Eighteen Months – The Road to Hibernation
For nearly my entire life I never thought too much of taking on the store.
I had more important things to do, other ways to enjoy my life, and so many projects that I used my energy towards, the thought of sitting inside, sucking in the smoke, and learning to have a split life just was not my plan.
So I woke up one day, about 18 months or so ago and said, I’m bored, I need something new.
Searching around the web, searching ideas of something to do with myself, I fell upon the idea of Blackjack. Don’t ask me why or how, I just stumbled into it.
I read everything I could find before choosing a strategy to learn. Then I read every book I could find to understand all the different ideas, approaches, math, systems, players thoughts, and betting methods.
Then I found CVBJ and my practice sessions began. I set up my Strategy, set up my optimum betting ramp, and then practiced hours on end for 2-3 months straight. My wife thought I was nuts… and still does, but I wanted to play perfect.
Off I go to hit the stores, I have what I believe a good system, good betting ramp, excellent recall of BS and 90 indices for the game I will attack. So for months and 100’s of hrs, I would grind. For the first 6 months I ended up losing, not quite what I had expected based on all those sims I ran, but it was enough to lower my BR by 20%. Now that BR which I mentioned was a joint BR, something I should have thought about before I started. By, Joint, I mean my wife’s slot play and my BJ.
One Big Mistake:
As my BR is dropping due to the slot play, I decide to up my RoR. How else will I cover those slot loses. Between a huge increase in hours played, I did so many 12hr-18hr sessions I hate now even to think of them, and a jump in my RoR, I was covering the slot play loses but never increasing the BR. Essentially my win rate was equal to the +EV of the game I played but could never outperform the rate of lose due to slot play.
The New Year comes in and it turns out that from Jan – May I’m up a bit over 600 units for the year, but the BR is still depreciating. Wow imagine how pissed I’m getting with the falling BR and my decent win rate.
From the end of May to last weekend I had 3 winnings sessions out of about 20. What a turn around. From up 600 units in May to just up about 80 units now, but the BR is gone.
My one big mistake which many of you will do too is sharing a BR with your wife or girl friend who play's slots. Don’t do it!
I keep reading it on the boards over and over again.
Can I win with a $200 BR?
I’m going with $1,000 what should I expect to win?
Can someone give me a betting ramp for a $500 BR.
Here’s the single answer for all these type questions.
STAY HOME!
Why go risk your money knowing before you even walk in the door that you have a greater than 75% chance of losing? Put it into stocks, let it build, and then when the size of your BR is sufficient to play correctly go fight your battle. Going to battle with a single bullet when your enemy has a fully stocked armory is just suicide.
Maybe you’ll be that 1 in 10,000 that make it with the $200 starting BR, but it most cases, the game you’re playing will never be good enough for that to happen.
If you’ve read about it happening to other players, find out what year they started, because it’s almost a guarantee that if they started with only 200 bucks and made it, they started 20-30 years ago.
They played by the first rule most of us never pay attention to, PLAY ONLY GOOD GAMES, and 20 years ago the good games were more common then today. Why else are so many of the Hall of Famers playing other games such as Poker, because the game of Blackjack ( in many venues) has deteriorated so much it’s not worth their time to play, do you get the hidden message here?
So if you are the fortunate player to have the “Dream Shoe” close by, beat it little by little until the day it dies.
New books get published every year by a player who has beaten the odds, beaten the games, had the discipline, and followed a strict diet of rules. Somewhere you may have read about the players who have lost 1 or 2 BR’s and stayed the course to finally conquer by using different approaches.
You just don’t read about the players losing their BR on here very often, whether it’s pride, shame, or just a sense of humility. Face it, this is a tough endeavor you’re walking into, all the math points the correct way, but it’s how perfectly you can follow those perfect formulas. It’s the decision to what miniscule or reasonable results you are willing to accept, that will make all the difference in the world.
My Journey to the Store will be in hibernation for a while as I rebuild my BR to a point of comfort.
No rant, no whining, no tears, just the plain facts.
Eighteen Months later... no BR but I'm still ahead by 80 units on paper...
