This is my first post. Just wanted to tell some stories based on my experiences in case they can be of use to anyone.
*** BEAT THE DEALER 1980, ATLANTIC CITY 1981 ***
My college roommate was from Costa Rica and for some reason he wanted to go to Atlantic City to gamble. He did and lost money. I didn't know anything about gambling at the time so I didn't gamble.
When we got back to school our other roommate, to tease me in a good natured way, gave me a copy of "Beat The Dealer" for a birthday present.
I was a business major and had a pretty good grasp of math and statistics. As I read Thorp's book I became fascinated by the subject of blackjack.
The next summer I had some financial aid money left over and did not have to work, so I spent the entire summer in the library ordering books from all over the country about the game of blackjack. Stanford Wong's "Professional Blackjack" and Ken Uston's "Million Dollar Blackjack" were two of the ones that I remember reading. I could not get a copy of Revere's book. It was written about by many people, but it was hard to find and libraries did not have it.
I found Thorp's system too hard to master, but Stanford Wong's I could handle. However, it was still too hard for me to master all of it, so I wanted to develop an even easier system. So I learned how to write computer code on an Apple at the library. I found a book that had basic language code for playing blackjack against the computer. I could type the code into the Apple and the computer would act as the dealer and I would be the player. This was great for learning how to count and I did not have to deal the cards myself -- although, I did plenty of that, too, while I was learning to count and testing the system.
I modified the code to keep track of my wins and losses and it seemed like I always won. I couldn't afford to buy commercial software for the IBM PCs that Stanford Wong sold to test systems, but Atari started selling inexpensive PCs. I thought that I could write my own code and write a program that could test my simplified system against various casino rules. I bought an Atari 1200XL ( I believe ). It only had 64k of memory if I recall correctly. It had a tape cassette for as storage device. The code I wrote got so long that it would not fit on to an entire cassette tape. Plus it would take forever to save and load. And if the tape got crinkled I would lose all my work.
To backtrack a moment... my roommate had a very strong magnet... about the size of a brick. We would use it on pinball games to catch the ball and run the ball back and forth over the switches on the table to earn free games. Well, one day I had the magnet in my backpack, but forgot. I put in the floppy disc from the Apple into my backpack. I lost everything! I never made that mistake again.
Eventually, Atari started selling floppy drives that handled those big 5 or 6 inch floppy discs. What a time saver! Still, with only 64k memory I couldn't write all the code I wanted to and the code ran slowly. I could never approach the million hands of simulations that Stanford Wong's software could do on an IBM PC.
I worked diligently on the code and my system for a year or so and waiting for a chance to test it on a summer trip to Atlantic City.
In the meantime, I would go to the Las Vegas nights at the various catholic churches in the larger cities around the region. I used to check the newspapers every week hoping to see an ad for a Las Vegas night. The rules were horrible because they were charity games. The dealers won the ties. However, I could sit at third base and only bet when the deck was positive. No one cared since it was charity game and everyone got to know me and knew I was a poor college kid. I usually lost a few bucks, but since the minimum bet was $1 and I only bet when I had an edge, I actually won on some nights. Mainly, I just wanted to practice counting in a real game.
Usually, there was one table with a $10 minimum that played by regular Las Vegas rules. The game was dealt with one deck. Unfortunately, because I was a student I never had $10 to spare. That was my entire bankroll! Funny thing was, one night I watched as everyone at the table got wiped out. I don't think anyone won a hand. I was sure the dealer was cheating -- perhaps dealing seconds. I found out later that the vice squad at the police department warned the church about using a particular company to run their Las Vegas nights because they cheated.
I finally got my chance to go to Atlantic City in the summer of 1981. I seem to recall that I had bankroll of about $80. The table minimums were $5 at the time, which seemed like a fortune to me. Minimum wage was probably around $3 per hour at the time. I definitely did not want to lose!
