"The Cards Owe Me" vs. The Long Run...
Imagine that, after playing Blackjack perfectly for a long playing session, John suffers a large loss.
John now thinks to himself, "Boy, the cards REALLY owe me in the future!"...
I read somewhere that way of thinking is BS. That the cards never "owe you"...but that in the long run variance will even itself out. Well isn't that basically the same thing?
Two things can be said and both are equally accurate.Originally Posted by Mickey
1) Your expectation from that point on will be the the same for the next long run hands as if you didn't loss any money so you will expect to be that much more behind that point.
2) After the long run number of hands from before you had the big downswing you should approach expectation.
These statements seem contradictory but both are equally true but nothing is owed to you.
In the BS scenario where the cards "owe" John, John would recklessly over bet his bankroll, since now he believes he knows in advance the window of time where variance is going to swing his way. John would be wrong. John risks blowing up his bank roll and going out of business.
In the scenario where John channels his inner Spock, John prudently sticks to Kelly betting (less than full Kelly) and may have to size his bets downward if the large loss took a big chunk out of his bankroll. By using the Kelly criterion, John should be almost impervious to going out of business.
Read this page and you will understand. http://beyondnumbers.lvablog.com/201...e-due-happens/
I like to think about it this way, if you're indeed playing with an edge the EV is always accumulating. It's actual deposit into your bankroll may be delayed by negative flux but eventually a positive flux will bring it (or most of it) home. Now in reality it's always better to have strong positive flux up front and most really successful gamblers tend to have had good luck in the beginning and then never look back. That said, knowing if your playing +EV eventually as the sample size gets larger and larger your actual win will begin to approach your EV should make you feel better provided you don't bust out due to overbetting or steaming.
This is a really interesting statement, bigplayer, can you elaborate on this? Along the same lines, do you think many who started out un-'lucky', gave up early and never realized what could have been? Are you one that had good 'luck' early, BP?
I did not have good luck at the beginning of my BJ career, but I I believed in the math and I had a replenishable bankroll and a full time job. So I think faith, commitment, and persistence helped get me through the learning curve, but I couldn't have done that without the replenishable bankroll.
I would guess he's saying that most succesful gamblers had good luck because most of them probably started playing not being properly bankrolled.
Odds of breaking were big (or bigger than most people feel comfortable with), they hit a positive run right off the start and then suddenly find themselves with a br that allows them to play properly.
Makes a lot of sense... most posters here have BR issues.
Some of the most regular posters dont even play because they dont have the money for it.
Im also part of another AP community (not BJ) and the situation is the same.
Over there at least 90% of the posters still dont have the proper BR to play.
I agree with Bjarg. I had some bad luck early in my serious play. I was still fortunate to have a nice win right before or after the big loss or both. Looking back considering the swings I see now I could have very easily busted my BR had a run of bad sessions hit. I have had some long runs of hard luck and some very deep but short runs since then. I just took each set back early in my serious play to sharpen and tighten up my game. That made me a better player but still as a better player I have had many bad runs that would have wiped my BR out earlier in my endeavor. It was an unbelievable run of good fortune when I invented my own count for a game I play that made my BR more swing resistant. I had several months of sessions that I just killed the casinos as soon as O started using it. I started to think I couldn't lose. I had taken $800 out of my BR to give my system a whirl. In the 2 months I ran the $800 into almost $20K being very conservative. I wish that lasted but alas reality is not that easy but I still continued to grow my BR over the last year since then. At least now I have the BR to withstand the crazy swings of this game. After hitting $40K (from the $800 while still having my original BR tucked away separate from that amount) and upping my spread I had 2 trips that lost 1/3rd of my BR causing drawdown to my previous spread level. Needless to say getting it back took a lot longer.
My experience was quite the opposite. So much so that Binion's Horseshoe (yes, that long ago) put me on flat bet and the Golden Nugget put me on "other games only" basis.
Not long after, I faced the reality of bad variance and thankfully was smart enough to keep my real job throughout.
I still work and AP on a part time basis. That has worked well enough for me that I would strongly recommend it to the new guys and gals that are just starting out. Unless you're bankrolled much better than I ever was, the income from a real job is your safety valve.
I was thinking about this during my morning swim. I started out very underfunded, playing $5 and $10 tables and it took till the end of my third year before I finally hit really strong positive flux and was able to grow my bankroll a bit and start playing just a little higher level.
I used to think this was sort of bad luck that it took that long. But I now know that I really had incredibly good luck each and every one of those days that I didn't bust out, especially since I was taking little amounts of money along the way for my meager living expenses. So I was very lucky that whole first 3 year run, just didn't know it.
I do believe that the very mediocre games that I was playing with very mediocre penetration actually worked to my advantage. Mediocre penetration meant, less really high counts, which meant it was less likely to string together a bunch of wins or losses at these high counts with top wager out. I think this creates a smaller win rate, but also a less volatility, a smoother ride with a smaller win rate, which unknowingly, really benefitted me at the time.It other words, just dumb luck.
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