Consective losses in a row

I'm trying to get some feed back on how many hands in a row any of you have lost. I witnessed my friend lose 13 hands in a row once. I'd like to hear from you in respect to the number of losses and if anyone can let me know what the odds are for losing "x" number of hands in a row. Probability is multiplying it out .5 to the x for the number of times but I don't think that is accurate. You information is helpful. Just trying to understand the wide fluctuations in variance one can expect.

I knew the number of hands because it was a single deck game dealt seven rounds. I lost every hand through the first four decks.

Someone correct me, but isn't the chance of winning any particular hand from a fresh deck about 43%? So your odds of losing one hand is 57%, or 1 in 1.75 hands played. Unless my 43% win percentage is wrong, then the odds of losing 10 hands in a row is 1 in 276 sets of 10 consecutive hands. That makes the odds of losing 28 hands in a row 1 in 6,847,058 sets of 10 consecutive hands played.

Of course, me initial assumption and my math are always open to question. Your friend would be a truly unlucky guy.

That would have to be a record. If that doesn't discourage you from playing again, I don't know what would. Thanks for the feedback.

I appreciate it. I wasn't sure if it was .57x.57x.57 ....to the 10th time.

I dropped 26 in a row once and if you count doubles or splits as two hands it was probably 30. I also know that I have had three other streaks of at least 20 in a row.
After two of those streaks I still landed up winning for the session and though there is no way to enjoy a bad losing streak, if you understand that this kind of stuff happens it does not discourage one from playing.

You are assuming the house wins 57% of hands played and that is not true. I think you forgot pushes. We win about 43% and the house wins about 48%, and push 9% of the time. I think if you do not count the pushes as hands (I do not when considering a streak like this) then 53% I believe is a more realistic rounded number.

he'd really think it was discouraging. Brendan, think about playing black and losing 28 in a row, including some splits and DD. Yikes. That's variance. Furthermore, that probably took place in about 20 minutes.

Brendan,

These numbers came from a 6D sim I ran in CVData. They show the percentage of time you'll be in a win (or loss) streak of the indicated length:

 

	At Least (%)	At Least (%) 

Hands	Win	      Lose 

1	43.6342%	47.7432% 

2	32.0788%	37.1857% 

3	20.9106%	26.0424% 

4	12.7742%	17.1803% 

5	7.4842%	10.8945% 

6	4.2641%	6.7254% 

7	2.3750%	4.0693% 

8	1.3064%	2.4269% 

9	0.7076%	1.4295% 

10	0.3810%	0.8316% 

11	0.2017%	0.4812% 

12	0.1077%	0.2769% 

13	0.0569%	0.1578% 

14	0.0296%	0.0896% 

15	0.0160%	0.0499% 

16	0.0085%	0.0278% 

17	0.0044%	0.0160% 

18	0.0023%	0.0090% 

19	0.0012%	0.0052% 

20	0.0006%	0.0028% 

>20	0.0003%	0.0015% 

I'll assume your %53 to be correct. That small change in the percentage makes a big difference in the odds of consecutive losses. Of course, we don't know whether the OP friend considered pushes or not.
However, the odds of 10 consecutive losses would then be 572 to 1 and the odds of 28 consecutive losses would be a whopping 52,514,066 to one!

This tells me he may have forgotten a few winning hands in there. It would be hard to lose that many hands even if you tried (short of hitting 20's)

...you were cheated.

It happened many years ago, when I could play longer sessions that I do today. Most of the first four decks were negative, so the majority of my losing hands were small bets. I remember ending up with a winning session against that dealer. It happened at Terrible's in Pahrump, back when there was playable blackjack there.

I have been heads up on 2 Deck and lost every hand I was delt as the count soared and stayed high when the shuffle arrived. That is at least 13 hands. I have had this happen frequently, it is just the way things are.

that the people who have lost in excess of 13 hands in a row have had this happen more than a couple of times as I have read through the threads?

According to the data, losing 13 times in a row and also accounting for pushes is .1578% that is 1 out of 633 hands. 1 out of 15 is over 2,000 hands.

However, I believe them when they say this.

Question for you. Where can I go and test a 1,000 hands at a time on a computer simulation, where I can see the results of wins/losses/ties and also view the winning and losing streaks. I'd like to run this 10-20 times. Your help or anyone elses help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Brendan

... some of those losses were merely pushes.

If you give that dealer the benefit of the doubt and start with a one in a thousand chance he cheated, 28 losses in a row raises that 0.1% to a near certainty (99.94% with some reasonable assumptions) in a Bayesian analysis.

Why would he cheat on small hands? Who knows? Maybe he was bored. Maybe he used to cheat at another casino, but has no economic incentive at Terrible's, so when he practices, he only does it on small bets. Almost any explanation is more likely than 28 legitimate losses in a row.

ETF

13 in a row is once every 633 hands according to your calculations. Since I play a lot of heads up where I get over 100 hands per hour, figuring in the times where there are other players on the table, perhaps I get 80 hands per hour average. That is only 8 hours of blackjack, which means every single day I play in Vegas I can expect to lose 13 in a row at some point. To me that makes it an extremely common thing.
If 15 in a row takes 2,000 hands, that is only 25 hours. If I play 500 hours this year, I should get 20 of these, not that uncommon either.
Once you have played long enough and often enough, you do not like these things but become understandable.

In general I would have to assume that long losing streaks occur when the count is negative. In your experience because you play so often, do you happen to know if your losing streaks occured during negative counts.

Unlike roulette, it makes no difference from hitting black or red from one spin to the next as each outcome is an independent trial. However, in BJ, the outcome of future hands is determined by what has previously been dealt.

I'm doing a little fact finding and am curious. Thanks...

Most have come, as you guessed on neg or slightly positive counts but parts of streaks have come on high counts also.
Understand that I am not talking about this being on one table or even at one casino always. My 26 hand streak came on 3 tables at 2 casinos. When they come on neutral or negative counts they generally will be like this because I wong out, go to another table and then just continue losing.

The worst, for dollars lost, came during a shoe where the count went high very quickly and then very very slowly kept going down while I seemed to get a stiff every hand. Already in a losing streak when the count rose, when I began raising my bets I must have appeared like a casino favorite, a losing steamer.

If you are not being cheated, a bunch of losses in a row is really not worth too much conversation. All you need to know is that it can and will happen and just have the stomach for it.