I sat down at a table with a nice young female dealer. She dealt fairly slowly and I was easily able to count. To my surprise I was ahead by $45 after just about 15 minutes! This was going to be easy.
Then the shift changed and a young, surely male dealer with a scowl on his face started dealing. He dealt fast as lightning. I could barely keep up my counting and within a few minutes I lost all $45.
Somewhere I had read that Ed Thorp said that spending 8 hours per day in a dark, smokey casino was not the way he wanted to make a living.
I realized quickly that this was not the lifestyle for me. I got up from the table, left the casino, and have only played blackjack a handful of times since then.
A side story that reminded me why I didn't want to gamble in a casino for a living...
I once gambled in Minsk, Belarus, at Hotel Orbita. The casino was on the top floor. I was playing bad basic strategy from memory. A big, drunk, and loud Russian guy (I think?) next to me kept bumping into me with his elbow. It was annoying and distracting. I wondered if he was a shill trying to keep people from winning. He was throwing around a lot of money -- hundreds of dollars. Given that the average wage of a college professor in Minsk at the time was $30 per month, I had to wonder how he earned his money. Black market? Organized crime?
*** BEAT THE MARKET ***
The journey was fascinating and there was so much to be learned from Ed Thorp. I picked up a copy of Ed Thorp's "Beat The Market".
"Beat The Market" is beautifully written. I was a student in college when I read it and could not afford to put up the $10,000 necessary for margin and to short the warrants. I had been interested in the stock market since I was a kid. I was fascinated by Thorp's market trading, so I read everything about Ed Thorp I could find. There wasn't a lot available because he was busy running his company. However, I finally found a book at the library with Ed Thorp's name attached to it. It was called "Dr. Z's Beat The Racetrack" and Ed Thorp had written the forward. He gave it a glowing endorsement.
*** BEAT THE RACETRACK ***
"Beat The Racetrack" was right up my alley, though. I could apply Dr. Z's system with confidence because it was endorsed by Thorp.
A little bit of a backstory... When I was in high school a few classmates and I went to Waterford Park -- now called Mountaineer Park. We went three Saturdays in a row and I lost $10 each Saturday. At the time I was making about $1.60 per hour as a busboy in a restaurant. I swore I would never go back to the racetrack unless I learned how to win. It would be more than 15 years before I bet on a horse.
After reading "Beat The Racetrack", I used my programming skills again -- this time to write code to implement the Dr. Z system on a handheld computer. This was about 1986. I think the handheld computer was called a RadioShack PC-6. I started going to the harness races at Yonkers Raceway on Friday nights. The initial bankroll was $50. After 10 trips to the track the bankroll had grown to $500.
It was hard work. I'd wait until the last minute and then type in the toteboard data and then sprint to the window. Oftentimes I would get shut out. Sometimes I would get to the betting window, but the computer would still be crunching the data and I'd have to hold up the line while it ran -- which didn't sit too well with the people behind me.
Next I decided to try the system on thoroughbred races because this is the type of races the system was developed on. I remember the first time I went to the thoroughbred races. I went to Belmont Park in NY on a Wednesday afternoon in May. I think I only found two bets the entire day. The thoroughbred races were much more efficient that the harness races. Clearly, waiting around all day at the track for a couple of bets, but having to type in the data into a handheld computer would be a tough way to make a living.
I longed to have a direct feed of the toteboard into a computer. Eventually, it happened, but it took another 10 or 12 years.
When it finally did happen in the mid to late 1990s, I programmed my desktop PC to scrape the toteboard data from various websites, crunch the data automatically, and then send in the bets via a very clunky HTML interface. It worked, but the system had started to lose its edge with the advent of online wagering.
It used to be one could only bet at the track. A bettor could wait until the last minute and put a bet down and the odds didn't change much. With the proliferation of online betting the odds can swing wildly in the last minute as money from around the world comes into the pools. The odds also change after the race starts.
