Ive got alot of "advice" on this Question and would like your two cents.
If, for example ,I have no BR, but I do have $1,000. every two weeks to play with. I play the best LV games I can find, one, two, and six deck.
Spreading 1-6 and maxing out at 2 hands of 6 units.
What would be my smartest unit amount to grow my $$$.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> Ive got alot of "advice" on this
> Question and would like your two cents.
> If, for example, I have no BR, but I do have
> $1,000 every two weeks to play with. I play
> the best LV games I can find, one, two, and
> six deck.
> Spreading 1-6 and maxing out at 2 hands of 6
> units.
Every two weeks you get another $1,000 that is devoted entirely to blackjack? You don't need it for anything else?
You can't use the spread you described uniformly for all different games. For example, at single deck, the spread you describe will get you thrown out in 10 minutes.
> What would be my smartest unit amount to
> grow my $$$.
What level of risk are you willing to accept for each of the $1,000 stipends?
Don
(Please wait to answer after Seemore replies and you repond to him.)
His question (and one I've had for some time) goes to how to handle a 'lifetime bank.'
If I had a BR in hand of $50K, I could set up a game plan for that and it might crank out a max bet of say $300 and a respective ROR of say 1% (I'm guessing about the 1%, but you knew that.)
If I had a known BR, to be collected at the rate of $2,000 every two weeks for the next twelve and a half months -my 'lifetime bank' is also $50K.
If I said my ROR is 1% on the $2,000 stipends, I would never get off the ground. Obviously if I increased my max bet to $300 while playing my stipends, chances are excellent that the flux wipes me put every week I show up to play.
So the question, how do I calc the optimal bet for a series of $2,000 stipends which eventually total $50K and keep the same ROR as above?
Hope that to be clear.
Thanks.
(BTW -I'm thinking my answer to Seemore would be to wait/practice about 90 days and then get after it. Very un-scientific however.)
> His question (and one I've had for some
> time) goes to how to handle a 'lifetime
> bank.'
> If I had a BR in hand of $50K, I could set
> up a game plan for that and it might crank
> out a max bet of say $300 and a respective
> ROR of say 1% (I'm guessing about the 1%,
> but you knew that.)
> If I had a known BR, to be collected at the
> rate of $2,000 every two weeks for the next
> twelve and a half months -my 'lifetime bank'
> is also $50K.
> If I said my ROR is 1% on the $2,000
> stipends, I would never get off the ground.
> Obviously if I increased my max bet to $300
> while playing my stipends, chances are
> excellent that the flux wipes me put every
> week I show up to play.
> So the question, how do I calc the optimal
> bet for a series of $2,000 stipends which
> eventually total $50K and keep the same ROR
> as above?
> Hope that to be clear.
Very clear. I think this question more properly belongs on the Theory and Math page of Don's Domain. I've never thought about it before, and, frankly, I've never seen the question asked, either. I don't think it has a trivial, or intuitive, answer.
The reason is that the correct way to play clearly lies in between playing each week just as if your bank were no more than the money you actually have at the time (too conservative) and playing as if you had all the future, promised, money right now (too risky). The right answer is not apparent to me, so I'll try to give it some thought.
Don
> Very clear. I think this question more
> properly belongs on the Theory and Math page
> of Don's Domain. I've never thought about it
> before, and, frankly, I've never seen the
> question asked, either. I don't think it has
> a trivial, or intuitive, answer.
> The reason is that the correct way to play
> clearly lies in between playing each week
> just as if your bank were no more than the
> money you actually have at the time (too
> conservative) and playing as if you had all
> the future, promised, money right now (too
> risky). The right answer is not apparent to
> me, so I'll try to give it some thought.
> Don
This came up years ago in the context of "computer chess" and how to use the available time to optimize the program's playing skill.
The basic problem is this... a program (or human for that matter) is given a fixed amount of time to make a fixed number of moves. While he is thinking, his clock runs (if you have ever played or watched a real chess game you will know what I mean). So a simple idea is to divide your time evenly. A normal tournament game might be 40 moves in 2 hours, or 3 minutes per move on average. Easy enough.
But now for the complication. The program is free to "ponder" (think) while waiting on the opponent to move, and if the opponent thinks a long time and makes the move the program expected, the program will have a move ready to play and won't burn any of it's time off the clock. IE saving time.
Now, how to use that time? Do you wait until you save it before you use it, and then just add it to the total remaining and divide by the number of moves left? Too conservative as you get near the end of the playing session (40 moves) with a _lot_ of time left on your clock, shouldn't you have used some of that time on critical decisions, when they arose, rather than waiting until probably the game is already decided (most chess games are technically over by move 40 even if they last much longer).
So, a more aggressive idea (which my program has always used) is to say "OK, I know I will save some time later, so I'm going to go ahead and use some of it before I have saved it, when circumstances make that worthwhile."
So I can't really use it _all_ before I save it, because I don't know how much I will end up saving, but then again, I also don't want to wait until saving it before using it or that might be too late.
Seems very similar to this exact question... We answered the question by playing thousands of chess games (a sort of simulation) to see in the "typical" game how much time we might save due to this effect. Then we went back and modified the time allocation to use that time earlier in the game where it might help us find a winning move or avoid a losing move. And we fiddled with that tweaking for a couple of years off and on until it seemed to hit a "smooth point". Yes, it won't always work right. Sometimes we save way more time than normal, and end up with extra time that isn't going to help much because it would have been better had we used it earlier. Other times we don't save as much as expected, and we end up being behind on time and then have to allocate less time than normal per move to avoid overstepping the time control.
