Crazy downswings.

[Ldubz274]

What's everybody's worst variance stories? I have been playing for 1 year now. Decent game. Double deck, H17 DAS with about 55% penetration. I play at the $25 min table because it is always empty so i am always getting a heads up game with about 160-190 hands per hour. I have been using the knock out strategy with full indeces generated using CV data. My spread is a 10 unit bet spread at a 25$ min table. My hourly is $100 per hour. In 10 months after 300 hours i was up 28k which is slightly less than my hourly. But all the sudden since November started I am getting killed. The month of November I lost 3k. And so far this month i have only played 22 hours and I am losing 15k!!! In only 22 hours!!! That is a 60 max bet downswing in only 22 hours. If you include the 3k downswing from last month then it becomes a 72 max bet downswing. Now whos dumb idea was it to reccomend a 100 max bet bankroll? Trust me it is not nearly enough. You need at least 300 max bets to be safe.

[Meistro123]

Well you can always resize when you are losing, but 60 max bets is pretty harsh indeed.

[Midwest Player]

Looks like they set the shuffle machine to "beast mode."

[Freightman]

Looks like they set the shuffle machine to "beast mode."

Are you Midwest Player, or Midwest Genius?

[21forme]

Are you Midwest Player, or Midwest Genius?

He's Midwest Instigator.

[ShipTheCookies]

Looks like they set the shuffle machine to "beast mode."

I thought that was pretty funny. Apparently others didn't.

[Freightman]

I thought that was pretty funny. Apparently others didn't.

It was. You clearly missed the dryness. In order to catch the dryness, you need to understand other characters on the forum, especially those proffering conspiracy theory as it relates to ASM.

To assist you in your further understanding

https://youtu.be/Cs3IYtjiZSU

[Dbs6582]

I thought that was pretty funny. Apparently others didn't.

I liked it too. I gave him a helpful.

[Stealth]

And so far this month i have only played 22 hours and I am losing 15k!!! In only 22 hours!!!

Well, all of us try to welcome the positive variance and to understand the reason for the negative variance. You are one in a long list with these concerns.

However, the math says your 15K loss in 22 hours of 170 RPH 2d heads up play is just over - 2 standard deviations. That is, you have less than (not zero!) 5% chance of being in that position. But you are!

The suggestions for 100 max bets likely did not include -2 SD!

THe math does not provide an answer, as the possibility of your results being "normal" still exist, however, I have found those instances of -2SD do raise a flag worthy of inspections and at about 4000 rounds can be highly suspect for other issues being involved. Those issues can be under or over betting or mistakes in playing protocols. I do not pretend to know which might be involved, if any, in your case but suggest you do a review of your game to insure their are no holes.

The veracity of the math improves as the number of rounds approaches or exceeds N0. N0 for your game is around 15,000 so you are only about a quarter of the way there, so the measure of your position may be skewed by the smaple size in number of rounds.

If that is done with no identification of any issue then go play and quit whinning.


LOL

[ZeeBabar]

I agree with MWP, the ASM can be programmed and sometimes, even when you are playing heads up, to randomly play one to two spots. It might help.

[stopgambling]

You need at least 300 max bets to be safe.

Totally agree . Anyone that suggest 100 max bets(only applies to hail mary bankroll) is simply giving irresponsible advice.

[Three]

What's everybody's worst variance stories?

While I do a lot to prevent long term downswings. Short severe downswings still happen and can't be avoided. My worst is about resizing bets to a more aggressive ramp and promptly losing like crazy. This was a few years back or so. I had struggled mightily to grow my BR from $10K to $20K. Then at a $20K BR I finally had enough to really start earning. I started green chipping and betting more agreesively. It didn't take long to grow the $20K to almost $50K. Maybe 6 months compared to years of struggle to get over that $20K hump. Then I upped my top bet again dreaming of hitting 6 figures in a few months. The next 4 days of play were brutal. I lost almost $30K of a $50K BR and finally dropped my spread to what it was before. Of course I immediately started on a winning tear. Talk about bad timing on both resizing of bets. It took another 6 months to get to a $65K BR at which point I resized back up to the bet size that hit me so hard with such a fast and steep downswing. I never had any downswings that bad since.

One thing is true about doing this for a living. When you play long enough you will see almost everything. That includes really bad downswings. I have put a lot of research into avoiding these types of things. I like to think I have been successful, but the nature of rare events is such that your results will never be a significant sampling that you can draw any conclusions from. Rare events can stack up quick and/or never be seen. The sim says I am on the right track. In 100 billion rounds the worst case downswing for my improvements went from around $150K to to less than half of that. But again worst case scenarios are extremely rare events by definition so even that is hard to hang my hat on. I know the way things tend to stack up feels like the difference between night and day for when I maximize EV and when I do what I think makes sense to trade a little EV to smooth out the swings and make those rare events even more rare and less severe. Sim data is blind to the types of swings you must endure. Variance doesn't know whether an upswing or downswing was the cause of variance. All EV is not created equal. Some EV comes at too big a cost in additional downswing variance. Gathering the info to pick your spots more carefully to more aggressively generate higher quality EV, or give up low quality EV that has too much negative variance associated with it. Since variance is blind to downswing or upswing cause the statistic doesn't change much and the extra EV you generate from the extra info gathered pays for what is given up in poor quality EV. The result is you head for about the same long run but the ride to the long run is much smoother especially concerning downswings.

[Ldubz274]

I ran the cvcx data and it only showed about a 1.5 ish% chance.... I use the easiest system in the book. KO with full indeces. I even purchased qfits Blacjjack verite app and plugged in my indeces generated from CV data and it gives me drills. Always the play drills are 100% accurate for me. And on index drills i am about 85% accurate. The only ones i have not to remember like the back of my hand are the lower soft hands vs a small dealer card A,2 vs like 3 or 4. But not doubling a hand like that wouldnt make up for my huge bad run. It is just annoying. I played again today, it was +8 so i split my 10s vs dealers 4. I get two 20s. Dealer has 4. Pulls 7 then monkey. Fucking kidding me. Stuff like that has been happening all the time latley. 500$ bet lost with two 20s.... it almost makes me think it is somehow rigged, but I know it's impossible, nobody wants to be the one person who ends up hitting the risk of Ruin, but it could be that that is happening to me...