I found an online wagering company that gave rebates on every bet I made. This helped and I had a really good run using the Dr. Z system. However, as larger and more sophisticated players (and probably betting teams) started to enter the game my edge diminished to the point where it wasn't worth the time to keep the computerized betting system up and running.
I'm working on the next phase of horse race betting and hope to be up and running again soon. This is just a hobby. The real money is in the stock market where I can also work from home, but it is also very tough.
If there is an easy system for blackjack I may try my hand at playing again. But for now, I'll leave it to others.
One last story... I have always been a big fan of the Cleveland Browns football team. After reading "Beat The Market" in 1980 I told myself that if I ever became the general manager of the Browns or any sports team, I would hire Ed Thorp as a consultant to help devise a winning strategy based on statistics. I never pursued it because I figured who would ever listen to a 20 year old kid about devising a statistical strategy to win professional football games.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. I was working at a corporate conference in San Antonio and Billy Bean of the Oakland A's was the keynote speaker. I had never heard of him at the time. He started talking and the more he talked the closer my jaw dropped to the floor. He was amazing! He was saying all the things I was thinking about 20 years earlier. DAMN! If only I had been a little wiser and more confident.
All was not lost... I did use statistical analysis (sabermetrics) to coach my son's little league baseball teams. We didn't have a lot of talent, but by understanding my players tendencies and having detailed stats I was able to create what I felt was an optimal batting order for generating runs. I also put our defenders in the right place on the field. We didn't win the city championship, but we were runners up and that was a good accomplishment given we were probably the 5th best team based on talent alone. The key was outworking the other coaches. Some coaches don't even keep a scorebook!
My wife had a brilliant idea for the team. She bought about 40 bottles of seltzer water. We lost the championship game, but gave each player two bottles to spray each other with. The kids had soooo much fun. It was like the scene from the "Bad News Bears". You would have thought my team won the championship. If I could do it again, I would have made sure the winning team had bottles of seltzer, too. They won the game, but they looked like they lost because we were the ones having fun.
But I digress. The point is, if you use good a good methodology, test it, and outwork the next guy, you will come out ahead.
Good luck and good betting!
*** BEAT THE DEALER 1980, ATLANTIC CITY 1981 ***
My college roommate was from Costa Rica and for some reason he wanted to go to Atlantic City to gamble. He did and lost money. I didn't know anything about gambling at the time so I didn't gamble.
When we got back to school our other roommate, to tease me in a good natured way, gave me a copy of "Beat The Dealer" for a birthday present.
I was a business major and had a pretty good grasp of math and statistics. As I read Thorp's book I became fascinated by the subject of blackjack.
The next summer I had some financial aid money left over and did not have to work, so I spent the entire summer in the library ordering books from all over the country about the game of blackjack. Stanford Wong's "Professional Blackjack" and Ken Uston's "Million Dollar Blackjack" were two of the ones that I remember reading. I could not get a copy of Revere's book. It was written about by many people, but it was hard to find and libraries did not have it.
I found Thorp's system too hard to master, but Stanford Wong's I could handle. However, it was still too hard for me to master all of it, so I wanted to develop an even easier system. So I learned how to write computer code on an Apple at the library. I found a book that had basic language code for playing blackjack against the computer. I could type the code into the Apple and the computer would act as the dealer and I would be the player. This was great for learning how to count and I did not have to deal the cards myself -- although, I did plenty of that, too, while I was learning to count and testing the system.
I modified the code to keep track of my wins and losses and it seemed like I always won. I couldn't afford to buy commercial software for the IBM PCs that Stanford Wong sold to test systems, but Atari started selling inexpensive PCs. I thought that I could write my own code and write a program that could test my simplified system against various casino rules. I bought an Atari 1200XL ( I believe ). It only had 64k of memory if I recall correctly. It had a tape cassette for as storage device. The code I wrote got so long that it would not fit on to an entire cassette tape. Plus it would take forever to save and load. And if the tape got crinkled I would lose all my work.
