is nothing worse than getting into a situation where the count is high,you put out a big bet and your first card is a 6.Inevitably,your next card and the one after that are tens and it keeps repeating itself.Evil thoughts run thru your head and I know that Thorpe was just a shill for the casinos.
Thats the time you have to laugh out loud and accept that on the road to success,you'll hit a few potholes and experiance a flat-tire or two.
F.I.D.O.

 

[jimpenn]

Blackjackjim...I had same situation last trip. Two week ago I played AC agressively wonging in and just couldn't get a card hand after hand. In fact, for two days I never played an entire shoe. In and out for 16 hours. I must of walked for 10 miles during two day trip. Just wasn't meant to be. Going back Monday courtesy of Borgata. O'well...this last trip took a few days to get over. LOL

 

[sagefr0g]

Blackjackjim, sorry man really. it's happened to us all. for me it's a rotten feeling that i can't shake. i think it's a part of humane nature. it's not normal to base your emotions on the long run instead of the short term.
so as to not just be hand waving on the issue lets not gloss over the fact that it could get worse before it gets better. that emotes even a worse malay .....
it helps me some when i have a lousey session or two to drag out my graphs and records and then i can see that for the long haul i am indeed well out front .
as we all know it's a roller coaster ride and that top bank is only going to be enjoyed about one percent of the time so that as Wong wrote much of the time we are going to have the feeling that we are not doing as well as we once were.

as far as bailing out. well i do it but not on losing sessions, only when i've won about a standard deviation over my expectation and never if the count is positive. it seems for me to give a psychological boost experiencing a lot of relatively smaller wins but of course it doesn't prevent the negative mood ingendered when the inevitable bigger losing sessions come along.
you'll be alright, just don't fall into the trap of chasing your loss's.

 

[supercoolmancool]

You are not still using Golden Touch are you? That could be part of the problem.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

You are not still using Golden Touch are you? That could be part of the problem.

I would certainly hope not. No AP should use Golden Touch or any other similar system. At the risk of being too austere, if High-Low is too tough for you than blackjack is too tough for you.

But this experience is very common. I've gotten good counts shoved up my ass all night session after session. Most of it is due to perception. When we have a good count and a big bet down, we feel like we have a huge advantage when in reality it's only 2%. It's as easy to lose at BJ as it is to win on a slot machine- people do it all the time, just ask all the slot players. That's a difference between us and them- they remember winning and we remember losing.

 

[Cass]

You are not still using Golden Touch are you? That could be part of the problem.

I think Jimpenn uses goldentouch, not blackchipjim.

Jim-
It's called variance and it happens. Remember if you have the advantage you should never quit, and if you dont have the advantage then you shouldn't have been playing in the first place. Sometimes it just happens that you cant seem to win and you wonder what the hell you are doing.

A few weeks ago I was playing at a casino and i was down $13,000 after playing 4 hours. My top bet was 2x$400. The most I have ever been down before this night was 7k, but to be honest I wasnt that freaked out. I run many sims on BJRM before i play so i know what my trip ROR is and what to expect. next morning I went back to the same table and I got a dealer heads up that was giving better pen. I had the best streak I ever had. I played one shoe without losing a hand, and i think i won like 12 hands in a row. Within 2hours I was back to even!! I ended up giving several thousand back to them before I got backed off. Overall I lost 5k, but i didnt feel too bad considering how my night before had went.

Moral of the story is all kinds of crazy things can happen. If you cant take then heat get out of the kitchen. You should be emotionally prepared to lose your entire bankroll, or set your ROR so that you wont go broke. Negative swings do happen, but just keep playing and eventually it will be a distant memory.

 

[ortango]

keep your head up bud. These bad streaks happen and sometimes there seems to be no end. I've never lost more than two trips in a row (and those are small 3-5 hour trips) in over 55 trips, but right now I'm in the middle of a 7 trip losing streak. Unbelievable as it sounds but if you flip a coin long enough you will get heads 7 times even with a 1% progressive edge. Just make sure not to chase your losses as stated above.

