longest period of negative variance

[tezzadiver]

I`m currently hitting 130 hours. Thank god there are still some good online bonuses to grind though which makes up slightly for this period of losing... Anyone hit a period like this before? Input appreciated.

[tezzadiver]

Not at a live game. I win about 70% of my sessions. If I play about 4 hour sessions you are talking about 33 sessions in a row being in that 30% frequency were I lose. This is either statistically improbable to understate things or you don't know how to cash out a winner and need to learn money management skills. I don't trust electronic blackjack so I can't speak to what you should expect there.

Let me rephrase. I am currently on a losing streak which has continued for 130 hrs. There have been scattered intermittent winning sessions but I am running way below EV for this period.

And I don`t need any lessons from you concerning money management, or need to learn money management skills. I do not play electronic blackjack only live- I just clarified that I do make some income from online bonus abuse. The 130 hrs relates to straight counting and the game of blackjack.


Yes I normally win 2/3 of my sessions but am having a extended losing streak at the moment, which is far from statistically impossible. All I would like to hear from people that have been in the same situation and for how long their long term period has extended for. I have a total of approx 500 + playing hours and it is the first time I have encountered such a streak, which for such a timespan, to me is quite significant.

[bigplayer]

I've had very long stretches of positive and negative variance. Periods of seemingly non-stop negative variance can easily last 300-400 hours. I have one friend who during a very aggressive phase of his career mostly spreading $25 to 2x$500 on good ruled shoes around Vegas in the early 1990's went several years substantially below EV just barely winning enough to survive despite playing 1000 hours a year always seemingly hitting another disasterous losing streak wiping out most of his gains before finally after several years of this before his results caught up to his EV over a period of just a few months.

If you know you're playing a winning game and are properly bankrolled just think of everything in terms of the EV that you are accumulating. If you keep grinding out the hours eventually the EV will come rolling in, but if N0 is 19,000 rounds it can easily take 10x that before your conservatively estimated EV and your actual win are within range of each other. (The thinner your edge the longer it takes for the signal to overcome the noise). Your solution is to find bigger edges via better games or more advanced techniques and the EV will show through the variance much quicker.

[Lowrider]

I had a losing streak that lasted about 125 hours...but that was nothing comped to the fact that I had my two worst session losses of my career in consecutive sessions...I almost quit...

[21forme]

I didn't lose a session in Jan and Feb this year. In March, I barely won one.

Think of the graph of hours vs. EV as an upsloping line - It's rare for you to be right on the line. You're either above it, coming down, or below it, going up.

[paymypush]

I play about 20 hours a week and have gone through worse than this many times. If the games you're playing haven't changed and you are doing the same things you were when you were winning, then I wouldn't worry about it. This bump in the road will smooth itself out.

[soytari]

to give you an idea,
a few weeks ago i played a game with player advantage off the top (house edge is 0.27 but there is extra double rule) i played about six days about 12 hours a day spreading 1*25 to 2*500 there was almost no heat.
my total result was 0, i was once down about 100 max bets i was only up 10 max bets. i had to stop cause i was dead tired.
but there are weeks where i only play 2-3 hours and i win so much that i dont need play anymore . you never know when variance will turn back. the answer my friend lies in the long run.

[zerg]

I am at about 600 hours. During a lot of that time I was up but the last 40 hours have been terrible and brought me way back down. I won about 3 of the last 30 sessions, most in high edge situations. Highlights include:
Dealer 21 at TC 9 after splitting/doubling to 5 extra big bets (77 VS dealer 5.)
Losing 10 next card known bets in a row (one pushed, 2 incorrect bets.)
Losing 120 bets in the best double exposure game I have ever seen (not blackjack.)

I am tapping our for awhile, or at least done grinding. Bankroll is in shambles. Considering a reload, but taking money out of the house seems questionable.

I have one other thing to add. If you are building a bankroll and increasing your bets, it is more likely that you will have losing streaks of many hours. This is because the more recent bigger bets can easily wipe out many hours of winning at lower levels.

[stopgambling]

so sad,Even after a few thousand hours ,one can be barely survive while playing a good game.I would not want to see myself after 1000 hours of play with 25% bankroll left .Wish i have 4-5 buddies to make things playable!

[Renzey]

The best thing I can advise to give you a feel for just how volatile and risky this game is, is to read "A Random Walk Down the Strip" fron Don Schlesinger's Blackjack Attack III. In short, five guys, all using Hi/Lo, all playing 400 hours each for the year, all playing the same good game, all using the same adequate spread were simmed. No two players came out with the same result. The worst guy lost 35k -- the best won 260k in the same game, same system, same hours.
A sixth player was added -- him playing the superior Hi-Opt II count for his own 400 hours. He won 97k.

The experiment was continued out to five years total -- 2000 hours for each player. Best guy won 1 million -- worst won 337k.

What did it all show? If you play 2000 hours, you may still come out substantially above or below your true EV, thru no fault or credit of your own!

[Anton Chigurh]

I was down through the first 150 hours of my career.

It is interesting to see the role that monster shoes play in our overall results. I can think of three great shoes - the type where the dealer has to color up blacks into purples to keep paying you - that together constitute my entire winnings over a few hundred hours so far. The edge is that thin.

[Gamblor]

Its usually those nights when I consistently flub on my big double downs and splits that send me reeling.

Really annoying when this happens consistently over several sessions.

LOL then there are those sessions where you just consistently lose and lose and lose

[tezzadiver]

Wow. Some stories here :-(
It is truly a dismal edge we have while counting and I can understand how easy it is is to give up, especially with long term negative variance.

Overall, I`m still up though- even though my hourly sucks.

Sometimes I wonder how the shuffling may affect it though. Maybe its ploppy thinking but there are shoes I can never seem to win- be it spread to 1, 2 or 3 hands. The `house` shuffle. Does anyone have any information on this and how to combat it? Or am I deluding myself into thinking a `house ` shuffle can in fact very much favor the house?