Selling Yourself Short and Imagination

BigPlayer Wrote:

"100K a year jobs are not that common ... .
blackjack beats the hell out of making 30K a year selling meat or running a Circle K."

Let's think about the "famous" players.

Stanford Wong: Ph.D.
Ian Andersen: Successful businessman.
Ken Uston: Harvard M.B.A. and Vice President of Pacific Stock Exchange.
Blair Hull: Subsequently founded Hull Trading and became largest individual shareholder of Goldman Sachs (!).

Success in blackjack requires mental dexterity, practice, planning, persistence, tolerance of risk and temporary failure, some social skills, and a thick skin. These qualities are rewarded in other fields too.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of blackjack pioneers was their imagination and creativity in exploiting blackjack opportunities. Who would think you could actually earn a living at blackjack? Who would think you could still do it in the 1980's or 1990's?! Subsequently the pioneers shifted to other areas. For example, Woods and Benter became multi-millionaires by creating horse racing syndicates in Hong Kong. Others shifted to poker, video poker, or sports betting. Stanford Wong and Anthony Curtis pursued the crazy idea of publishing blackjack and sports information on the web! The problem is straight counting has become a marginal commoditized activity. At some level it is a skill a teenager could pick up from an easily available books. And it takes little imagination to want to emulate Uston. I have heard of counters who refuse to play other more profitable opportunities because they only want to play blackjack. Other counters insist on dangerous handheld games when superior shoe games exist. Smart ones will sell comps, trade frequent flier points, sell beanie baby toys on E-bay, develop computer software, market financial products, etc.

Kim Lee, I like your posts for the honesty concerning using gambling to make a living. When you read books from these early pioneers they explain sophisticated team play concepts they used. They also pooled bankrolls from people who believed in them. The books are written almost like a fairy tale. Ken Uston's Million Dollar blackjack talks about how he would put $50,000 in to the cage and make marker withdrawls to feel secure about not having to carry such a large amount of money. I do not know if there are many average people with going professional dreams that would have the fortitude and psychological stability to do such a thing. Ken did not make the money all by himself. He used teams. The casinos believed he and others like him could not beat the game. Then when they discovered he could he had to sue for the right to play. Then he was no longer a welcome face in Vegas and Atlantic City. He had to put up with crap all the time. I do not know how he could enjoy it. The streaks and the hastles outside of the game. It would be wiser to diversify your abilities if a player was considering gambling a career. I like horse racing. The Milk Maid will not let me try sport betting. I wish not to try poker. I believe to be a professional it would be best not to have many responsibilities in life such as family. So a professional gambler may be a very lonely lifestyle. Gambling will always be an enjoyment to me but will never be my sole means of income. I believe horse racing has better opportunties for a professional than blackjack. But knowing I have the abilities to spank the pony man and put the hustle down at the tables does not make me desire to live the life of a lonely professional gambler. I have too many other interests and valued relationships in my life.

"Smart ones will sell comps, trade frequent flier points, sell beanie baby toys on E-bay, develop computer software, market financial products, etc."

My start in gambling resulted from my desire to work for a hedge fund but I lack a strong understanding of probabilities. As a result, I read numerous gambling books and decided to focus on blackjack. It was tough making money counting cards at blackjack and lost money for first year. A couple of years later, I turned to video poker for comps and took to the challenge of cracking IGT's monopoly on multi-line video-poker. It's tough to bring out a new idea. My next challenge is to open a casino (at least I know most of the tricks from the other side).

Go to page 2 for my invention, Ten Seven Poker(TM), which is currently being offers in over 100% return. The royal flush consolation prize, if offered, increases the return. Besides the royal flush consolidation prize, the game includes a money back feature for flops that are "losers". The game also includes certain game features that are attractive to advantage players.

Cheers.

of course blackjack is a risky business. It's not easy for anyone to make the change from a steady work paycheck to the uncertain paycheck of blackjack,especially for the newbies who often post about "Going Pro"... in a dream of overnight fashion.

If we could put a dollar sign on the millions of $$$ lost by inexperienced card counters, I wouldn't be surprised if the number flirted with all the money progression gamblers have lost.

I would say many of the newbies who use to frequently post about their blackjack experiences on the internet all the time, and no longer do, may have tapped out or gave up. They came to realize there is NO gravy awaiting them, but rather a ruthless game that dont forgive.

