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Thread: At what point is a cash back rebate good?

  1. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dbs6582 View Post
    The second quote comes from a thread where we’re talking about someone winning like Don Johnson (where he wasn’t playing with an advantage).
    He was playing with a much much bigger advantage than a counter. Counters get but a minimal advantage. If you think he wasn't doing lots of things to get an advantage over the rebate you don't understand what he did at all. He just pretty much flat bet. If you understand BJ you know there are a lot of things that can give you the advantage while flat betting. He was doing what he could to maximize them all. Plus there was the rebate so he didn't need much extra. What made him great was he figured out how to get away with it for as long as he did.

  2. #28


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    Quote Originally Posted by Sharky View Post
    so let me get this right....casinos are in business to make $$$, yet your business sense says they "like winners"...hmmmm.....this may be ever more ground breaking then your "fixed demand" theories...this may be really be noble worthy...please expand...
    Sharky, I just explained it to you in my previous post. Please reread it. If it doesn’t make sense to you then this concept might be over your head. Here’s it in a nutshell. Casinos need occasional winners to stay in business. If nobody ever won at a casino nobody would go to a casino and casinos would go out of business (I hope you were able to follow that). Casinos don’t mind if someone wins as long as they are playing in a negative EV way. If they’re doing that, then they will be a positive EV customer for the casino in the long run. If this didn’t make sense to you, it’s probably better for you to just forget about it and move onto something else.

  3. #29


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    I wonder how many hands of blackjack are dealt worldwide in a single day. I'd imagine someone somewhere winning 41 consecutive hands would have happened in all of our lifetimes. To say its impossible in 100 lifetimes would be like stating with absolute certainty that it is mathematically impossible for someone to ever win a lottery jackpot.
    Last edited by angle_sh00ter; 08-19-2018 at 10:12 PM.

  4. #30


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    Quote Originally Posted by Three View Post
    He was playing with a much much bigger advantage than a counter. Counters get but a minimal advantage. If you think he wasn't doing lots of things to get an advantage over the rebate you don't understand what he did at all. He just pretty much flat bet. If you understand BJ you know there are a lot of things that can give you the advantage while flat betting. He was doing what he could to maximize them all. Plus there was the rebate so he didn't need much extra. What made him great was he figured out how to get away with it for as long as he did.
    Three, I agree with on flat betting. Don was flat betting most the time during his big win at the Tropicana, and during many of his big loses. And Don did experience some big loses during this time playing the same way. You don’t see much press about these losses. Why? Because casinos don’t want you to know about those. Casinos only want people to know about their winners. It’s why they put up pictures of slot winners in their casinos. Have you ever seen a picture of a person who has lost several thousand on slots in a casino? I know I haven’t. That’s why I call Don Johnson the slot winner poster child for whales.

    You need to listen to some of Don’s Interviews. GWAE has two of them, and Colin recently did an excellent interview with Don on BJA. Don has said casinos aren’t ATMs; Don has said he had a lots of losing sessions during this time; Don has said he’s not made of Kevilar; Don has admitted the press didn’t report on all his losses. If Don had some magic winning formula, he wouldn’t have taken all these big losses.

    And you’re wrong about these attractive loss rebates going on a long time...they did not last long. After Don’s big win at the Tropicana, they took away his loss rebate, but he was still allowed to come back and play, as long as he played like he did during this big win. The Tropicana knew it’d only be a matter of time before he gave it all back.

    Once Don’s loss rebates were taken away, it appears this is when he started trying some AP plays, and this is when he travelled with his entourage. What few people know is this part of his bj career did not go well. Casinos spotted this right away and he got the boot. That’s why he’s barred from so many casinos today.

