Still selling, ROTFLMAO, nt. (nt)
I personally have won 10K at a table in 45 minutes (hurray for me!) but I was just there having fun, drinking and aggressively pressing my bets. I only bought in for $60 at a two dollar minimum table.
If I had a small edge at a game like craps and a small or moderate bank my betting would have been much different. I would NOT be pressing bets and keep in mind it is the aggressive pressing that craps players do that makes the game so exiting. I would be Kelly betting or some approximation of the same. With a $20000 bank I might only want $200 on the layout on a particular roll of the dice. That being true I could certainly see a small underfinanced team being only able to extract $20000 from the table on a single roll regardless of how long that roll might have been. They aren't betting the houses money they are betting their own.
That being said, I still wish I had been at the table for that hour with a few stiff drinks in my belly. Yo eleven!
Hip Hop
So you're against "selling" dice control methods but not against "selling" inferior card counting systems like KO?
How is KO an inferior card counting method?
Granted it probably doesn't have as many competent practitioners as Hi-Lo, but there are still many people who use KO profitably.
In fact, depending upon a person's requirements, KO can potentially be much more powerful than other counts. For example, it is much easier to back count multiple tables at one time using KO than other counts using TC conversions.
Or a personal example. I have used many different counts in my life (initially learned Hi-OptI, then switched to Uston APC, now use both Hi-Lo and KO depending...). Due to outside concerns (real life job) I sometimes go long periods (10 - 12 monthes) between being able to play blackjack regularly. To me then hardest part of shaking off the rust was always the TC conversion and estimating the number of decks remaining. With KO, I can spend a couple hours practicing running down decks and a couple of hours rememorizing some index numbers and I am good to go. Re-picking up the skills necessary to accurately estimate the remaining decks to do a true count conversion takes much more practice time for me. For a short trip following a long layoff, it isn't worth it to invest the time relearning those skills for such a short trip.
When I know I will be able to spend a large period of time to playing blackjack I do invest the time to relearning TC conversion so I can utilize the Hi-Lo count which can be used in conjuction with other methods of advantage play (such as shuffle tracking).
KO is a perfectly respectable counting system.
After the fact sampling is basically Ploppy methodology. It makes me skeptical when people argue for a form of AP using ploppy methodology. Not only is the methodology suspect, but they become suspect for using it.
Agree completely-but it is a little unfair to label the dice control crowd as ploppies just because of this. Both Wong and Thorp (probably others also, just examples that spring to mind) use the "bets I have made-sessions I have won" methodology on occassion. It enlivens dry theory and explains the practical reallities of the theory. I completely avoid using this methodology for the reasons you state, and then people say "so you have never been in a casino?" or "so you never won any money"?
The point that you and John made about the quality of play decreases with higher stakes is an interesting one. But I am not sure that is true if you increase your bets gradually. When I was a red-chipper, losing $1000 was a big deal. Now it is trivial. Losing 50K would be a big deal for me, but if I had doubled my bets several times, I wouldn�t feel that way. You get used to the fluctuations as the betting increases. This is true, but it illustrates a broader point. Consider your outlook on this before you were knowledgeable about card counting. If I had told you would making 1k+ bets and shrugging off thousand double-digit loses, using a 40-year old method to fleece casinos under their noses in plain view of thousands of surveillance cameras, completely legally, I suspect you would have said something like "And this is after my job at the fairground flying small children to the moon on the back of flying elephants?". Many credible things seem incredible initially.
That said, I think this is a half-empty, half-full question. I too am sceptical, but my scepticism manifests itself in the form of wanting to encourage a more sophisticated methodology for proving/disproving the concept, rather than simply dismissing it.
