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Blackjack Strategy
Alright I understand that blackjack as a game has a -ev but according to the wizard of odds the house has about a 1% (0.65387% according to the wizard for party but I doubt I filled it out right) advantage. With this being such a small advantage I would like to think it would be possible to make money for quite some time playing this game.
My thinking is as follows -This is most likely flawed just want someone to explain the flaw- Lets say you bet $1 and lose. If you bet $2 and win you are now even. Lets say you bet $1, $2, and lose both. Then you bet $3. You are up even. Lets say you bet $1, $2, $3 but you win the $6 bet you are still even. Lets say you bet $1,$2,$3,$6 but you win on the $18 bet you are then up $6. From then everytime you make an additional bet you are making money whenever you when. $1,$2,$3,$6,$18 etc.. As soon as you win your hand you would start over from the bottom. Would you not be able to make money off of the blackjack paying 3:2. (This assumes a simplistic game of no doubles and splits and no insurance etc). Now if you factor in that you would be a "favorite" to win if dealt 11 and the dealer has a 6 showing This would seem like it could be a very profitable game. The major issue I see with this logic is that the betting gets extremely large relatively quickly but the odds of losing 5+ blackjack hands in a row seem slim. Does this not seem like a reasonable way to play blackjack? (Consisently betting the same amount does NOT seem like you would be possible to win since you are going to lose more hands then you win.) I have been doing better in blackjack then I ever have (I have made a few hundred dollars playing in the past couple days) but I am more interested in the theory... is it a solid one? If you want to minimize the betting growth you can always just double your bet everytime although this would make it more difficult to show a long term profit. Any comments? Anyone else try this? |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
Thank you I knew I read something simliar to it somewhere just never seen it applied to blackjack only roulette
I will look that over after I get home from work but it looks semi-promising. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
This strategy was proposed a few hundred years ago for playing roulette. However it was proved at about the same time that -EV games can't be beaten no matter how you play them.
Your strategy will simply lead to a high probability of winning a very small amount and a low probability of losing a very large amount. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
You say the chances of losing many hands in a row are slim but say you lose 7 in a row, which isnt that unlikely if you play frequently, you would be betting over $100 just to break even from your initial $1 bet. If you lose just a couple more hands then your bets quickly escalate to up and over $1,000 just to break even.
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
Indeed this is Martingale and has been discussed a zillion times here and elsewhere.
Casinos are filled with players who think they are the first to have thought of this and also think it's a fool-proof way to 'beat' the system. I was a blackjack player and dealer for awhile and have met MANY people who had some warped logic for why this was a good idea. It's very simple why the stuff doesn't work but it's actually not easy to explain to somebody who doesn't yet understand it imo. I'll just leave it at "it's a pretty bad idea" and you can study up and go from there. However, with correct basic-strategy, you can play profitable blackjack on the internet if you are interested and many people in the internet-bonuses form do exactly that. They bonus-chase from site to site. They are still at a 1% disadvantage as a player, but if you expect to only lose $30 at the tables while clearing a $200 bonus then it's all +EV for you. The casinos are hoping that you will play more AFTER you clear the bonus (plus, some players bust out before they finish the bonus) thus they are willing to sacrific some EV to get you in the doors. In blackjack at online-casinos it is wise to play a little more at their place even after you clear the bonus. Lots of casinos don't like it when they feel you are abusing the system (note that this isn't really a problem with poker bonuses) |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
You lose 1% on every bet in the long run.
This means if you keep betting $1 you will lose 1% of the total bet, in the long run. Similarly, if you play long enough with your system every time you get to betting $18 you are losing 1% of it. Etc, etc, etc. It doesn't matter what system you employ. If it's 1% to the house, in the long run you lose 1% of the total amount you bet. In the short run, you could be lucky and win a few dollars; or, immediately hit a catastrophic run of losers and lose your shirt. The best bet you can make is to add up every dollar you think you will ever bet on blackjack in your life and bet it on the red in roulette. It's virtually 50%/50% that you will win an enormous amount of money. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Uh, how bout the simple actaully practical explanation? Eventually you WILL have a losing streak which , based on your system, would call for you to bet more than the max bet allowed in the game. When this happens, you will be unable to recoup your losses - which will in fact be more than your total wins prior.