  5. #31


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    Quote Originally Posted by angle_sh00ter View Post
    I wonder how many hands of blackjack are dealt worldwide in a single day. I'd imagine someone somewhere winning 41 consecutive hands would have happened in all of our lifetimes. To say its impossible in 100 lifetimes would be like stating with absolute certainty that it is mathematically impossible for someone to ever win a lottery jackpot.
    angle_sh00ter,

    Let's give this a shot. Say the world has 10,000 (or 1E4 in scientific notation) BJ tables, that each has 5 players playing 1E2 (or 100) rounds per hour for 10 hours per day. By the way, I'm making up these numbers and intentionally inflating them.

    Multiplying gives us 5E7 hands of BJ played by players each day in the world.

    Now if (according to Don) the odds of winning 41 consecutive hands is 1 in 18E12 (18 trillion), then it should occur on average once every

    (18E12 hands/streak)/(5E7 hands/day) = 3.6E5 days/streak

    or roughly once every 1000 years, so if you are Methuselah you've got a chance of seeing it in your lifetime ;-)

    Now I seriously doubt that the world has averaged 5E7 hands/day over the last 1000 years (BJ itself hasn't been around anywhere near that long: David G. Schwartz in "Roll the Bones" states that BJ was developed in France in the mid-18th Century), so in fact the world has yet to see anywhere close to 18 trillion hands of BJ played.

    By the way, according to Wikipedia, the Powerball odds are 1 in 292,201,338 of winning a jackpot per play: 3E8 << 1E18.

    Hope this helps!

    Dog Hand

  6. #32


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    Also from Wikipedia:

    Trillion
    Trillion may refer to:

    Numbers
    Trillion (short scale) (1,000,000,000,000; one million million; 1012; SI prefix: tera-), the current meaning in both American and British English


    Trillion (long scale) (1,000,000,000,000,000,000; one million million million; 1018; SI prefix: exa-), the former meaning in British English and the current use in many non-English-speaking countries
    Other

  7. #33


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    In any case I'm not sure how anyone could ballpark the number of hands of blackjack played in the history of the game to even within the nearest 100 billion without at least citing some source of data. I know in my local casino there are well over 100 blackjack tables and according to a 2011 gaming industry report there were 3400 commercial casinos worldwide. I'd say the 50,000,000 daily hands per day estimate is grossly innacurate

  8. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sharky View Post
    ah contraire mon ami....you say "everyone who wins is a threat", yet "casinos like winners"....please expand on where you got your business acumen???
    Casinos like to project the illusion that everyone can be a big winner. Look at the photos on the walls of all the "winners" and their jackpot checks.

  9. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dbs6582 View Post
    You need to listen to some of Don’s Interviews. GWAE has two of them, and Colin recently did an excellent interview with Don on BJA
    Don has the sense to not reveal anything that is not known. Most of what he was doing is not public knowledge. Creative thinkers can figure out most of them if they understand all the ways to get advantage in BJ. Just think about what you see happen when playing BJ that would help a clueless ploppy have a higher theoretical than the HE for a BS player without him understanding what was going on. He thought about all this in advance and crafted a deal that maximized what he could do and did what he and his entourage could do to facilitate maximizing every one of those things. Doing this he was very effective at flat betting and getting a nice edge anyway. Then you throw in the rebate and he is really cooking. If anyone thinks this vague statement reveals too much I will take it down.

    (End of post deleted)
    Last edited by Three; 08-20-2018 at 09:04 AM.

  10. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dog Hand View Post
    Let's give this a shot. Say the world has 10,000 (or 1E4 in scientific notation) BJ tables, that each has 5 players playing 1E2 (or 100) rounds per hour for 10 hours per day. By the way, I'm making up these numbers and intentionally inflating them.

    Multiplying gives us 5E7 hands of BJ played by players each day in the world.