Goods Cards To All.
BJC
For nearly my entire life I never thought too much of taking on the store.
I had more important things to do, other ways to enjoy my life, and so many projects that I used my energy towards, the thought of sitting inside, sucking in the smoke, and learning to have a split life just was not my plan.
So I woke up one day, about 18 months or so ago and said, I’m bored, I need something new.
Searching around the web, searching ideas of something to do with myself, I fell upon the idea of Blackjack. Don’t ask me why or how, I just stumbled into it.
I read everything I could find before choosing a strategy to learn. Then I read every book I could find to understand all the different ideas, approaches, math, systems, players thoughts, and betting methods.
Then I found CVBJ and my practice sessions began. I set up my Strategy, set up my optimum betting ramp, and then practiced hours on end for 2-3 months straight. My wife thought I was nuts… and still does, but I wanted to play perfect.
Off I go to hit the stores, I have what I believe a good system, good betting ramp, excellent recall of BS and 90 indices for the game I will attack. So for months and 100’s of hrs, I would grind. For the first 6 months I ended up losing, not quite what I had expected based on all those sims I ran, but it was enough to lower my BR by 20%. Now that BR which I mentioned was a joint BR, something I should have thought about before I started. By, Joint, I mean my wife’s slot play and my BJ.
One Big Mistake:
As my BR is dropping due to the slot play, I decide to up my RoR. How else will I cover those slot loses. Between a huge increase in hours played, I did so many 12hr-18hr sessions I hate now even to think of them, and a jump in my RoR, I was covering the slot play loses but never increasing the BR. Essentially my win rate was equal to the +EV of the game I played but could never outperform the rate of lose due to slot play.
The New Year comes in and it turns out that from Jan – May I’m up a bit over 600 units for the year, but the BR is still depreciating. Wow imagine how pissed I’m getting with the falling BR and my decent win rate.
From the end of May to last weekend I had 3 winnings sessions out of about 20. What a turn around. From up 600 units in May to just up about 80 units now, but the BR is gone.
My one big mistake which many of you will do too is sharing a BR with your wife or girl friend who play's slots. Don’t do it!
I keep reading it on the boards over and over again.
Can I win with a $200 BR?
I’m going with $1,000 what should I expect to win?
Can someone give me a betting ramp for a $500 BR.
Here’s the single answer for all these type questions.
STAY HOME!
Why go risk your money knowing before you even walk in the door that you have a greater than 75% chance of losing? Put it into stocks, let it build, and then when the size of your BR is sufficient to play correctly go fight your battle. Going to battle with a single bullet when your enemy has a fully stocked armory is just suicide.
Maybe you’ll be that 1 in 10,000 that make it with the $200 starting BR, but it most cases, the game you’re playing will never be good enough for that to happen.
If you’ve read about it happening to other players, find out what year they started, because it’s almost a guarantee that if they started with only 200 bucks and made it, they started 20-30 years ago.
They played by the first rule most of us never pay attention to, PLAY ONLY GOOD GAMES, and 20 years ago the good games were more common then today. Why else are so many of the Hall of Famers playing other games such as Poker, because the game of Blackjack ( in many venues) has deteriorated so much it’s not worth their time to play, do you get the hidden message here?
So if you are the fortunate player to have the “Dream Shoe” close by, beat it little by little until the day it dies.
New books get published every year by a player who has beaten the odds, beaten the games, had the discipline, and followed a strict diet of rules. Somewhere you may have read about the players who have lost 1 or 2 BR’s and stayed the course to finally conquer by using different approaches.
You just don’t read about the players losing their BR on here very often, whether it’s pride, shame, or just a sense of humility. Face it, this is a tough endeavor you’re walking into, all the math points the correct way, but it’s how perfectly you can follow those perfect formulas. It’s the decision to what miniscule or reasonable results you are willing to accept, that will make all the difference in the world.
My Journey to the Store will be in hibernation for a while as I rebuild my BR to a point of comfort.
No rant, no whining, no tears, just the plain facts.
Eighteen Months later... no BR but I'm still ahead by 80 units on paper...
Goods Cards To All.
BJC
