just been lucky?

[ReD40]

alright first let me explain my playing style, then tell me based on my results if its just been luck or if i can maybe keep this up.

i play $5 tables, normally two hands at once, BS as best as i can
usually ill bet between 5-15 on the two hands
as im playing, if i notice there hasnt been many face cards the past few hands ill raise my bet if ive been winning. the highest ive bet is $30 on both hands
i start with $200, typically playing for 3-4 hours, i'll usually walk away ahead 200-300. this has happened probably the last ten times ive gone.

So, have i just been getting lucky? think i'll get any heat from playing like this? thanks for any input

 

[creeping panther]

Red40

Congrats on a good run.

You will get no heat the way you are playing, IMHO. The math should catch up with you and you will lose it all back, the casino knows this. I am concerned that you say you may not even be playing perfect basic.

There are some shoe games that are *so* good that I do believe a player playing perfect basic and watching the cards as you do can actually come out a little ahead, with a small amount of luck. At worst lose a very small amount.

I refer to these GREAT GAMES as "The Razors Edge".

CP

 

[callipygian]

if i notice there hasnt been many face cards the past few hands ill raise my bet

Are you playing single deck, double deck, or shoe? This might be okay if you're at a crowded double deck table where only a few rounds go by before a shuffle happens, but you're probably not playing with an advantage in a shoe game.

 

[EasyRhino]

Agree, unless you're playing a good single deck game.

Let's say the "card watching" method correctly identifies advantages about 50% more than it misses them... (this might be generous). Even in this case, then a 3x spread wouldn't be sufficient to overcome the house edge of a typical shoe game. You'd probably only be raising your bets like 15% of the time.

 

[sagefr0g]

alright first let me explain my playing style, then tell me based on my results if its just been luck or if i can maybe keep this up.

i play $5 tables, normally two hands at once, BS as best as i can
usually ill bet between 5-15 on the two hands
as im playing, if i notice there hasnt been many face cards the past few hands ill raise my bet if ive been winning. the highest ive bet is $30 on both hands
i start with $200, typically playing for 3-4 hours, i'll usually walk away ahead 200-300. this has happened probably the last ten times ive gone.

So, have i just been getting lucky? think i'll get any heat from playing like this? thanks for any input

so your up maybe two or four grand or so, i guess. sounds like your playing a shoe game, maybe six or eight decks? what are the rules? frorm not knowing the rules and numberof decks i could only just guess that if you are playing six or eight deck shoe games you've had a lot of good luck.
the thing about where you say if there haven't been many face cards the past few hands that you raise your bets can really be tricky when your just card watching and not using a card counting method. talking six or eight decks here. reason i say this is that i've been experimenting with the same sort of approach. i mean really i don't recommend it lol. i think i know this sort of approach is really on shakey ground because i mean your only going to get maybe 1%, 2% or so advantage overall if your counting cards and doing things like wonging in and out and spreading to multiple hands, stuff like that. so where your basing card watching (as described by Renzey in Blackjack Bluebook II) which would be a sub-priority sort of advantage play tactic to card counting and such then you have to figure your advantage if any would be mighty slim and incalculable but probably way less than 1%.
one of the things about card watching is that well yeah you might see a load of babies come out compared to faces and aces for a few hands but that very often doesn't mean that the true count isn't still way, way negative too where a bunch more babies are gonna come out and ruin your hopes. maybe have you doubling down on a big bet only to lose it or not having much real likelyhood of getting a blackjack. i mean if your gonna do the just card watching thing to have any hope of getting those bigger bets out in truly positive counts you have to at least have a sense of the cummulative nature of what your watching. and even then it's just gonna be a qualitativie sense of the game prospects your gonna have instead of a quantitative one.
it's fun though. i haven't had any success with it in the casino's so far. i've had some anecdotal success with it on the computer for loads of hands thing is even with that i believe it's been a lot of luck involved because when i inspect the logs of my hands played i can see that often my betting is not well correlated to the true counts logged.
just some observations and thoughts from one who has been there done that.
i'm still interested and playing around with the concept but sure wouldn't want to recommend it.