Tell me this: Do cards know when TC is +10 and do they know the order ...

Tell me this: Do cards know when TC is +10 and do they know the order of the deck?

If the TC is +10 and you don�t have any bet restrictions and you got the bankroll to support the table limit bet in this situation, and if you bet that limit and won.

Tell me this: Did you won because you are a �skillful player or advantage player� ?
Did you won because the TC was +10 or because you�ve got lucky?

Further more, if you�ve lost that bet it was because you�ve been unlucky or because the standard deviation?

How about if you keep betting the MAX and in the process you keep losing and losing until you don�t have a bankroll anymore? Do you still consider yourself an advantage player? Hmmm?

Do you know how many so called �advantage BJ players� are hanging on the rail in Vegas? All of those players have used the so called �expert� and �scientific� advice of betting as much as you can get away with on positive counts. Off course within bankroll limitations and still managed to lose it all.

Now, are those players still considered �advantage players� ?? Well, I guess they are because they actually played correctly and they did the right move at the time. ....,What a life ...eh?

Puiu

"Do cards know when TC is +10 and do they know the order of the deck?"

You have understood nothing!..

You may have in fact won money playing Blackjack but the why and the how have completely escaped you.

You wrote:
You may have in fact won money playing Blackjack but the why and the how have completely escaped you.

Isn�t the purpose why we all play this game, �, To make money?
Making real money is the name of the game Cyrus. Just staying in front of your computer and running sims that gives you all the BJ math in the world it means nothing if you can not manage to extract real money from the game. You may get an extra 0.25% on your sims if you do this and that but the real test is how much $$$ you have at the end of the day.

Well, I guess you are right. I have won a lot. I�m playing this game a lot and the best thing I know is how to make money using BJ as a vehicle. That�s all I have to know. I am also much more willing to go home after taking a modest win. If I get up (starting with initial bets normally ranging from $100 to Table Limit, I do not under any circumstances, allow myself to go home a loser. This is critical! I do not give back everything I have made in a session.

Rightly or wrongly, I honestly believe it to be perhaps the single most important skill for a player to master. You�ve got to extract money out from the game, Cyrus. Else, Why play in the first place?

Puiu

If the count is most on positive and you have a large number of your bets out there but at the end of your session you�ve lost real money. That doesn�t count?

Just because the count was positive most of the time and you�ve placed a very large sum of money in those circumstances it means that you have won? Right? In theory you are a winner because you play it right! Hmm?

If you bet 1,000,000 on plus counts and the computer tells you that you�ve got 2% EV but you�ve lost 300,000 in the process, that is fine with you! ..Hmmm? In theory you have won $20,000? Hmmm?

You call yourself an advantage player?

Puiu

Dear Puiu,

I agree with you. You have studied and done your homework and learned to count and vary with your indexs, and how to manage your money. You have done everything you can to be a success but unfortuanately it has not gone well for you apparently. Might I recommend the progressions page to you while it won't offer you a statistical advantage it might be something your mentally capable of...good luck buddy.

I guess I'm wondering whether we're not chasing a bit of false precision here.
I studied medicine for 6 years in Europe and 5 years of Engineering in a US college, and we were big on seeing things in perspective.

When I see people talking about gaining .02% advantage by some sophisticated means in a game like blackjack that has a huge amount of variation I lose my temper.

Now, I have a problem with this too: "Avoid the XXX casino - They Hit soft 17's." Now, as I recall, hitting soft 17 gives the house an extra edge somewhere around 2/10 of a percentage point.

However, it's going to take a LOT of hands, the only problem is that the long run is much longer that our lifetime for that difference to resolve itself. Just for fun, I tracked dealer soft 17's the last 5 times I went to the casino. I played a total of just over 9 hours, and in that time only 3 dealer soft 17's came up, and in each case the H17 rule caused me to win a hand I would otherwise have lost (the dealer busted all three times). Now, this sounds like a statistically low number of soft 17's, and I know that in the long run the H17 rule will help the dealer more often than hurt. But I also know that in one individual session of blackjack the H17 vs. S17 rule is pretty much irrelevant to the player. It makes a difference to the house, of course, because of the huge number of hands that are played overall. If everything else were equal, I'd of course pick a casino that used S17. But I don't know that I'd so much as walk an extra 10 minutes to get to one. I might just pick the place with prettier waitresses. It's important to keep these numbers in perspective.

Cab fare to a casino with better rules is probably a net waste of money, unless the rules where you are REALLY bad. And plane fare to Vegas or Reno just to get better rules is probably a gigantic waste.

Perhaps we should be looking for better approximations rather than more perfect counting strategies.

Puiu

Dear Puiu,

Let me begin by just stating my opinion. Your post talks about your vast medical education in Europe and your Enginnering education in the United States. As an Engineer myself I can't imagine what school you went to that left you so woefully inadequate in comprehending even the most basic concepts of statistics. First to devalue 2/10% in a process that has a maximum yield of around 1%.
Secondly to attempt to draw any kind of a conclusion from your experiences at 9 hours of play. I read your post on the progressions
page where you admit that you play both count and progressions. So here we have it you play progression then come here and rant and rave about how pathetic we are to count. Give me a break. My conclusion is that your education is as imaginary as you advantage play.

It just means you are more likely to win than the house, doesnt guarantee you that you will. Thats better than having lousy odds against the house, no?

education to realize that the theory of probability is logic, not math, and he won't bet his hat and ass on it. One half of one percent
falls in to the pure luck possibility.

Tell me this: Do cards know when TC is +10 and do they know the order of the deck?

No. Point is, YOU know something about the cards when the TC is +10. Ok, maybe you don't, but you should.

ETF

Be honest, totally honest. Have you even played 5000 hands of BJ where you truely counted? I'm not saying a count/prog, just counting using your bet variations and indicies? I would bet you haven't. Furthermore, I have trouble reading your post and believing you studied anything other then maybe philosophy. I don't mean to be offensive but your thinking and reasoning seems to be almost like a ploppy. It seems almost like you've memorized the facts about counting but you have no idea what those facts mean?

Dear Puiu

MIT is one of the finest Engineering schools in the world. I applied there but my grades were not good enough to get in. Without being crass, I leave it to the readers of this post to determine for themselves if someone without any fundamental understanding of statistics and probability is indeed an MIT graduate. But I will make a deal with you...I'll believe you that you are an MIT graduate if you'll believe me that I'm Claudia Schiffer Secret lover. Do we have a deal?

don't realize that Everything is Mathematics. Logic, Algebra, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Analysis, Vectors, Probability and Statistics are all the same thing. All Tools that the mathematician uses to solve a problem (all math). If you make an analogy along this premise to test it, then what you wrote was. That Yourself and P have enough education to know that Hammer,screwdriver,
etc is not a tool. Is that what you meant to say?

Frank -

<< education to realize that the theory of probability is logic, not math, and he won't bet his hat and ass on it. One half of one percent falls in to the pure luck possibility. >>

And yet the casinos will bar counters.
And yet they WON'T bar Jerry P. (who is "smart" enough to play "correctly".)

It is clear there is a flaw in your thinking.

As you state, "casinos bar any consistant [sic] big winner";
and we know casinos don't bar John Patrick;

Therefore: (There's a syllogism here, Frankie - can you spot it?)