If you had unlimited money and the casino was willing to accept bet of any size, your system would in fact work. Neither of those two factors are true. While your odds of losign 10 bets ina row are small (~0.1%), if you play long enough, it is guaranteed to happen. If you started at $1, you would need to bet $1024 on the next wager - well above the table limits. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
Uh, how bout the simple actaully practical explanation? Eventually you WILL have a losing streak which , based on your system, would call for you to bet more than the max bet allowed in the game. When this happens, you will be unable to recoup your losses - which will in fact be more than your total wins prior. If you had unlimited money and the casino was willing to accept bet of any size, your system would in fact work. Neither of those two factors are true. While your odds of losign 10 bets ina row are small (~0.1%), if you play long enough, it is guaranteed to happen. If you started at $1, you would need to bet $1024 on the next wager - well above the table limits. [/ QUOTE ] ....bingo! You win the prize for the most practical reason why Martingale does not work. Back in the mid-70's when I first started going to Vegas, one night I ran into a grizzled old 'veteran' at the BJ table. He advocated the system, and because I didn't know better, I played it along with him. I won a pile of $$ doing it, BUT, in hindsight, I now know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was one lucky mother. I started reading BJ strategy books after that, and sheepishly realized the error of my ways. I ended up playing a modified basic strategy with a simple count and did reasonably well into the early 80's.....Until the pit bosses finally woke up and would consistently break the deck, switch dealers, etc. at any table that they suspected card counting was going on. It got to be way too much work, and I very rarely play any more. I'll do it recreationally with friends at a $5 or $10 table, but no more $200-$500 per hand/two hands at a time for me!! I'm just not that good at it to justify the exposure. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
What you are actually doing with a Martingale is trading a high probability of a small win for a low probability of a huge loss. The net result is that your EV as a percentage of your total moey bet is exactly the same as if you didn't use the progression. Your EV in actual dollars is worse because you are making bigger betrs. Also, as others have said already, any significant losing strek will have you risking a lot of money to win one unit.
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
(CLIFF NOTES @ BOTTOM)
I've been a blackjack dealer for the last 4 months and I can tell you that this system is the worst. I can't tell you how many times I've run off 7 wins against someone without even batting an eye. This happens ALL the time. Lets say you are betting 5 a hand (standard bj minimum @ casinos) and you lose 7 in a row. 5 - 10 - 20 - 40 - 80 - 160 - 320... so on that eighth hand you are wagering $640 bucks to win $5. You are down $635 total in 7 hands and are one hand away from being down $1275. IMO the following way is the way BJ should be played (from experience). lets say you sit down at a table and play 10 bucks a hand and go on a 7 hand losing streak. That is a 70 dollar loss. No need to panic because all you need is one good run and you are up. Everytime you win, place an extra chip onto your bet. So if you win a 10 dollar bet, the next hand you are going to bet 15. Win that one and you will be betting 20, etc. If you go on a 5 hand winning streak, here is what you should win: Hand 1 : Bet 10 .. Win 10 Hand 2 : Bet 15 (put 5 back on your stack) .. Win 15 Hand 3 : Bet 20 (put 10 back on your stack) .. Win 20 Hand 4 : Bet 25 (put 15 back on your stack) .. Win 25 Hand 5 : Bet 30 (put 20 back on your stack) .. Win 30 OK... in 5 hands you have just turned 10 bucks into 110 (profiting 100 bucks). On the 6th hand, I usually bring it down to 25... if I win then I bring it down to 20 and if I keep winning, I just keep it at 20 bucks/hand. __________________________________________________ ___ At this point I start to think that I'm due for a loss, so I bring my bet down 5 bucks a hand for 2 hands. Hand 6: Bet 25 (put 35 back on your stack) .. Win 25 Hand 7: Bet 20 (put 30 back on your stack) .. Win 20 __________________________________________________ __ I just keep it at 20 bucks/hand until I lose Hand 8: 20 bucks (put 20 back on your stack) ... Lose Ok, so you went on a 7 hand winning streak and turned 10 bucks into 135 (after the 8th hand loss). This is also the least aggressive way that you can play this system. You can be more aggressive off the start and full press your $10 right away, then when you win the $20 bet you can take back 10 and be betting $30 bucks on your third hand. Cliff Notes: When upping your bet, make sure you are using the casino's money, and not your own. IMO this is the best way to play blackjack. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
the strategy above is just as flawed as any martingale system. Every bet has -EV. No batting strategy will allow you to beat the game. (Without counting of course).