    Now if (according to Don) the odds of winning 41 consecutive hands is 1 in 18E12 (18 trillion), then it should occur on average once every

    (18E12 hands/streak)/(5E7 hands/day) = 3.6E5 days/streak

    or roughly once every 1000 years, so if you are Methuselah you've got a chance of seeing it in your lifetime ;-)
    The math really doesn't work that way for rare things. What is the n0? You can't expect things to get close to what is expected until you play through your n0 many many times, maybe hundreds of times. For the win streak frequency there will be relative clumps and droughts. That 1000 year sampling may contain no instances or many. Looking at smaller samplings than a huge multiple of n0 is an insufficient sampling and could show anything from extrapolating the insignificant sampling of actual results. The extreme example is it happens on the first and only hand in the sampling. That is not likely but it is as likely as it happening on any other hand. But like I said before, DonS's data was enough to cry BS on any accuracy being contained in the article despite the fact that it could have happened.

  11. #37


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    Hey, I thought of a good exmple to show everybody how casinos are okay with big winnners as long as they play bj in a negative EV way...bascially as long as they get lucky. This story is similar to the Don Johnson's story. It's about Kerry Packer, a famous very wealthy Aussie billionare (I think he was the weathiest Aussie in his day). In 1991, Kerry Packer won $ 7 million playing blackjack in one night at the Las Vegas Hilton casino. Taking inflation into account, that would be like winning $13 million today. After that guess what the Las Vegas Hilton did? They had a special private room built just for Kerry Packer. Why? Because they wanted him to come back and play at their casino again. The Hilton had his play evaluated and determined he was playing a losing game, and it was just a matter of time before he gave it back to them. When Kerry came back to Vegas the following year he played in his private room at the Hilton. Guess what happened? He lost $10 million, which surprisingly wasn’t that much for Kerry Packer. This is the same reason the Topicana invited Don Johnson back after he won $5.8 million. They reveiwed his play and saw he was playing a negative EV game and just got lucky that night. The math doesn't lie...when a whale wins big money, the tape is reviewed to see if the player was moving their bet with the count or if there was any other advantage play going on. If they don't see any advantage play going on, then that player is asked to come back. Why? Because the casino knows in the long run, they will win it back.

    Btw, Kerry Parker won and loss on a whole different level than Don Johnson. Kerry fairly routinuely won or loss $15 to $20 million in a weekend and this was back in the 90s, when a million meant something. Lol. Casinos knew Kerry played a negative EV game but he could still impact their profits for the year if he got on a "hot streak", which happened from time to time. Yes, they liked his action, but they also feared it since some of the smaller casinos didn't have a bankroll large enough to deal with the negative swings, which are inevitable. Kerry could handle a big loss much better than some of the casinos. Btw, I wonder if the Blackjack Hall of Fame will elect Kerry Packer into their Hall since he once won big at the blackjack tables? Please, don’t get upset with me. That’s a joke.

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  13. #39


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    Gramazeka, thanks for attaching these links for the rest of this group to see. I have read all these blogs from Eliot Jacobson and for the most part I respectfully disagree with Eliot’s assessment of Don Johnson. (btw, I don't know why this post is in bold...that was not my intenet).

    My interest in this story is nothing more than curiosity. It’s a very interesting story. The way it was presented in Atlantic magazine (which is what made DJ famous) didn’t make much sense. And what most AP’s believe about DJ also didn’t make much sense. That’s why I did my own research and found most of what I was reading was wrong or at the very least misleading. Since these casinos are public companies, I checked their financial records and saw that Don’s winnings and the casino’s loss rebate programs during this time had little impact on these company’s financials. In fact, these companies did much worse in 2012 and 2013, than in 2011 when they were giving out these attractive loss rebates.

    The main reason I doubted what I was reading is because I do not believe casinos are as dumb as some APs seem to believe.
    Yes, the rank and file dealers, pit bosses, etc might not be the sharpest tools in the tool shed, but the upper casino management understand their business. They use mathematicians and surveillance experts to protect their games. They are a little smarter than some people in the AP community think. Yes, they make mistakes like all people, but when they see their mistakes, they quickly correct them.


