Psychics and blackjack

[ycming]

I strike a rapport with a senior citizen and he doesn't want to split his 4's V dealer 4. I ask why. His reply is a classic for Voodoo annals: "Four is an unlucky number. I never split 4s." I ask: "Why are fours unlucky?"
Because: "How many funnels did the Titanic have? Four." Voodoo logic never ceases to amaze me. :grin:

What game should you spilt 44 against 4? As i play in UK the BS say don't spilt. Or is this an index play?

Thanks
Ming

 

[Katweezel]

Ming Dynasty

What game should you spilt 44 against 4? As i play in UK the BS say don't spilt. Or is this an index play?

Thanks
Ming

You got me Ming. This is my own voodoo basic strategy departure indice. This departure has been very kind to me in the past in my eternal quest to get more chips/boxes down when I believe the timing is... nigh. My 44 V 4 hopefully can turn into 2,3,4,5 or more winning hands for this round, all with good units profit to be made for an aggressive splits/doubles play on this occasion, I hope... And of course, the dealer 4 looks like a sitting duck don't it, ready to be shot? My bottom voodoo line: I believe 4s are a lucky number, and I don't give a rat's how many funnels a sunk ship had...:grin:

 

[ycming]

You got me Ming. This is my own voodoo basic strategy departure indice. This departure has been very kind to me in the past in my eternal quest to get more chips/boxes down when I believe the timing is... nigh. My 44 V 4 hopefully can turn into 2,3,4,5 or more winning hands for this round, all with good units profit to be made for an aggressive splits/doubles play on this occasion, I hope... And of course, the dealer 4 looks like a sitting duck don't it, ready to be shot? My bottom voodoo line: I believe 4s are a lucky number, and I don't give a rat's how many funnels a sunk ship had...:grin:

If you feel lucky i should feel lucky, am gonna start spilting those 4 lol.

4 is an unlucky number for the chinese it means death

Ming

 

[blackchipjim]

numbers?

Hey ycming, if four is the number meaning death and you are about to split them why. I always was under the impression that the number eight was lucky for asians. Correct me if I'm wrong but with two fours it is equal to eight which is lucky.

 

[Katweezel]

Long term and short term

If you feel lucky i should feel lucky, am gonna start spilting those 4 lol.

4 is an unlucky number for the chinese it means death

Ming

Attaboy Ming. That's the spirit. 4 means death all right... death to the dealer! You can safely throw your BS chart away for 44 V 4 because the conclusion was based on trillions, billions or many millions of hands simulated. So the long-term recommedation is go with the math. But let's face it; you are never going to be playing for the long-term. In fact, you are always in the short term. You will be lucky to see one million hands, let alone one hundred million. And 44 V 4 is probably a reasonably close call anyway. And a final voodoo call: Double 4 = double death V one 4 for the dealer. She is outgunned, big-time... by Super Ming

 

[Dopple]

I never split tens because every moron in the world thinks I have taken the dealers bust card and wants to threaten me with bodily harm.

I would think a psychedelic as opposed to psychic experience would be more in tune with my heart. The term psychedelic may or may not be contrued as relevant to mind altering drugs. Results may vary, consult your psychic should symptoms persist.

 

[psyduck]

[QUOTE 4 is an unlucky number for the chinese it means death

Ming[/QUOTE]

Not really! 4 and death in Chinese are close in pronunciation, but not exactly the same!

 

[blackchipjim]

question

What in the heck do the asian people say when they call for the monkey which is face. I can't for the life of me remember the pronunciation.

 

[ExhibitCAA]

Katweezel: "You can safely throw your BS chart away for 44 V 4 because the conclusion was based on trillions, billions or many millions of hands simulated. So the long-term recommedation is go with the math. But let's face it; you are never going to be playing for the long-term. In fact, you are always in the short term. You will be lucky to see one million hands, let alone one hundred million."

OK, are you INCAPABLE of understanding the explanation that I have made a trillion times on this web site already???? The computer's simulation of trillions of hands is a COMPUTATIONAL TECHNIQUE to estimate the expectation on the hand, but that expectation applies even to a SINGLE hand played, and the strategy on that hand may not even be a close decision. It would be stupid to play suboptimally even for one hand.

