bankroll

playing mostly at a 25-500 table, what is the min bankroll i should play with? also, do you guys ajust your bets based on the count or the advantage (kelly optimization system?)

But I like to carry $20,000 for 20 hours of play, and stay below a
5% risk of ruin, when my max bet is $500 at a hi-lo true count of 3.

will adjust their bet, anywhere from zero to their max, based on the advantage. Bankroll is a very vague concept and it isn't clear how you are using it. Some people refer to a session stake as a bankroll, others call a trip stake a bankroll that is to last for several sessions. Some people call the bankroll the entire amount they are willing to use for bj for their lifetime, others call it there current net worth, etc. To answer your question at all you need to first define what you mean by bankroll and then define what your risk tolerance is... that is, what probability of losing this money while in the pursuit of profit are you willing to take. If someone is willing to take a 98% that he will lose all of his money then a bankroll of two max bets is probably sufficient.

if i imply the total sum i am willing to lose simply playing blackjack, dedicating that stake entirely to local blackjack play at a 25-500 tables.

Yes, you must be willing to lose it in order to consider it part of your bankroll. But to arrive at the appropriate bankroll side you need to define the risk level. You have some amount of money to put at risk that you want to sustain your blackjack play forever. The smaller the risk you are willing to accept the more you must be willing to risk. The amount of money you need for a 5% risk of ruin is much greater than what you need for a 20% risk of ruin. A not too exact answer, if you don't take profits out very frequently then 100X your max bet will probably sustain your play with a minimal risk of going broke. That would be $50,000 for a $500 max bet. You can certainly play with a smaller bankroll but will have a greater chance of going broke. I advise you to buy the book, BJ Attack, by Don Schlesinger and also some software like BJRM. With the very minimal information you are able to provide you can only get very general answers. With good charts and software you can get better answers based on the specifics of the game you play, rules, pen, spread, etc.

a couple of posts in the past (I think it might have been you) addressing the point that if you are a fulltime player or regularly drawing profits, that the RoR calculations available in books are not accurate. I have recently invested in CVCX, which has RoR calc in it (have not received it yet). Are you aware if this (or any other) software will allow me to take into account an X% of regular draw from the bankroll and adjust RoR accordingly?

Thanks!

D

is by Mathboy and was a post of the month sometime back entitled "Long Term Risk of Ruin" and is a real eye-opener.

All you have to do is artificially lower your % expectation by the amount you are withdrawing. Alot of the software out there has an entry for tipping. You can simply input your withdrawals in the tip box and this will lower your EV. This will give you an accurate RoR for a player that needs to live on his BJ earnings.

kRis

because they are based on faulty assumptions, such as you never, ever add to or take from the bankroll and never increase or decrease bet sizes. But that does not mean that they are not very useful. You can just ignore what ROR stands for, risk of ruin. It is really an instantaneous figure describing the risk/reward relationship of your current bet sizes. If you are someone who regulary adds money to the bank and does not take from it then your real ROR is smaller. If you sometimes take profits then the ROR is much higher.

Just as a not too exact generalization: you will be safe, very safe, if you have 100 max bets, don't increase bet sizes unless you double the bank, cut bet sizes in half when you lose half the bank, and only take profits out when you make rather large gains in the bank, 30% to 50%. Playing this way we've lost half the bank 3 times over the last 7 years, with lots of players putting in lots of hours on the same bankroll.

but the method is okay because it usually overstates your ROR by assuming that money is taken every hand. The truth is that the less frequently you remove money the less of an effect it has on your risks.

But back to the real world for a second, if you have regular fixed expenses from which you need to tap into your bj bankroll then you are going to go broke anyway. To play for a living you need to have lots of money, miniscule living expenses relative to your betting, and you must be an expert comp hustler with over 100% of your expenses covered. This is an opinion, of course, but I've never seen a single example to make me doubt it.

You said that your team takes profits out once you hit 30 to 50% in profits of the bank. Is there a reason that you don't wait til you double it? Me and my partner usually wait til we double up, sometimes it is quick, sometimes it takes some time. I thought this was how most teams and semi-teams did it. Of course this can just be a preference for your team, but just curious anyways.

regards,

table

bank and play to very small fractions. It sometimes takes over a year to double the bank and not everyone can go that long between pay days. If everyone in the group were completely financially secure then I would favor once per year distributions. For those reporting and playing taxes you really should conclude things in some fashion at the end of the year as you are really not supposed to count losses from one year against winnings the next year.