Help My Friend

[futrend]

I have a friend who has used the BlackjackInfo.com site to test various
betting patterns. He believes his hard work has paid off in a particular
bet change pattern that can help him not lose money (or much) playing
a negative video blackjack game at a casino. It has decent rules, but the
obvious bad rule is 1:1 for blackjack. However, the main purpose is to gain
point to achieve and maintain a specific card level. For this purposes the
video blackjack does have a low variance.

I have tired to tell him that in a this single deck video blackjack game,
each hand is totally independent. I have insisted that any change in bet
from one hand to the next can only at best add some volatility to his play
vs a level bet size. I have also told him that any positive result can only
be do simply because of short term luck. In other words, he just happens
to win rather than lose enough times on those bets of which he has
doubled his bet.

My hope is that if you address this issue on this board he might have a
greater respect for the information than coming from me. He seems to
be totally deceived by some short term results he has received supposedly
researching his ideas on this site!

Any help for him will be fully appreciate. He basing his conclusions on bad
assumptions, but if in total denial that his methods will not work and will
not listen to my explanations.

Bob

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

It's simple really; the machine will state clearly in the rules that it uses a standard 52-card deck that is shuffled after each hand. Well, it should, at least. Assuming that a shuffle is done after each round, each round is an independent trial. A betting strategy not based on deck composition (which is a moot point in this case) can not beat the house edge, period. To make matters worse, even if this particular machine did somehow deal out a certain amount of cards before shuffling, the rules (1:1, for example) would make the house edge so high as to negate any advantage gained by a composition-dependent betting strategy.

Full-pay video poker would be a much better way to achieve points for a particular level of a player's club card.

 

[Sucker]

If you search this site (or ANY gambling site, for that matter) you will probably find hundreds of threads dealing with this issue. Unfortunately, we can talk to these people until we're blue in the face and it usually does no good. I guess some people are just incapable of understanding even the SIMPLEST math.

As far as playing a game in order to keep his points up on his card; video blackjack that pays 1:1 on blackjack is HORRIBLE odds, no matter WHAT the rest of the rules are. Try steering him toward video poker. Have him go to wizardofodds.com and learn the strategies for some of the better VP games. If he's willing to hunt around for the proper payout schedules, he will easily find games such as 9/6 Jacks or Better which offer a return of about 99.5%, which is probably about SIX times better than that stupid video blackjack game. If he's REALLY willing to look around, it's actually possible to find games where he has the edge over the HOUSE, if he learns perfect strategy. Though few & far between, these games actually DO exist!