To backtrack a moment... my roommate had a very strong magnet... about the size of a brick. We would use it on pinball games to catch the ball and run the ball back and forth over the switches on the table to earn free games. Well, one day I had the magnet in my backpack, but forgot. I put in the floppy disc from the Apple into my backpack. I lost everything! I never made that mistake again.
Eventually, Atari started selling floppy drives that handled those big 5 or 6 inch floppy discs. What a time saver! Still, with only 64k memory I couldn't write all the code I wanted to and the code ran slowly. I could never approach the million hands of simulations that Stanford Wong's software could do on an IBM PC.
I worked diligently on the code and my system for a year or so and waiting for a chance to test it on a summer trip to Atlantic City.
In the meantime, I would go to the Las Vegas nights at the various catholic churches in the larger cities around the region. I used to check the newspapers every week hoping to see an ad for a Las Vegas night. The rules were horrible because they were charity games. The dealers won the ties. However, I could sit at third base and only bet when the deck was positive. No one cared since it was charity game and everyone got to know me and knew I was a poor college kid. I usually lost a few bucks, but since the minimum bet was $1 and I only bet when I had an edge, I actually won on some nights. Mainly, I just wanted to practice counting in a real game.
Usually, there was one table with a $10 minimum that played by regular Las Vegas rules. The game was dealt with one deck. Unfortunately, because I was a student I never had $10 to spare. That was my entire bankroll! Funny thing was, one night I watched as everyone at the table got wiped out. I don't think anyone won a hand. I was sure the dealer was cheating -- perhaps dealing seconds. I found out later that the vice squad at the police department warned the church about using a particular company to run their Las Vegas nights because they cheated.
I finally got my chance to go to Atlantic City in the summer of 1981. I seem to recall that I had bankroll of about $80. The table minimums were $5 at the time, which seemed like a fortune to me. Minimum wage was probably around $3 per hour at the time. I definitely did not want to lose!
I sat down at a table with a nice young female dealer. She dealt fairly slowly and I was easily able to count. To my surprise I was ahead by $45 after just about 15 minutes! This was going to be easy.
Then the shift changed and a young, surely male dealer with a scowl on his face started dealing. He dealt fast as lightning. I could barely keep up my counting and within a few minutes I lost all $45.
Somewhere I had read that Ed Thorp said that spending 8 hours per day in a dark, smokey casino was not the way he wanted to make a living.
I realized quickly that this was not the lifestyle for me. I got up from the table, left the casino, and have only played blackjack a handful of times since then.
A side story that reminded me why I didn't want to gamble in a casino for a living...
I once gambled in Minsk, Belarus, at Hotel Orbita. The casino was on the top floor. I was playing bad basic strategy from memory. A big, drunk, and loud Russian guy (I think?) next to me kept bumping into me with his elbow. It was annoying and distracting. I wondered if he was a shill trying to keep people from winning. He was throwing around a lot of money -- hundreds of dollars. Given that the average wage of a college professor in Minsk at the time was $30 per month, I had to wonder how he earned his money. Black market? Organized crime?
*** BEAT THE MARKET ***
The journey was fascinating and there was so much to be learned from Ed Thorp. I picked up a copy of Ed Thorp's "Beat The Market".
"Beat The Market" is beautifully written. I was a student in college when I read it and could not afford to put up the $10,000 necessary for margin and to short the warrants. I had been interested in the stock market since I was a kid. I was fascinated by Thorp's market trading, so I read everything about Ed Thorp I could find. There wasn't a lot available because he was busy running his company. However, I finally found a book at the library with Ed Thorp's name attached to it. It was called "Dr. Z's Beat The Racetrack" and Ed Thorp had written the forward. He gave it a glowing endorsement.
*** BEAT THE RACETRACK ***
"Beat The Racetrack" was right up my alley, though. I could apply Dr. Z's system with confidence because it was endorsed by Thorp.
