Last night I played at a store where I knew they might be watching me, since I had had recent wins there and was playing rated. Therefore, I decided to start off flat betting two hands to establish myself as a typical decent basic strategy player. The dealer must have won every hand for about a ten deals, except a couple where I won one hand and lost the other. I was quickly down the majority of my 40 unit buy-in, when it began to change. Only flat betting, I soon amassed my own 40 unit buy-in plus an additional 70 units, before I quit. I never once bet more than 2 units on a hand (2X was required to play two hands). The only deviations I made, was once with a count of +9 I took insurance on my A/9 hand, but ignored my 8/7 hand (which I thought was the ploppy thing to do), and I doubled down on an 8 vs. 5 at a similarly high count. Boy, was I ever glad that I did not change tables due to that initial poor beginning.
There have been times, though, where the dealer won so many hands shoe after shoe that I was glad I did more to another table. That is either pure voodoo, or some other mechanism we just don't understand. At some point, I think it is better to change tables than to dig in one's heels saying adamantly, "I refuse to leave. It just isn't scientific to change tables. I will remain come hell or high water!" I did just that once in my first year of AP play at the Trump Plaza. I lost so many shoes in a row, it was comical, although I didn't think so at the time. It was not just me; the entire table was getting crushed for hours. At one point, everyone at the table refused to play another hand until the dealer reshuffled the cards. He had to call the pit supervisor over for permission, since we had all stepped back from the table. I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000 in that friendly $15 min game playing my level 1 system strictly by the book.
I know it's considered ploppy to change tables, but the way I look at it is just because we don't understand why something is happening, does not mean there isn't a scientific justification for leaving a table-- we just don't know what it is. Since as an AP we look at it as one continuous session, it does not change anything in the traditional way of thinking to change tables.
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