    First let’s clear up one thing that is incorrect in Eliot’s blogs; even Don Johnson has admitted it’s incorrect.
    Eliot says Don Johnson “beat several Atlantic City casino out of over 15 million dollars in late 2011 and early 2012”. This isn’t true. What’s true? DJ had three
    winning sessions during this time that totally over 15 million dollars. By DJ’s own admission, he also had several large losing sessions during this time. Since he won’t say how much he lost (and the casinos won’t show reporters receipts from his losses), we will never know how much he won during this time, once we consider all his losses. Remember casinos don’t like the public to know about people’s losses. They only publicize people’s wins. This is why you only see pictures of slot winners in casinos, and you won’t see any pictures of losers. Casinos want people to believe any old Joe can win in a casino.


    Also, as a side note Eliot gets his dates wrong.
    DJ had these big wins in late 2010 and early 2011 (not "late 2011 and early 2012”). DJ’s biggest and most famous win was in April 2011 at the Flamingo playing alone for 12 hours, drinking “liberally” and surrounded by casino security guards. There was no advantage play going on during this time. That’s why he was allowed to play for 12 straight hours. It was during this time, he got on an incredible winning streak. We can debate if it was more than 40 hands in a row, but I think that’s missing the point. The insiders that saw it and reviewed the tape have all said the same thing….Don Johnson got very lucky that night. At one point in this session, Don won $1.2 million on three hands due to splits and doubles. Casinos are okay with people winning this way. That’s why Don Johnson was invited back to the Tropicana. They knew it was just a matter of time before they won their money back from him.


    Eliot did say something I agree with.
    It’s about DJ winning due to the attractive loss-rebate program he negotiated. I expect the casinos agree now this was over the top too, which is why you won’t see these any more. Btw, many whales were doing this during this time. It doesn’t take a math wizard to see that these loss rebates could be exploited. Henry Tamburin, a noted blackjack expert, agrees that these loss rebates alone would be enough to lead to these wins. “A 20 percent discount?”Tamburin asked, “but if that’s true, and you’re only losing $8 out of every $10 bet, you’ve just keep banging away. All you’d have to do is bet at high levels and use basic strategy.” The entire article is attached:

    https://abcnews.go.com/Business/blac...ry?id=15971410


    A member of the MIT blackjack team, Bill Kaplan supports my contention that Don Johnson was lucky during this time.
    Quoting from the following article:
    https://www.gambling911.com/gambling...on-071811.html

    “A member of the notorious MIT blackjack team, Bill Kaplan, believes that Johnson was not playing enough Blackjack for his so-called “winning system” to truly work.
    Kaplan claims that much of Johnson’s winnings did come from a string of good luck.“Even if he’s playing a winning game,” Kaplan said, “it was still a run of good luck.”


    So What Made Don Johnson Famous?


    Here’s the answer. It’s because of one 12-hour lucky streak at the Tropicana that occurred in April 2011.
    What did Don’s big win lead too? It was partially responsible for the Tropicana showing a loss for blackjack for the month of April, which has happened before but is very unusual. They only lost about a million in bj for that month but the fact that they showed a loss made news. If Don had quit when the math said he should have quit, then we probably wouldn’t know about Don Johnson. Both James Grosjean and Eliot Jacobson have done the math for the loss rebate program Don was playing under and shown Don should have quit long before he won $5.8 million. As we all know, Don didn’t obey the math. He actually said as much in one of his GMAE podcasts. This win led to the Tropicana telling a reporter about Don Johnson and the Atlantic magazine putting him on their cover saying he “Broke Atlantic City”, which rocketed him to fame.


    Why was this such a big deal?
    Because this is the myth everyone wants to believe. That one person can wreak havoc on a casino and “Bring Down the House.” As we all know, Don did not break Atlantic City or the Tropicana; he did not even come close.


    It’s interesting that a couple months later another whale won over $5 million dollars at the Tropicana.
    See attached article:

    http://www.blackjackchamp.com/casino...aps-blackjack/

    Why isn't this guy famous? Probably because nobody wrote an article about him or elected him into a Hall of Fame.

    Last edited by Dbs6582; 08-23-2018 at 05:15 PM.

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