 

[sagefr0g]

crap session

i had a lousey night last night. started out good was up about ten units after having realized a few large bets at a good count. then i ran into some shoes that just didn't produce a positive count worth betting into. seemed as if i couldn't win a hand. then i get a good positive count bet into it and lose. the count keeps going up or stays high. i bet in more and lose more. this on a night where i decided to finally raise my ramp. so now when i'm losing my big bets i'm losing more than i'm used to. finally get another positive count and got a little of my bank back. but overall my waiting bets and my advantage bets got me to where i ended up forty units down.
crap feeling but this sort of thing goes with the territory.

 

[jimpenn]

Yes, I have been using the Speed Count for two/three months now. I agressively wong in AC only and not being an AP this gives me a big advantage wonging into shoes and getting out. Like you guys said, "It's better than nothing."

I have experienced a big advantage while wonging only in AC using the Speed Count. Why don't you guys believe that it gives me an advantage? It sure tells me when to get into a shoe and not. I understand I could not be successful with this system in Vegas, but AC is a different animal when counting a new shoe and then just moving on to the next table at the start of another shoe. I'm not attempting to make a living, just want to enter shoe with advantage and then get out when neg.

 

[blackchipjim]

bailing the ship?

Thanks guys, no I don't use the gt I did awhile back as an experiment but trashed it for poor performance overall. I do use KO and with the indices and have had overall good results. I love playing the game and love having an advantage. I'm still getting use to the casino enviroment with the heat. I do weither it''s my imagination or not recieve attention at times that I try to camo my play and shed it. I find it very hard with a high positive count to drop my bet down to the min. to avoid the heat. I find with KO and eight decks the counts don't get too high too often and it pisses me off when I know I should drop down so the floors don't eyeball me. This is my only closiest casino and can't afford to be barred. I'm in it for the long haul and pratice everyday and my horse agrees to keep going. I have a profit overall and you gentlemen and your comments always help and are appriciated. Thanks blackchipjim:cool2:

 

[sagefr0g]

I'm still getting use to the casino enviroment with the heat. I do weither it''s my imagination or not recieve attention at times that I try to camo my play and shed it. I find it very hard with a high positive count to drop my bet down to the min. to avoid the heat.

hey blackchip don't overdo that dropping your bets as camo. infact find another way. the camo action as you describe it is doubtless part of why your having less than desireable results. like you say it's rare to have a high enough count to bet up so you gotta do it when you have the opportunity.

 

[Jeff25]

Speaking of getting slaughtered on high counts...I wonged into an 8 decker the other day. Count stayed above the pivot for 5 or 6 rounds. I was playing two hands every round. Only won 1 hand. Ended up loosing 73 units on that shoe alone.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Yes, I have been using the Speed Count for two/three months now. I agressively wong in AC only and not being an AP this gives me a big advantage wonging into shoes and getting out. Like you guys said, "It's better than nothing."

I have experienced a big advantage while wonging only in AC using the Speed Count. Why don't you guys believe that it gives me an advantage? It sure tells me when to get into a shoe and not. I understand I could not be successful with this system in Vegas, but AC is a different animal when counting a new shoe and then just moving on to the next table at the start of another shoe. I'm not attempting to make a living, just want to enter shoe with advantage and then get out when neg.

It will give you an advantage. It's just a pretty small one, and with all the difficulties of playing profitably in AC as it is you put your bankroll in greater danger by using a weak count.

 

[Cass]

Yes, I have been using the Speed Count for two/three months now. I agressively wong in AC only and not being an AP this gives me a big advantage wonging into shoes and getting out. Like you guys said, "It's better than nothing."

I have experienced a big advantage while wonging only in AC using the Speed Count. Why don't you guys believe that it gives me an advantage? It sure tells me when to get into a shoe and not. I understand I could not be successful with this system in Vegas, but AC is a different animal when counting a new shoe and then just moving on to the next table at the start of another shoe. I'm not attempting to make a living, just want to enter shoe with advantage and then get out when neg.