TG

If we could put a dollar sign on the millions of $$$ lost by inexperienced card counters, I wouldn't be surprised if the number flirted with all the money progression gamblers have lost.

Well, counting is tough, but its not that tough. Inexperienced card counters may certainly go broke and/or fail for a variety of reasons, but collectively I very much doubt they lose money. You have do something unbelievable bad such as continually reversing the sign of the count to actually have a negative expectation as a counter.

i just assumed by 'inexperienced' and losing money he meant the ones that dont succeed, and dont win their money back for whatever reason (BR, discipline, etc)...

...what I was getting at was that most bad counters go broke through overbetting or quit because of the flux. However, since they collectively have a positive expectation, a few lucky talentless individuals will win way above expectation winning back the losses of all the others and then some.

"You have do something unbelievable bad such as continually reversing the sign of the count to actually have a negative expectation as a counter."

False, you can have an edge and still go broke.

I used to find it hard to push out those max bets when the count called for it. (Especially after the practice sessions playing BS at table min.) Then I got BJRM and saw what this truncated spread was doing to my EV and ROR. It's far worse than making a mistake with the count.

there is a big difference between an "edge" and a "useful edge" You may have an edge spreading 1-3 at double deck, but the variance to ev ratio will be so high that you might have to play 500 hours a year for 5 years to have a decent chance of being ahead. The edge you achieve with a narrow spread is just not very useful since the variance is so high that just plain bad luck may wipe you out before your edge can exert itself.

is that the collective is playing with an edge. Playing to a safe ROR protects individuals. Variance will not equally distribute the winnings among all the overbetting counters. But the ev will be there. Most will go broke, a few will do quite well. The overall return will converge upon action * advantage. Overbetting can't really change the overall edge. Playing to a small ROR means that you are willing to sacrifice a good portion of your potential win in order to have a greater probability of success.

John, simply says you have to make unbelievable counting errors to lose. This is far from true. He then carries on saying the winning card counters will win back all the money the losers lost. This is far from true. He also says you have to have a negative EV to lose. This is far from true. I dont assume anything other than what John says, is what he means.

"Overbetting can't really change the overall edge. Playing to a small ROR means that you are willing to sacrifice a good portion of your potential win in order to have a greater probability of success."

Overbetting does change the overall edge, it will increase the edge in positive counts, and lower the overall edge in negative counts. The price is a higher ROR. Oddly enough, both can have devastating effects on risk of ruin, even though they are totally opposite.

TG

1. You don't have to make unbelievable errors to lose...just plain bad luck can destroy even a fairly well bankrolled counter (1% risk is just that...1 out of 100 go bust).

2. You DO have to make unbelievable errors to lose your edge if you spread wide enough...but your edge is long term, not short term so if your errors increase variance you put yourself at the greater mercy of bad/good luck

3. Variance has NO IMPACT on long term EV. 1000 underbankrolled counters cumulative action is probably enough every month for the cume action to get into the longrun. That is, if 1000 counters each have a 50% risk of ruin you can bet that the sum total of their action will still equal action x edge. The fact that 500 go bust means nothing to the casinos...the 500 who don't go bust will win bigger (because by definition they were overbetting). ((This is the basis for the famous "hail mary bankroll"))

You wrote:

John, simply says you have to make unbelievable counting errors to lose. This is far from true. "

He didn't say that. That statement is not true.

He then carries on saying the winning card counters will win back all the money the losers lost. This is far from true. He also says you have to have a negative EV to lose. This is far from true. I dont assume anything other than what John says, is what he means.

If you really feel this way, then please pay attention to exactly what he said

John May: "Inexperienced card counters may certainly go broke and/or fail for a variety of reasons, but collectively I very much doubt they lose money. You have do something unbelievable bad such as continually reversing the sign of the count to actually have a negative expectation as a counter. "

This is a true statement. Your misquoting it suggests to me that you simply don't understand it.

PS: The in the above quotes was added by me.

You and bigplayer are assuming every card counter mimics each other.

Let's look at the REAL world;

If an individual player(A)loses half his bank, gets frustrated and decides to give up blackjack. Does player B win the loss back plus the expectation of what player A left behind,plus the expectation of his own(player B)?

Of course in the real world many other variables apply, but for practical purposes we'll say player A and B have the same skills,strategy,edge,cover,spread,bankroll.etc.

ps...simple yes or no question will be fine,no math needed.

thanks,
TG