Let me give an example. You have a coin that is heavily weighted in favor of heads, maybe in the 90% heads to 10% tails ballpark. Then, we run a computer simulation of a gazillion hands and determine that the heads probability is in fact 88.763%. It took us a gazillion to get the accuracy to determine that the probability is 88.763%, as opposed to 88.91% (that's the number being thrown around by the numerically illiterate). Now that we have our 88.763% answer, we can forget about the gazillion hands. It doesn't matter how we came to this 88.763% answer. We could have just as easily read this answer off the tablets Moses brought from the mountaintop (or, we could have computed them using exact combinatorial analysis, without resorting to simulation). It doesn't matter. The simulation was simply a computational method to get the answer. NOW, we know the coin is 88.763% in favor of heads. You are going to play the game one time only. Are you going to stupidly call tails, and then rationalize that by saying that you aren't going to be playing a gazillion flips?

The expectation applies even to a single flip, and just because the computer ran a gazillion trials doesn't mean that the strategic decision is close.

Let me try one more example, since obviously this point hasn't sunk in yet. There are two tables of Russian Roulette offered at the casino. Each table has a specially constructed gun that has one million slots, but we don't know how many bullets. Through computer simulation of gazillions of times pulling the trigger, we find that the first table has 5000 bullets in the gun (so 0.005000 chance of death), while the second table has 1 bullet in the gun (so 0.000001 chance of death). You are going to play this Russian Roulette only once. Even though you aren't going to play many times, it would be pretty stupid to choose the table with 5000 bullets in the gun.

Note also that our simulation of gazillions of hands was just a computational method to figure out how many bullets were in the guns; equivalently, we could have gotten the information from the dealer, who could have told us that at the beginning of the shift, she loads one gun with five thousand bullets, and the other gun with one bullet.

If you want to make a foolish play, abandoning BS so that you can gamble by splitting 44 v 4, then knock yourself out. But please stop defending the play by using incorrect arguments that completely misrepresent the meaning of statistical estimation techniques.

 

[Deathclutch]

I still enjoy seeing ECAA debunk the "we don't play billions of hands" argument.

 

[Katweezel]

Katweezel: "You can safely throw your BS chart away for 44 V 4 because the conclusion was based on trillions, billions or many millions of hands simulated. So the long-term recommedation is go with the math. But let's face it; you are never going to be playing for the long-term. In fact, you are always in the short term. You will be lucky to see one million hands, let alone one hundred million."

OK, are you INCAPABLE of understanding the explanation that I have made a trillion times on this web site already???? The computer's simulation of trillions of hands is a COMPUTATIONAL TECHNIQUE to estimate the expectation on the hand, but that expectation applies even to a SINGLE hand played, and the strategy on that hand may not even be a close decision. It would be stupid to play suboptimally even for one hand.

Let me give an example. You have a coin that is heavily weighted in favor of heads, maybe in the 90% heads to 10% tails ballpark. Then, we run a computer simulation of a gazillion hands and determine that the heads probability is in fact 88.763%. It took us a gazillion to get the accuracy to determine that the probability is 88.763%, as opposed to 88.91% (that's the number being thrown around by the numerically illiterate). Now that we have our 88.763% answer, we can forget about the gazillion hands. It doesn't matter how we came to this 88.763% answer. We could have just as easily read this answer off the tablets Moses brought from the mountaintop (or, we could have computed them using exact combinatorial analysis, without resorting to simulation). It doesn't matter. The simulation was simply a computational method to get the answer. NOW, we know the coin is 88.763% in favor of heads. You are going to play the game one time only. Are you going to stupidly call tails, and then rationalize that by saying that you aren't going to be playing a gazillion flips?

The expectation applies even to a single flip, and just because the computer ran a gazillion trials doesn't mean that the strategic decision is close.

Let me try one more example, since obviously this point hasn't sunk in yet. There are two tables of Russian Roulette offered at the casino. Each table has a specially constructed gun that has one million slots, but we don't know how many bullets. Through computer simulation of gazillions of times pulling the trigger, we find that the first table has 5000 bullets in the gun (so 0.005000 chance of death), while the second table has 1 bullet in the gun (so 0.000001 chance of death). You are going to play this Russian Roulette only once. Even though you aren't going to play many times, it would be pretty stupid to choose the table with 5000 bullets in the gun.

Note also that our simulation of gazillions of hands was just a computational method to figure out how many bullets were in the guns; equivalently, we could have gotten the information from the dealer, who could have told us that at the beginning of the shift, she loads one gun with five thousand bullets, and the other gun with one bullet.

If you want to make a foolish play, abandoning BS so that you can gamble by splitting 44 v 4, then knock yourself out. But please stop defending the play by using incorrect arguments that completely misrepresent the meaning of statistical estimation techniques.

Thank you ExCAA for devoting considerable time and effort in pointing out the error and silliness of my voodoo advice to Ming, regarding 44 V 4. Your impressive math-post demonstrates how right you are, well beyond doubt. I posted mine on 3rd Oct. So about 14 days went by and luckily, you spotted it and have set the record straight. If it had been one of those real nasty moderators, I may have been in deepshit for spreading heresy.