A little bit of a backstory... When I was in high school a few classmates and I went to Waterford Park -- now called Mountaineer Park. We went three Saturdays in a row and I lost $10 each Saturday. At the time I was making about $1.60 per hour as a busboy in a restaurant. I swore I would never go back to the racetrack unless I learned how to win. It would be more than 15 years before I bet on a horse.
After reading "Beat The Racetrack", I used my programming skills again -- this time to write code to implement the Dr. Z system on a handheld computer. This was about 1986. I think the handheld computer was called a RadioShack PC-6. I started going to the harness races at Yonkers Raceway on Friday nights. The initial bankroll was $50. After 10 trips to the track the bankroll had grown to $500.
It was hard work. I'd wait until the last minute and then type in the toteboard data and then sprint to the window. Oftentimes I would get shut out. Sometimes I would get to the betting window, but the computer would still be crunching the data and I'd have to hold up the line while it ran -- which didn't sit too well with the people behind me.
Next I decided to try the system on thoroughbred races because this is the type of races the system was developed on. I remember the first time I went to the thoroughbred races. I went to Belmont Park in NY on a Wednesday afternoon in May. I think I only found two bets the entire day. The thoroughbred races were much more efficient that the harness races. Clearly, waiting around all day at the track for a couple of bets, but having to type in the data into a handheld computer would be a tough way to make a living.
I longed to have a direct feed of the toteboard into a computer. Eventually, it happened, but it took another 10 or 12 years.
When it finally did happen in the mid to late 1990s, I programmed my desktop PC to scrape the toteboard data from various websites, crunch the data automatically, and then send in the bets via a very clunky HTML interface. It worked, but the system had started to lose its edge with the advent of online wagering.
It used to be one could only bet at the track. A bettor could wait until the last minute and put a bet down and the odds didn't change much. With the proliferation of online betting the odds can swing wildly in the last minute as money from around the world comes into the pools. The odds also change after the race starts.
I found an online wagering company that gave rebates on every bet I made. This helped and I had a really good run using the Dr. Z system. However, as larger and more sophisticated players (and probably betting teams) started to enter the game my edge diminished to the point where it wasn't worth the time to keep the computerized betting system up and running.
I'm working on the next phase of horse race betting and hope to be up and running again soon. This is just a hobby. The real money is in the stock market where I can also work from home, but it is also very tough.
If there is an easy system for blackjack I may try my hand at playing again. But for now, I'll leave it to others.
One last story... I have always been a big fan of the Cleveland Browns football team. After reading "Beat The Market" in 1980 I told myself that if I ever became the general manager of the Browns or any sports team, I would hire Ed Thorp as a consultant to help devise a winning strategy based on statistics. I never pursued it because I figured who would ever listen to a 20 year old kid about devising a statistical strategy to win professional football games.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. I was working at a corporate conference in San Antonio and Billy Bean of the Oakland A's was the keynote speaker. I had never heard of him at the time. He started talking and the more he talked the closer my jaw dropped to the floor. He was amazing! He was saying all the things I was thinking about 20 years earlier. DAMN! If only I had been a little wiser and more confident.
All was not lost... I did use statistical analysis (sabermetrics) to coach my son's little league baseball teams. We didn't have a lot of talent, but by understanding my players tendencies and having detailed stats I was able to create what I felt was an optimal batting order for generating runs. I also put our defenders in the right place on the field. We didn't win the city championship, but we were runners up and that was a good accomplishment given we were probably the 5th best team based on talent alone. The key was outworking the other coaches. Some coaches don't even keep a scorebook!
My wife had a brilliant idea for the team. She bought about 40 bottles of seltzer water. We lost the championship game, but gave each player two bottles to spray each other with. The kids had soooo much fun. It was like the scene from the "Bad News Bears". You would have thought my team won the championship. If I could do it again, I would have made sure the winning team had bottles of seltzer, too. They won the game, but they looked like they lost because we were the ones having fun.
But I digress. The point is, if you use good a good methodology, test it, and outwork the next guy, you will come out ahead.
Good luck and good betting!
