I cannot help but notice when I lose five to seven times in a row. I also cannot help but wonder if upon that 6th to 8th hand (after those losses)... I wonder is there some parallel running probability which says I have better odds to finally win one? Can this translate into EV? Is it quantifiable and thus usable in the game?
this might have been addressed somewhere in BJA3, if so, sorry, i haven't made it there yet.
thanks
A
John Patrick and all sorts of other lunatics have written a number of books on the subject. This is ploppy nonsense.
Probably someone can give you the odds on a 8 hand streak but it does not really effect the next hand.
I think my longest streak was 16 in a row. Someone once mentioned that if you played 24 hours straight, that some time in that period you would probably loose around 10 straight.
It is just the nature (variance) of the beast.
It also has something to do with why many backoffs come while we are loosing. The recreational player will loose a bunch in a row and leave but if the count is positive while we are getting killed, we continue to put our money in that circle.
Victoria
The last time I sat down to play an 8-deck game (H17,no surrender) I lost 6 times and one push before I started to win. After 3 hours I was able to make it (about 10 units ahead). It looks like the long losing streaks happen more on a game using higher number of decks. The bad rule will certainly make the losing streaks last longer and happen more often.
> I cannot help but notice when I lose five to
> seven times in a row.
It looks like the probability of losing 8 hands in a row is around 0.126%. Have a look for yourself:
http://www.bjstats.com/bjsc.asp
> I wonder is there some
> parallel running probability which says I
> have better odds to finally win one?
There is, but it is negligible. It is so small that you could not use this information to gain any advantage.
> Can this translate into EV?
Nope. If the count is negative you will be giving away a certain percentage of your money. If it is positive you will be winning a certain percentage in the long run. That's all there is to it.
> Is it quantifiable and thus usable in the game?
Nope, there is absolutely no way to accurately predict streaks in Blackjack. You must KNOW what cards are coming and what cards have gone in order to know what to expect. Anything else is just useless guessing. Why do you think that there are no message boards like this for John Patrick, Jerry Patterson, Bobby Singer, of any of the other Blackjack con men? Could it be because all of their players are broke and pissed off?
-Sonny-
P.S.- Leave the guessing and streak prediction to the people who play Roulette and switch their bet to black after red has come up 3 times in a row.
> P.S.- Leave the guessing and streak
> prediction to the people who play Roulette
> and switch their bet to black after red has
> come up 3 times in a row.
Interesting thought not original with me; if red kept coming up, and I did play roulette, why switch to black!? Maybe it' a gimpy wheel!!!
> It looks like the probability of losing 8
> hands in a row is around 0.126%. Have a look
> for yourself:
> http://www.bjstats.com/bjsc.asp
Such a statistic is entirely dependent on how many hands are being played. You don't seem to indicate that in bjstats. Did I miss something?
Don
At the bottom left of every table there is a link to the sim details. Also there is some additional info on the main page.
> > It looks like the probability of losing 8
> > hands in a row is around 0.126%.
> Such a statistic is entirely dependent on
> how many hands are being played.
How so?
> How so?
You're looking for streaks of losing eight hands in a row. Suppose I play only eight hands. Then, I have to lose all eight of them. Since pushes don't count, we lose about 52.5% of resolved hands. Losing eight in a row is (0.525)^8 = 0.00577 = 0.577%.
So, I don't understand the 0.125% (too low) being offered as the correct answer.
Furthermore, when people ask about streaks, they rarely mean losing, say, eight hands right off the bat and stopping. They usually define a period of time over which they play, and then they wonder what the chances were of having lost eight in a row, given that they played, say, 100 hands, or 400 hands, or whatever. That is a much more complicated formula and is harder to calculate. And, of course, the answer is higher than 0.577% and depends on how many hands we play.
In any event, if you play forever, you're almost certain to lose eight in a row, right? So, asking what the chances are of losing eight in a row -- in a vacuum -- really doesn't make a lot of sense.
Don
> You're looking for streaks of losing eight
> hands in a row. Suppose I play only eight
> hands. Then, I have to lose all eight of
> them. Since pushes don't count, we lose
> about 52.5% of resolved hands. Losing eight
> in a row is (0.525)^8 = 0.00577 = 0.577%.
> So, I don't understand the 0.125% (too low)
> being offered as the correct answer.
This is the percentage of streaks that are exactly 8 hands in length. Not the chance that you will get an 8 hand streak.
> I cannot help but notice when I lose five to
> seven times in a row. I also cannot help but
> wonder if upon that 6th to 8th hand (after
> those losses)... I wonder is there some
> parallel running probability which says I
> have better odds to finally win one? Can
> this translate into EV? Is it quantifiable
> and thus usable in the game?
You have simply hit upon a run of negative flux. Happens all the time to everyone. Last week I sat down at a $10 table and never won a hand in 20 minutes. (Did push twice, though)
What has happened to you in those 6 or 7 rounds has no bearing on what will happen on round 8, 9, or 10. You could win, but, then again, you could continue to lose.
Again, you are in the short-term and the last few hands has no bearing on what happens on the next...EXCEPT... What's more important during a run like this to me, is simply, WHAT'S THE COUNT? If it has hit the stratosphere, I put the big money out, if not, I play the game the way I'm supposed to.
Don't worry about it.
PM
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