Why do you think AC is better than vegas? Vegas HA : .19 two deck, .26 six deck

AC HA: .42 six deck, .44 eight deck

???

 

[jimpenn]

ac vs vegas...wonging

Do you think you could get away wonging for two days at the same casino in Vegas without heat going from table to table? I don't think so. In AC, with patieince and persistence you can always enter a shoe during a positive count and get out when neg. You couldn't get away with that in Vegas at a single casino for any considerable length of time.

 

[sagefr0g]

on bailing out ....

i started learning and applying advantage play not too long ago. my records date back to 01May2005 . started with $300 and got it up to $7000 (1,400 units for me) until my last two sessions. i lost forty units the other night and thirty five more units this evening. the forty unit loss came upon the very day i had decided to increase my bet ramp from a spread of 1:8 to 1:10 units. i decided i could live with a ROR that is slightly above 2% as the bankroll is replenishible to some degree. making this decision may not seem like a big thing for some of you but it was for me. something about advantage play helped turn me into a very thrifty sort of person and i was pretty much of a cheapskate to begin with. having been a work a day sort that lived pretty much pay check to pay check for thirty years before retiring also made me pretty tight with the buck. well for now in retirement i'm fairly well off but it hasn't made me any less careful about money.
my betting for the most part has been extremely conservative (excepting for a few steaming events). for a while i was only ramping a spread of 1:6 and that was sometimes playing eight deckers. like i've often said i'm one of the few that uses a stop point method where i would quit play if i got up around a standard deviation of my expectation but i would continue play until losing my trip bankroll if i didn't hit that quit point. i would only ever take sixty units with me for any given casino session.even though sixty units was stretching it somewhat it would give me at least about an hour of play or more.
so now that i'm going for the 1:10 spread i realize that i need to take a larger trip bankroll. i'm thinking i'll be taking about 140 units as a trip bank roll now. that should give me some wiggle room if i end up having to split and then double down on a big bet. it took some getting used to for me when i started laying out the bigger bets. the fluctuation is significantly greater. this evening i was up forty units in about an hour and then two hours later i was down thirty five units. rarely had roller coaster rides like that with the 1:8 spread.
well anyway moving to the 1:10 spread and experiencing the greater fluctuation taught me something. it some how made me look at sessions differently than i had before. i believe i'm going to abandon the quit point tact and just get in as much play a session as i can with out drawing to much heat. the thing i learned by the wild swings that occured is that each trip can be viewed as a bunch of mini sessions of which at one point you may be up forty units and another point down thirty five or so. but thats just the short run and the good news is that over longer periods of time the ole bankroll shall make that 'drunken' drift upward just as it did before with the 1:8 spread but also the bank should grow bigger quicker in the long term.
it's funny i didn't feel so bad about dropping 35 units this evening as i would have in the past with the 1:8 spread. what i realized is that first of all i've got a good level as far as ROR and that a 1:10 spread is really going to help my bankroll in the long term much more so than the 1:8. i realized that in the past i've allowed my fears to stand in the way of my making better progress with the game. one thing i can say about tonight is that i played damm good and i played through some great opportunities. racked up some good ev and eventually that ev will come to fruition. it's like life, it has it's ups and downs but all and all if one doesn't mess up to bad one finds ones self to be pretty much in good shape. i guess pride isn't a good thing in some respects but there is a type of pride that i think is good and that is the kind you get where you take on a difficult task, give it your all and if you get knocked down you get back up and take another shot at it because you know you got what it takes to succeed. sometimes i get to my local joint when they are just opening up and the dealers and pit boss's come parading out to the tables amidst all the intimidating glory of the ornate casino. dealers carrying chip filled racks. lots of them, like an army. and there i am little ole me trembling in my sneakers with my puny bank in my pocket ready to take them on. and so far i may lose a battle or two but i'm winning the war. we should have a bit of pride don't you think guys?