A replenishable bankroll is one solution.
No solution for AP because basically casinos have found a very good solution for their AP problem.Originally Posted by Cloudstreets7087
You need 100 max bet bankroll. So the novice AP should first save $8000, then find a $5 table. Play $5 to $80 spread until the bankroll grows to $16,000, then switch to $10 table. The shortcut is to Wong in/Wong out but only if you have a lot of casinos nearby so they don't know you are Wonging.
Nope...
I started with $1000 total to go play with. But I knew that I could put $250.00 a week toward my game. I played off that $1000 each session. If I lost I would replenish my bankroll at a rate of $250.00 a week. Should I loose my entire session bankroll I knew that I was at most 4 weeks out from being back to the $1000 session bankroll I had. For the basis of calculating my bet ramp I simply figured (52 x 250) and then just rounded it all down to $10k. In cases where I lost all my $1000 session bankroll I just waited a month to replenish and practiced hard during the "down" time.
I think those that grew their BR from a small BR without adding to it would say luck has more to do with it than anything. For me I went through some cycles of thinking I was cresting the BR hill to going back to what I started with. Each time I studied more and figured ways to improve my game and smooth the ride to long run EV. I changed the way I did all the math so I never had to convert the count to a TC. I instead converted the index or betting boundaries to the RC at the current pen. I learned risk aversion to help with RoR at first and after my BR grew enough to up my bets at the same RoR of the EV maximizing approach to achieve both higher EV and more stable BR growth. I came to realize that the ride's sings were proportionally to certainty which is tied to the width of advantage and decision bell curves. I knew the way to get the bell curves tight was from more advanced counts and counting techniques. I increased my skill at various types of these and incorporated them into my play when I was perfect at using them. It helped a little with EV but mostly smoothed the ride.
After doubling my BR I started to get creative and took $800 and put it toward a new count I had been working on for a trial run. I figured if I was barking up the wrong tree I would only be out $800 and the vast majority of my BR would be safe. My count got off to a flying start. I got really lucky with big loses being sandwiched betwee big wins and had 6 months of exceptional performance. My experimental BR was now larger tan my doubled BR. But then after 8 months with the trial run my luck ran out I had my first sustained downswing. If it had happened earlier the trial run might have ended before it got going.
Well after working to improve my approach again I started to try to figure a way to better define your advantage. My approach already had a 1.0 BC which is the best for a linear approach. That meant I had to go non-linear in my use of data. Luckily I had met a great AP who had shared a boatload about his non-linear approach because unlike most linear counters I understood immediately the gains from the non-linear approach. Most of what this friend of mine did in a non-linear approach was geared toward playing more accurately. His playing decision advantage bell curves were extremely tight but I was trying to use a non-linear approach for betting. I was trying to get a more accurate ace adjustment because the value of the ace can get squishy when the deck gets out of whack. Anyway I started this crazy idea of how to weight the ace by some info gathered about ceck composition so I could bet more accurately than 1.0 BC of the ace having a constant weight associated with the tag.
On the way to this point I had an even more impressive run of good results and upped my bets. Then the worst thing that can happen occurred. I had a bad downswing immediately at the new bet and was forced to change back to the old bet ramp before the worm turned.
Basically I have 2 points to the story. 1 is it comes down to luck in the short run and playing on a short BR the short run can kill you. My second point is you can try to make good luck more likely by doing everything you can to make the sustained downswing less likely. Usually these same things increase your EV. Once you get that huge BR or join a team that effectively does the same thing to your playing BR you may see these gains as hardly worth anything but if your success is tied heavily to the short run every step you take to tighten up those advantage bell curves around either your count or your plays will mean a lot toward surviving that high RoR in the short run. If you get lucky and grow your BR that short run becomes less of a factor. Eventually you won't worry about it much at all if you are successful enough. The first thing is to eliminate the places that are likely to cause mistakes. Mistakes can kill a small BR. Then play the best approach you can with no mistakes. You can go from needing a lot of luck to needing a little less luck in order to grow your BR enough. But no matter what growing a BR from something small requires luck. The question is how much luck and the answer depends on what you do.
Never play an approach you can't do perfectly. Try to develop new skills until you can do them perfectly. Study, study, study and practice, practice, practice. Your best approach is the best approach you can do perfectly.
Last edited by Three; 04-22-2015 at 07:09 PM.