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
the strategy above is just as flawed as any martingale system. Every bet has -EV. No batting strategy will allow you to beat the game. (Without counting of course). [/ QUOTE ] It's not designed to be a flawless system... but it's the best way to manage your money when playing blackjack. It will give you the most return on your money if you hit a hot streak, and will give you the least amount of loss when you hit a bad streak. The EXACT opposite is true for the Martingale. It is a very profitable way to bet IMO, as it gives you a chance to make some real money. I see thousands of hands played out a day, trust me [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
You're wrong.
What you're doing is pretty much the same as a martingale, just not as severe. Lots of people believe in that stuff. That doesn't mena that it's correct. And your limited experience and selective memory of the times you saw it work great mean diddly to this discussion unfortunately. Lots of dealers claim to know the best way to play just because they've been doing it for 10 years, 30 years, whatever. But most do not. If you aren't counting cards and want to play blackjack in a way that minimizes your losses then you need to bet the minimum on each hand. Betting the 'house money' and stuff like that is really no different than all the other martingale stuff. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
In the orginal posted I noted the obvious flaw I was just thinking about it and figured there had to be some sort of simliar system...
I am just noting that I have played blackjack whenever bored for a while and well I have been winning recently.. using this method despite the flaws. Anyone have comments on Wackitys system? it seems decent might be worth trying to see how it works Like it has been said I understand there is no way for +ev on blackjack on the net (cant count) but I am curious about how some people do play the game and this system thus far has made me actually walk away from black jack with more money then I sat down with I have actually left with 5 times what I sit down with on multiple occasions When I played blackjack in the past I would almost always lose WackityWhiz your avatar is very distracting btw |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Bob,
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I feel that progressive betting is a million times better than the martingale system. I understand that BJ can't be beaten with any specific betting strategy, but progressive betting gives you the best chance at a very profitable day IMO. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Jeff - If you press ESC my avatar will pose for you [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Just take your inital $10 bet and do this then:
10 wins, double to 20 20 wins double to 40 40 wins, keep same bet now 80 in your stack 40 wins, keep same bet, now 120 in your stack. 4 wins at you're at 120 risking $10. But the house edge is still the same, and you aren't going to change that. It's all about the action baby! |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Is there any more of an indisputable fact in the world that so many people refuse to understand or believe?
No non-counting betting strategy does anything to affect your win rate, period. It is a fact. Yet practically no one in the world believes it to be true. Man the casinos are good at marketing. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Basically, you're telling gamblers to press their luck, and if they have some luck, because they've increased their bets, they will have won more than the guy who reduces his bet to 1 unit when he wins.