That _really_ sounds like an analogy to this question, IMHO. Too aggressive and you go bankrupt during each session (run out of time and lose a game in chess parlance). Too conservative and you end up too much saved up time, or in the case of BJ with a betting schedule that could have been adjusted upward to provide more profit...
food for thought...
Only difference here is that he knows how much "time" he will save every week because he knows how much additional money he will have coming in to his bankroll, something that I don't know in chess until after the fact...
> Only difference here is that he knows how
> much "time" he will save every
> week because he knows how much additional
> money he will have coming in to his
> bankroll, something that I don't know in
> chess until after the fact...
I have no doubt that the BJ problem is quite solvable, as it is posed. I just don't know the right answer at the moment.
There is actually a kind of related problem that Johnny Chang asked me about and that he hadn't yet solved. It concerned having a large bank at home and bringing only a portion of it with you on a trip. The question is: How do you play on that trip? As if you had just the money that's with you (too conservative), or as if you really had all the rest of the money, but which you can't access on this trip (too risky)?
The answer is clearly a function of how long the trip is going to last. If it's very short, you play just about as if you had all the money with you, because, should you tap out, you once again have access to the full bank rather quickly. But, suppose the trip is going to last a year? Then, clearly, you have to play as if the money that's with you is all the money that you have, because you can't afford to tap out and not be able to play for so long a period of time.
So, the question is: How do you play for intermediate periods of time, such as, say, two weeks or a month? Again, I don't know the answer right now.
Don
> The answer is clearly a function of how long
> the trip is going to last. If it's very
> short, you play just about as if you had all
> the money with you, because, should you tap
> out, you once again have access to the full
> bank rather quickly. But, suppose the trip
> is going to last a year? Then, clearly, you
> have to play as if the money that's with you
> is all the money that you have, because you
> can't afford to tap out and not be able to
> play for so long a period of time.
So it's really just a convenience thing. Mathematically, whether or not you have all of your bank at any given time will make zero difference as long it's there (or will be there, as in the original scenario), right?
> So it's really just a convenience thing.
No, you didn't read carefully.
> Mathematically, whether or not you have all
> of your bank at any given time will make
> zero difference as long it's there (or will
> be there, as in the original scenario),
> right?
Not if it isn't available to you on a trip and you run out of money, thereby losing opportunity because you can't play anymore.
Don
So if you were getting chunks of $2,000 every day for 25 days, you'd be safe in playing, right off the bat, as if you had a $50K BR.
But if you were getting $2,000 every other week for 50 weeks, you'd want to play more conservatively in order to decrease your chances of tapping out, thereby increasing your chances of getting in more play time before your next $2,000 chunk comes in. And the quandary is finding the optimal ev vs. play time tradeoff.
Is that right?
> So if you were getting chunks of $2,000
> every day for 25 days, you'd be safe in
> playing, right off the bat, as if you had a
> $50K BR.
Well, not exactly, because, if you bet at the $50,000 level, with only $2,000, you'd be tapping out all the time, without getting a fair run with your $2,000.
> But if you were getting $2,000 every other
> week for 50 weeks, you'd want to play more
> conservatively in order to decrease your
> chances of tapping out, thereby increasing
> your chances of getting in more play time
> before your next $2,000 chunk comes in. And
> the quandary is finding the optimal ev vs.
> play time tradeoff.
> Is that right?
Yes, exactly.
Don
> Well, not exactly, because, if you bet at
> the $50,000 level, with only $2,000, you'd
> be tapping out all the time, without getting
> a fair run with your $2,000.
If you had the entire $50K BR, wouldn't your session banks be around $2,000 anyway? If so, what's the difference between that and getting 2 grand everyday?
> If you had the entire $50K BR, wouldn't your
> session banks be around $2,000 anyway? If
> so, what's the difference between that and
> getting 2 grand everyday?
Once you blow 2 grand you are out until you get more money. If you blow 2 grand and the shoe is still hot, and you have money, you continue playing... But for this particular thread, when you blow your 2 grand, you stop playing for a while, which probably means the trip is cut short...
This is an interesting problem, but not one I care about as I'm not sure I'd be in that particular situation often enough. I take with me what I plan to play with and win/lose/draw. If I hit a bad run, I often quit in disgust, but that doesn't mean the bad run won't continue at the next table... But it does feel good to leave.
Most new counters seem to understand everything _but_ the variance. Yet that is the most important concept to keep in mind, otherwise you might end up with a bullet in your head when you play a sure-fire game and still lose badly for a session or several.
First time my son went with me as a sort of "team" deal, he got really aggravated with me giving me the "I thought you said we would win" argument. I finally got him to understand the concept of N0, the long term, and short-term variance. He still winces, but he understands that we will get it back at some point. So long as you don't go broke first... then you have to quit of course.
> Most new counters seem to understand
> everything _but_ the variance. Yet that is
> the most important concept to keep in mind,
> otherwise you might end up with a bullet in
> your head when you play a sure-fire game and
> still lose badly for a session or several.
>
If you're referring to me, what in the world gave you the idea that I don't understand variance? Variance isn't the issue here, anyway, because ROR is the same in all these cases (no matter how you split up your $50K BR); the issue is reduced hours of play (which is caused by variance, but again, it's not the variance itself that hurts you, it's the reduced play time).
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