What are your thoughts on the blackjack sims online or for tablets? I have what I think is a really good one. It's called 21 sim and I think its only for ipad. What I love about it is that it uses a 6 deck shoe. Most things you find online continuously shuffle. Also, you don't have to play just one on one against the dealer. You can turn on other CPU players at the table to simulate other people playing. You can even simulate walking away from the table and let the CPU take over your seat and run out the shoe. It also has a running and true count at the top of the screen. it's in a small font. So, it's easy to practice your own count and you can always look if you want to check, but I never do anymore. Also, if you manage to bust out, you can just replenish your chips. You don't have to "Buy" them like a lot of apps do. Anyone heard of this app? 21 Sim.
the 0.5-1% is an average advantage with play-all which includes your bets at a negative advantage. Your advantage for a particular true count may be higher. You will also be betting more at these higher advantages. 1% may not seem like much, but that's just for a single hand, not annually, not hourly. If you receive 100 hands per hour, it's really quite a lot. Casinos work on the same principles.
Hi, Cloud!
I really enjoyed reading your post! Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts to date. I agree with your points. Knowing and believing the math will help eliminate emotion and that is a big help when the 'chips' are down. Learning about N0 helped me feel more confident.
The 'progression betting' idea is something I first read about in Arnold Snyder's book, "Black Belt in BJ" on p.204 where he describes what you do for the same reasons you said.
But, it's interesting you think the local Casino doesn't care about counting. I'm curious why you think they don't care and why you, nevertheless, bother to use the betting cover if you think they don't care. Sorry, if I misunderstood your post, I'm just trying to understand your situation.
Has card counting come up directly and explicitly at the table or do you just get an impression that they don't really care much but you're not willing to push it and be blatant about it or something like that? I'd love to hear more about this. Also, do you play pitch games or shoes and what is your spread on the games you play? If you're willing, I'd love to know the table conditions (rules, penetration, side bets, crowding, etc.), too.
I'm assuming you don't use any other cover schemes (besides 'progression betting') because you feel the Casino doesn't care what you're doing. Is that right? If so, it must be nice!
It sounds as if maybe this is local Casino and you go there a lot. Is that about right? Do you play rated?
I'd enjoy reading more updates as you continue!
Thanks and Good luck to ya!
SiMi
I don't mean for this to sound rude, but if you think they don't seem threatened by you as a counter, it may be because...you don't represent a threat to them at this time. That may change if and when you get better and begin playing correctly. I hope you do improve, as you seem to be on the right track. You're miles ahead of most newbies that show up here. You seem open to constructive criticism and willing to make the necessary changes. So specific comments:
1. Your stack size, buy in amount, number of chips on the table, etc. is completely and 100% irrelevant to how you should play and hand, including whether you should continue playing the remainder of the shoe or leave. The only exception is if buying in again would put you over the CTR threshold (>$10,000). You've mentioned "stack management" and similar ideas a few times. That doesn't exist in blackjack. Counting is a game of large numbers of trials. Based on the count, you either have an advantage on the next hand to be dealt, or you don't. Each possible play (hit/stand/double/split/surrender) has an EV associated with it. One of them is optimal. How much you have in front of you has no bearing on those EVs, so it should have no bearing on your play.
2. You may wish to leave at the end of the shoe or when the count tanks based on your win or loss amount, but this should be because of potential heat issues, not because you've hit some arbitrary threshold that seems like a decent win or loss. We are playing with small advantages. Your long term results are a function of your winrate times the time you spend at the table (or backcounting), subject to "some" variance, of course. Anything you do that limits your time at the table will limit your long term win. If you leave after a $300 win in 15 minutes, you've got a $300 win. If you followed that with another hour of play in a game worth $50/hr, sometimes you win more, sometimes you lose, but on average you'll have $50 more income. It's just time spent times your theoretical winrate. We make our money by exploiting small edges repeatedly. If you take away that repetition by imposing a low win or loss threshold, you will have a long string of results that closely approximate a coinflip and you'll never achieve enough hands to let the edge begin to work. In a typical good game, you need 200 hours of play to have a 5/6 chance of being ahead. It's hard to get there 15 minutes at a time.
3. Bankroll. You seem to think that you should just go for it and hope for the best with whatever bankroll you have because $50000 is not in the cards. Who says you have to be playing to a $500 max bet? You don't size the bankroll to your bets, you size your bets to your bankroll. From the sounds of it, you should probably be playing lower limits, although I don't think you've said what your actual bankroll is. Click on "BJ Resources" at the top of this page, then select "CVCX Online". Select "Hi-Lo, Ill18 & Fab4", set the rules and penetration to match your game, set the risk of ruin to something more reasonable like 5% or less, check "simplify bets", click calculate, and see what bet sizes you should be using. This tool has some limitations, but it's a very good start. For a few more options and more data, consider purchasing CVCX. If you continue to take blackjack seriously, you will need CVCX. In particular, it will let you play around with different backcounting options, which is especially helpful if your local casino doesn't have playable games for less than $25 minimum.
