I love this. Essentially "Yes, it's meaningless and anecdotal evidence, but I'm going to draw conclusions from it anyway".Originally Posted by LoneWoLF
I never checked. They did more than just use extra thin cards. They used different sized discard trays on the tables. Some places even set the discard tray into the table so the cards sit closer to the felt in the hopes it will throw off your deck estimates. Simple things can throw many counters off. You should rate your deep pen estimates by how far off you are when they pull the unused cards from the shoe to shuffle. If you are off by a good bit and the pen is deep the added pen where more precise deck estimates is a must may be costing you or at least introducing huge unnecessary variance. I have found when I am spot on it is easy but when I am off results are all over the place. In the case of the latter you are better off with a shoe that ends where deck estimation isn't so crucial. After 1.5 to 2 decks left you need half deck accuracy. Under 1 deck even that is getting shaky. At under 1 deck in a shoe game things just get bizarre anyway. With 26 cards left they could all be the same rank or a few ranks may be totally depleted. Counting breaks down when things are bizarre like that.
Last edited by Three; 08-20-2016 at 07:11 AM.
Sure is easy to say a casino doesnt cheat you, when you're on the positive side of variance. You have no case since you are not a net loser at the place you couldn't 'crack'. No my deck estimation isnt off, my count is not off, ive tested it time and time again on the software and you know whats even funnier, i played the same exact game that harrahs is offering on Verite heads up no mid shoe and in little less than an hour i made 6k playing the same stakes, same everything. Not ONCE have i won anything close to that amount there, but i have posted 3-4 of my biggest all time losses. Funny isnt it?
No they are not using thin cards to throw your deck estimation off. They're not using different sized discard trays, which I have seen before in other places and maybe even harrahs at one point. Im completely confident in my game and my deck estimation at harrahs and just to make sure I always test myself anyway when they bring out the remaining cards of in the shoe and stack it up in the discard traay. When they do that i visualize the midpoint in the tray of cards just to make sure they're not trying anything funny or that the cards arent swelled up after a days worth of being played with.
What is going on here is just completely bizarre. Either they're cheating or im just one of those guys who was born with a black shadow over my head. It's not just blackjack but in everything i do. Ive tried positive thinking and you know that thing called 'hard work' and that hard work pays off? Well in my case, none of that works and hard work doesnt pay off for me either no matter what i do. Someone with my luck wouldve gone mentally insane in their lives already. And im pretty close to it.
You know how Don occasionally brings out theres always that 1 person in 200 who could still be behind, well guess what, you found that 1 person.
Last edited by LoneWoLF; 08-20-2016 at 01:05 PM.
A simple solution for you next time when you play. Don't play blackjack game that uses ASMs to shuffle their card if you think they are rigged. Play the blackjack games that the dealers shuffle by hand and ask them to fan the cards face up before they shuffle. As simple as that!!!
If you think Harrah's Chester stacks the deck before they switch cards or when they table opens up ask and request the cards to be fan face up. As simple as that!!!
In most high limit pits in Pennsylvania Casino they do hand shuffling. It is possible to find some casinos that does hand shuffling with $25 limit tables as well.
Last edited by seriousplayer; 08-20-2016 at 01:15 PM.
I've tried that with other casinos and they simply refuse to fan the cards face up and give you no explanation. It's funny that they dont because what can they possibly lose by showing everyone the cards? A small case could be said for people shuffle tracking, but even that is rare after a proper shuffle technique. What excuse do casinos have by NOT fanning the cards face up, if they're just going to throw it in the ASM right after? Should raise red flags to everyone. And it should also raise flags to everyone that the commission is a complete joke and so easy to be bypassed if someone savvy enough wants to cheat. How can a gaming commission that is supposed to enforce game protection have casinos NOT fan their cards face up? I mean really? And we're supposed to believe with 100% certainty that casinos dont cheat LOL. Im done here, i really am. The whole system is corrupt, which seems to be a common theme going around in the world.
Im not behind overall , just giving you an example into my current state of mind. But im sure theres a stat for my expectation at this one store and its less than 5% thats for sure. Easily 2 SD down there. Maybe even 3, considering the hours.
I'm not ridiculing your unfortunate plight. Just want you to know I've suffered downstreaks lasting nearly a year and a half. So have others I'm sure. 5+ SDs? Who cares? Part of the process. "You either have the stomach for this game or you do not." - Fred Renzy
Like I have said, i dont care about the losses, it's whether or not im getting cheated that bothers me. I hate losing at just ONE store. It makes all my hard work feel like it was for nothing if it was to just get cheated. Now I feel I have to put in double the work.