Speaking of deepshit, some of what you said - as you no doubt expected - went a little over my head, with a whooooshing sound. Which brings me to the case for the defense... Your impeccable math is probably more suited elsewhere other than Voodoo. Down here in Voodoo (and especially under a thread titled Psychics and Blackjack) my understanding is that posters here are cut some slack to kick around stuff, without getting bogged down in Serious Math Boy Science.

I've had a good run with splitting 44 V 4 and I passed that on to Ming. I'd assumed that anyone reading anything on a Voodoo board, under that heading, would certainly not take it as gospel from the Blackjack Bible. Just in case anyone did, you have kindly set the record straight... And I promise never to misrepresent your gazillions principle ever again.:angel:

Now while I briefly have your focus down here, I'd appreciate some comment on these two points, if you will.
1 Grosjean's comment: "1.5% advantage is not enough considering all the things that can go wrong."
2 Have you had much/any experience with playing MHBJ on a reserved-for-you-only table?

Thanks again.

 

[blackchipjim]

serious voodoo

Seriously folks this a voodoo board if you take anything from anyone that posts on this board as fact or serious discussion is wack.

 

[ExhibitCAA]

Katweezel: "I've had a good run with splitting 44 V 4 and I passed that on to Ming."

For someone to state, as an empirical fact, that they have won money with a certain play such as 44 v 4, is almost indisputable. I say "almost" because it is unlikely that you kept detailed records indicating how much you would have won had you NOT split the 44 v 4. Regardless, I have no problem with people justifying things on the basis of "fun," or because they have some calculations (which we can then check). My only objection is the misinterpretation of simulation, which, as I said, is merely one of several methods to determine the expectation-maximizing play for a given situation. We can get the same answer without having to use a simulation at all, in which case the "I'm-only-going-to-play-a-small-number-of-hands-in-my-human-lifetime-so-who-cares-about-a-simulation-of-a-gazillion-hands" rationalization falls flat.

Kat: "I'd assumed that anyone reading anything on a Voodoo board, under that heading, would certainly not take it as gospel from the Blackjack Bible."

No danger there!

Kat: [please comment on:] "1.5% advantage is not enough considering all the things that can go wrong."

If the edge on the target game is only 1.5%, keeping one's head above water can be difficult in the face of: 1. Expenses (airfare, rental cars, hotels, books, Green Chip, etc.); 2. Theft; 3. Heat (hard to get many hours in at the 1.5% edge); 4. Gambling of SO; 5. Higher moments (variance, skew); 6. A life. Most APs try to reduce the extent of all six of these things.

Also, if you THINK the edge is 1.5%, then there is very little margin for error (player mistakes, team miscommunications, worse penetration, countermeasures, cover, incorrect mathematical analysis). But wait, this is the Voodoo Board, so what the heck am I talking about here?

Kat: [please comment on:] "Have you had much/any experience with playing MHBJ on a reserved-for-you-only table?"

I rarely (but not never) have a reserved-for-you-only table, but what is MHBJ. More common than a reserved table, APs often raise the table minimum to a level that makes it unlikely to attract civilians.

 

[Katweezel]

Multi Hand Blackjack. Like say, at your reserved table, playing ah, from 3-7 boxes each round. No other players.

 

[ExhibitCAA]

You mean Multiple-Action Blackjack, where you make three bets, and the dealer plays out her hand three times sequentially, saving the same upcard for each trial?

 

[Katweezel]

Multi Hand Blackjack

You mean Multiple-Action Blackjack, where you make three bets, and the dealer plays out her hand three times sequentially, saving the same upcard for each trial?

No. My table, no other players. Like this round, I decide to play 4 boxes. Next round, I decide to play all 7 boxes. Next round 3 boxes, while the dealer plays normal, (like as if these boxes are other players) only they are all my boxes. So I am always in control of third base... the power box. I never could find anything on MHBJ in any book.

 

[ExhibitCAA]

third base controlling the table? [sigh]

Anyway, many casinos limit a player to two spots, and very few allow more than three spots, at least in the US.

 

[daddybo]

I think KAT is pulling your leg CAA. :laugh:

 

[blackchipjim]

control?

You mean third base doesn't control the flow of the table Daddybo?

 

[daddybo]

You mean third base doesn't control the flow of the table Daddybo?

Actually, I can control not only the dealers bust cards, but the other players initial two cards when I occupy third base. sigh.. but I can't seem to control MY cards. :laugh: