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[johndoe]

By all means, ask for help - people are very helpful here!

But when you ask us specifically to not hold back, we won't!

When you characterize your style as "hit and run" and "good money management", and "not optimum" it implies that you're doing something correctly.

My advice: Take the bankroll that you've accumulated, and sit on it until you at least learn to count cards and play correctly. It's really not very hard but it does take practice and discipline. Read the books suggested elsewhere on this site (such as http://www.qfit.com/book/ ), practice your skills, ask questions here, and when you're ready to win, hit the casinos intelligently.

This is really the only way to improve your game, except for not playing.

 

[ExhibitCAA]

ivan21: "I do think I am playing on a razors edge but sometimes I also feel like I'm leaving money on the table."

Every time you leave the table, the pit boss is thinking the same thing.

johndoe already addressed my big issue, the "the-long-run-is-not-relevant-because-I'm-only-playing-a-short-session" fallacy, and its cousin "in-the-short-run-a-card-counter-is-not-guaranteed-to-win-either" fallacy.

Let's simplify this. I have a weighted coin--it's 60%-40% in favor of Heads. You may test the coin if you wish. Now, let's play one flip for $100. You may call the flip. Wouldn't you call Heads? What if someone says, "I'm not going to play forever, just this one flip. Even the 'smart' player who calls Heads is not guaranteed to win. I'll call Tails, and if I win, I'll use clever money management to run out the door before giving it back. Then I'll go next door, where maybe I can play the same coin flip game again. I'll of course call Tails again."

You'd probably say the guy is an idiot.

If you want to play a single spin and bet Black on roulette, and the casino has an American wheel (0 and 00) immediately adjacent to the European wheel (only a 0, no 00), would you justify playing the American wheel?

 

[creeping panther]

Ivan

I do think I am playing on a razors edge but sometimes I also feel like I'm leaving money on the table. It's may also be risky to bring only 3k to a black chip table, not enough room for error.

3k to a BJ table of $100 min. Now that is foolish. I have seen alot of things over time. Once I was on a table $25 to $500, it became apparent that something was going on as the dealer was busting at a 75% rate and we were winning almost all our splits and doubles. There were 4 of us and all playing near perfect basic with great rules, I was playing AP. There was 1 man at first playing 2 spots at $500 each, this went on for 9 hours until they closed the table, I stopped counting this guys win at $97,000, and this guy already was well to do. We all won big, I have seen similar events and I will see more in the future. When you play a great game, .22 to.33 HA and you are a perfect basic player you can easily come out ahead, at worst you will lose little. In your case it looks like you are having a great upward run.

There are alot of ways to win at BJ, Counting etc will always give you a solid edge.

CP

 

[johndoe]

3k to a BJ table of $100 min. Now that is foolish.

This I think is not such a bad idea for a non-AP. I'd day bringing $1k is better, and $0k is better still!

 

[StandardDeviant]

If you play full tables at 60 hands/hr, and perfect basic strategy, you are probably playing at a $150 * 60 * .005 (house advantage) = $45/hr loss. So with 10K to play with, you can expect to play for 222 hours before losing the 10K.

Well.....yes and no. The Monte Carlo simulator may say that the expected number of hours is 222. This is determined by running millions, maybe billions, of iterations. However the individual player can't play millions of iterations. He can only play one iteration (starting with the full BR and ending when the BR = 0), and over that one iteration, results can be far different from expected value.

When I plug it into the sim, I get a 10% risk of ruin at just 20 hours of play, and a 50% risk at about 100 hours. At 222 hours the RoR is about 68%.

While it is technically correct to say that the expected value is 45/hr loss under these circumstances, the player can't actually expect to realize the expected value without playing tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours (to get to the long run). And our player will blow up long before he gets there if he's betting $150 a hand with a 10K BR.

 

[Ivan21]

Thanks CP

I have a much better idea of you perspective as a AP. I have just about finished the Blackjack Zone and it has dispelled a lot of myths that I've had since playing this game. Last winter I was playing strraight up against the dealer, two hands. I noticed he kept busting and I pressed my bets to 500 per hand. I made ~ 14k for one shoe. A new player sat at the table, so I colored out and left. b/c I didn't want to lose it back or have the new guy screw up my cards, etc...the BJ myths made me leave the table. Plus it wasn't a bad profit for playing only one shoe.

 

[psyduck]

Maybe you should just use your current method to see how long your winning streak will last. Before I started counting, I was using BS and a betting progression. At one point, I was up more than 200 units. Then I started to lose and lost all the win.

I started to study the statistics and realized my method had a negative expectation. Luck is always a factor, but sooner or later stats will show its face.