However, in fact, because of blackjacks, splits and doubles all working to make it an almost even game, (using basic strategy), blackjack is a game where you win less hands than you lose, but some of those you win pay more. Pressing in a game where you win less hands isn't good play, in the long run. It's better to press your bet when you lose and decrease your bet when you win, imo. The simplest system for this is to add 1 unit when you lose and decrease 1 unit when you win. A run of bets might go something like this, (leaving out doubled bets, etc): -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 +7 +6 -5 +6 -5 +6 -5 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 Running total: -1 -3 -6 -10 -15 -21 -14 -8 -13 -7 -12 -6 -11 -5 0 +4 +7 +9 You'll notice you win as many units as the number of winning bets you made to get back down to a 1 unit bet again. However, you are in profit after 9 losses and only 7 wins, in this particular sequence, so some might choose to revert to a 1 unit bet after the 16th, or, indeed, even after the 15th, bet, and "start again". But, whatever. It's all luck, anyway, and you can have bad sequences even with this conservative betting strategy. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
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I feel that progressive betting is a million times better than the martingale system. [/ QUOTE ] Martingale is a progressive betting system, it just happens to progress after loses instead of after wins. It all equals the same [censored]- you lose in the end. The only way to win long-term is to count and track slugs, but with continuous shuffle machines or weak penetration these days, it's a thing of the past for the most part. Find a $1 table in Vegas, flat bet, and drink for free. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
Is there any more of an indisputable fact in the world that so many people refuse to understand or believe? No non-counting betting strategy does anything to affect your win rate, period. It is a fact. Yet practically no one in the world believes it to be true. Man the casinos are good at marketing. [/ QUOTE ] I think if you doubled every hand that would be a very good way to your win rate. Not increase, just affect (negatively). |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
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If you had unlimited money and the casino was willing to accept bet of any size, your system would in fact work. [/ QUOTE ] No, it wouldn't. This has been discussed in-depth in the probability forum. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
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[ QUOTE ] the strategy above is just as flawed as any martingale system. Every bet has -EV. No batting strategy will allow you to beat the game. (Without counting of course). [/ QUOTE ] It's not designed to be a flawless system... but it's the best way to manage your money when playing blackjack. It will give you the most return on your money if you hit a hot streak, and will give you the least amount of loss when you hit a bad streak. The EXACT opposite is true for the Martingale. It is a very profitable way to bet IMO, as it gives you a chance to make some real money. I see thousands of hands played out a day, trust me [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] The best way to manage your money gambling and to last as long as possible is simple. Bet as little as possible each hand. Seriously, there is no "system" better than that. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
The Martingale, and most other double-up betting systems, actually do have a use in live blackjack (not online). They serve as a cover for a good card counter.
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
In ANY gambling game your long-term result win (or loss) will = Total of All Your Bets * Your (or House) Advantage. Shorter: Win = TotalBets * Advantage.
By definition, as rearranging this formula gives the definition of "Advantage" (Advantage = Win/TotalBets). If you bet a total of $1000, or $1,000,000, or any other amount, at a game where you have a -1% advantage, then you will, on average, lose 1% of it (doh - by definition!) The exact sequence of your bets which contribute to your TotalBets (the $1,000 or $1,000,000 or whatever) does not alter the Total (with another "doh!"). The total is the total, regardless whether it is arrived add by adding up bets which are increased after a win, or after a loss, and/or by how much you increase them (I think I learned this school when I was about 8 or 9, a+b = b+a, the total is the same regardless). When you play blackjack the cards you get, and the decision choices available to you, are not affected by the size of your bet. In other words, regardless of whether you bet small or big on a hand, the outcome will be the same. Thus the Advantage does not change (in simpler terms: your chance of winning or losing a hand is not affected by the size of your bet). So we have established that in the formula: Win = TotalBets * Advantage that altering the sequence of your bets affects neither the TotalBets nor