Ir is funny because I didn't have a case because I wasn't cheated. The conditions there required a different approach that I never managed to crack. I had to modify my approach at Harrah's Philly to start winning. And I am not on the positive side of variance. My system is quite precise and doesn't stray much from expectation. That means I put in the time carefully selecting when to play and I make my EV. I actually usually stay a hair above it because adjusting to live play is more accurate than general adjustments you can qualify in a sim. I have had one month runs of over and under EV and even almost flat BR over the period but expand the time a couple weeks and I make EV. This is what you expect if you do all the stuff that everyone says isn't worth it. Your EV doesn't improve much from any individual tweak but you are tightening your decision bell curves with each one which makes you stay closer to EV. I rarely have two losing days in a row and my winning days tend to be higher magnitude than the losers. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see what the overall trend will be and that it won't take long to reach equilibrium compared to others with extremely wide bell curves around their decisions. It really is the most basic math of the statistics of the game.
Your last sentences in the quote sound like my history at the casino I play that offers by far the best theoretical game out there. I won't say what they did to make it hard. No need to give casinos a blueprint for making it tough for us. But everything they did was legal. What I did to make my results this way was I stayed too long. I wanted to win too much. And should have been more selective about when I played. Basically it was a poor exit strategy. Almost every visit I could have left an easily tolerated win with little exposure. I wanted more since the game was so good. Had I left I would have been up huge there but I didn't and usually left after losing it back and then some or without winning much more. Then, just as any deeply dealt casino would do, they would give me the signal they had had enough of me for the day. If I played too much after that I would surely be backed off. They have known I am a counter for years as I assume most places do. the key to longevity is to keep wins small enough and not to visit too often. All the big wins came within a short time of arrival. The idea that it is all one big session seemed to bite me in the ass when I use it as an excuse to stay. In general either I win too much or I give some back while increasing my exposure. At this place it seemed to always be the latter. Both are bad for the longevity player.
You will never crack why you are losing with that attitude. As soon as you make the excuse that you are being cheated you close the door to learning more about how to win and why you lose. Everyone talks to you about what you are doing wrong or the reason your plans will fail. You never listen to any of them and then wonder why you fail. In another thread you made the absolutely absurd comment that one of the members here with the most experience and one of the few that probably has a 7 figure lifetime win is an amateur. While describing a relative newbie like yourself as being an expert. This attitude easily explains why you continually seem to be behind the eight ball in life. You never learn from anyone else mistakes. You have to make each and every mistake every counter has ever made before you will learn the lesson you could have learned by listening to those that have walked the road before you. This is no doubt true in every aspect of your life. Grow up and realize you can learn so much from those that have walked the path before you. Then you can avoid all the pitfalls that the others your age avoid which makes you feel like everything is against you.
You know what's really funny? I would love for someone to go and test my skill in a casino and ill show you im making absolutely no mistakes, so all your assumptions that im playing wrong are absurd. My game is absolutely perfect and like I said, the casino is cheating or im cursed. There's no mis-sized discard trays or thin cards or anything that is throwing me off. I account for all of thatas I've seen casinos try to do that. I account for card thickness due to heavy wear throughout the day and temperature in the casino. I do all that by visualizing the 6 decks in the discard or sometimes when they use 8 decks in the discard and visualize the midpoint to make sure I know where the exact measurements are due to those other indirect factors that i just mentioned above that can possibly throw your deck estimation off.
Nothing is wrong with my game for the millionth time and ive tested it also on verite millions of times. Some people are just plain lucky in their life and think they're some type of savant. Just look at smallcapgrowth who was recently on GWAE and said hes close to making a million. You actually think he's better than me? It's just completely laughable. All he has is the bankroll and more time than I do with also much better luck than i have. I think my problem is I just dont play enough to have the math sort itself out, but whenever I do it's over. But even with a lot of hours played I will need some luck like flash and smallcap to be on the good side of positive variance to have a really good year and not just your normal average EV year or below EV type of year. I bet you flash and smallcap with the hours ive logged wouldve been up huge or at least at EV just due to sheer luck, while me on the other hand im on the -2-3 SD less than 5% chance side of the bell curve. Life's good isnt it?
Just give me half the luck you guys have and there's not one person who can outpace me in lifetime win by the time my life is over.
Last edited by LoneWoLF; 08-20-2016 at 02:27 PM.
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