I have just finished an extremely frustrating five-week blackjack trip in which I suffered serious carnage to my bankroll.
After about two weeks I hit a high point of $9,000 in the black, yet from then on hardly had a winning day. I ended the trip losing $13,000 overall meaning that in three weeks (about 120 hours) I lost $22,000.
I bet in $25 units so this was the equivalent of 880 units.This is the most serious downdraft I have experienced and it has damaged my confidence, though I do have the bnakroll to recover.
I would be interested to know if anyone out there has sustained a similar run of bad luck or whether a losing streak such as this suggests I might have been doing something wrong?
My play was in several locatons in the US and I mixed it up - playing single-deck, double-deck and six-deck.
In the shoe games I sometimes wonged in. Those occasions when I came in from the start I came out of at least half of shoes where the count dipped to worse than -1 after two packs had been dealt.
I played only single-deck games where at least 30 cards were used and double-deck where at least 60 cards used. In shoes I aimed for 80% penetration or better unless they offered surrender in which case I was prepared to accept 75% penetration.
I also tried to stick to less crowded tables - playing at most with just one other in single-deck, two others in double-deck and three others in the shoes.
My spread for one-deck games was generally 1-4; for double-deck 1-6 and for the shoes 1-12. Over the few years I have used this staking level I have averaged around $50 per hour.
Is this heavy defeat within the normal bounds of standard deviation or is it simply too high to be true?