4. Progression in neutral or negative counts. There is a place and a time for this, but generally only when using a fairly aggressive spread. It does have a cost. Even if the edge is 0%, betting more increases variance, which is something we want to avoid. I strongly suggest eliminating this play from your arsenal until you *do* have that $50k+ bankroll. Think about it this way...generally you only want to be playing around with progressions or other betting cover on your small bets in situations where even if the higher bet were actually your minimum, you'd still have a healthy spread. In essence, this move is a method to get your minimum bet down even lower. You aren't so much taking a $25 min and betting $50 sometimes as you are using a $50 min and sometimes getting it down to $25, when spreading from $50-xxx would still be a solid spread. You're taking a $50-800 spread and turning into $25-800 sometimes, for example. Not betting $50 on occasion when otherwise you are spreading $25-300. I know I'm not expressing this very clearly, but short version is stop doing this.
5. Optimal betting. I'm not going to go deep into the theory here, but I'll give you a quick overview. On any particular favorable bet available to you, the correct bet to make is the one that maximizes your utility. Generally, this means you should bet an amount equal to Bankroll * Edge / Variance. There's plenty of literature you can read on this (search Kelly betting). You know your bankroll. Edge varies by true count, but you can find these numbers using CVCX Online or a variety of other sources. Variance for blackjack will generally be around 1.3-1.35, but can also be found by count using CVCX Online (it's Standard Deviation squared). So at any given time, bankroll is relatively constant. Variance is more or less constant. The one factor that moves around quite a bit is the edge. This means your bets should be proportional to the edge. In an ideal world, you would bet nothing unless you had the advantage, then you would be exactly proportional to your edge no matter how high the true count got, but that starts to stand out pretty quickly, so we artificially limit our bet spread so we can continue to play without detection for as long as possible. You can easily hand calculate your optimal bet at each true count, but it's much easier to let CVCX do it for you. But once you do, stick to those bet sizes and don't deviate from them based on your stack size or current buy in total, and don't quit playing in the middle of a favorable count.
6. Optimal play. You state that you will lose money with basic strategy at high counts. This is not true. If you play perfect basic strategy on every hand, but spread your bets aggressively based on the count, you will still have a nice advantage. On a shoe game, this will capture something like 80% of the total winrate you could achieve by counting. You can get most of the other 20% with a handful of index plays. While it is best to play certain hands differently based on the count, sticking to basic strategy only will still win money.
7. Don't post specific identifying info online. You are posting enough info that could easily identify you if the wrong casino employee happened to be a member here.
There are several books you could read that would likely help you, but I'd suggest starting with Norm's free book, Modern Blackjack, also found under "BJ Resources" at the top of this page. It's a fantastic book that covers all of the basics in detail, supported by many, many detailed simulations. As an engineer, you should get a lot out of it. And you can't beat the price
Best of luck to you.
Nyne, wonderful post. I know I could probably look it up but if one plays Min. $25 games, with a max bet of $125-150, and a BR of $35k., what changes should a person make? Play min. $50 games or increase top bet to $300? My mental issues often come up. For instance, I am playing $25 min, DD game and the count hovers around neutral for several shuffles and after 45 minutes, I am up, say $200, and then the count moves up to TC4, I bet $200, lose, count remains at TC4, bet $200 again. Split 8s', double one against a 7 card and I have now $600 on table, lose hand. So, after winning for 45 minutes, in a few seconds, I am in the hole for $800. I understand intellectually that it's just variance but it affects me and the next high count, I am betting $100 instead of $200 which is again a silly thing to do. Working on becoming mentally stronger.
ZeeBabar, you may not like my answer, but the best way to answer these questions by far is to use Norm's software. I haven't been following the forums as closely as I used to, so perhaps I missed something, but last I knew, you did not own CVCX. It really is a necessary tool. You can compare the winrate (and more importantly, the CE/hr) for each game or betting strategy you are considering and it will tell you immediately which is better. If this increases your winrate by even $1/hr, it's paid for itself in 90 hours. You really can't afford not to have it.
As far as your betting issue, I don't have a lot to offer here. Simply knowing a play is optimal for my bankroll and chosen Kelly fraction is enough for me. If you have trouble with that, perhaps using a slightly smaller Kelly fraction will give you the confidence to make the correct bet every time since the overall size of the bankroll swings will be reduced. I would suggest not doubling your bet sizes though until you figure out what it takes for you to make the correct bet every hand. Doubling the size of the swings won't help that mental process along.
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