Advantage values. So, surprise, Win won't be affected either. If you bet $x at a y% advantage game, you will, in the long-run, get a result of $x * y%. This is the definition of "Advantage" AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT THIS (unless you are capable of changing one of the laws of mathematics. If so you are a God, and probably have better things to do than play blackjack). The ONLY thing you can control, and only in the SHORT TERM - is the distribution of results. If you went to a casino and played a martingale system, and left as soon as you were at least $1 up, then you would walk away the winner something like 85%-90% of your visits (exactly how often depends mostly on the number of double-ups permitted by the maximum:minimum bet ratio available to you). Of course, a whole bunch of $1 wins, is somewhat ruined by a $1023 loss! And the sad news is that stopping gambling one day, and restarting the next, is mathematically indentical to playing non-stop. Win=TotalBet*Advantage regardless of when you go home to sleep. Here's an experiment: grab a coin and toss it a whole lot of times (a few hundred would be good). Record whether you toss a Head or Tail. (You can do this easily in Excel) Treat each Head as a win, and each Tail as a loss. All bets are a flat $1. After a series of bets (maybe only one long) has reached a $1 profit "go home" (ie. record that you had a winning session). Start the next session (from the next coin toss) as a new session. You'll eventually win EVERY session (because, sooner or later, there will be a run of luck sufficient to get you to $1 up). It might take a VERY long time (hundreds, thousands, even millions of coin tosses), but it is mathematically certain that eventually ever session will reach +$1 (such is the nature of a "random walk") Now - WITH EXACTLY THE SAME SERIES OF COIN TOSSES - repeat the accounting exercise, this time scoring a TAIL as a $1 WIN, and a Head as a $1 loss (ie. reverse them). You will the identical result, ie. you will every single session (sooner or later). So, regardless of whether Heads are winning bets, or Tails are winning bets, you can win EVERY SINGLE SESSION. Surely, if a series of coin tosses results in winning sessions with Heads being good, it must result in losing sessions with Heads being bad? Nope. Regardless, every session will be a winning one (actually the last session is probably still "in progress", but if you'd tossed enough coins you could still have hundreds of winning sessions and only one still unfinished, and that might only be down a few dollars, ie. it's not signficant). This apparent paradox isn't real. The reality is that your sample contains a fixed number of Heads and Tails (eg. 346 Heads, 334 Tails). The difference between these two numbers (eg. 12) is how much you won or lost. Dividing the sample into "sessions" does not alter the total. I will repeat this - it is important: The quantity of winning sessions does not affect the total win (or loss). Now let's introduce a Margingale. If you worked through the above experiment (or just thought about it carefully), you'll have seen that a losing session can take a LONG time to get back up to $1. Sometimes only a handful of coin tosses is required, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds. If you were keen enough to do a REALLY large test, some sessions that went south early might take thousands of coin tosses to eventually come back up. There is a very quick and easy way to get back to a $1 profit - Martingale. After a loss, double your bet. Now it only takes ONE SINGLE WIN to get to +$1, regardless of how many losses preceeded it. Win = +$1 Loss, Win = -$1 + $2 = +$1 Loss, Loss, Win = -$1 + -$2 + $4 = +$1 Loss, Loss, Loss, Win = -$1 + -$2 + -$4 + $8 = +$1 etc. Boy! Imagine that, rather than having to toss hundreds or even thousands of coins to slowly inch our loss back up to +$1, a dollar at a time, we can do it with one single winning toss. It is, in fact, impossible to get there any faster. Go back to the SAME series of coin tosses, and with Heads being a win, and doubling up after a loss. What is the effect on your results? If you work your way through the first few sessions you see that the sessions are VERY much shorter than the flat betting approach, because all it takes is one single Head to win. You will win every single session (because, sooner or later, usually sooner, you'll throw a Head), and every session wins you a net $1. Each and every Head means you've won $1, regardless of how many Tails are in front of it. So count the number of Heads in your sample, that how many dollars up you are. Now do exactly the same thing for Tails being the winning bet. Each and every Tail means you've won a $1. The number of tails in your sample is the total you've won. [The last session might still be in progress, but assuming your sample is very large this will be insignificant. If you stop the entire sample gathering exercise after the last two tosses are different, ie. either HT or TH, you will either finish the last session $1 up, or have the last, unfinished session $1 down. In other words, if there is an unfinished session, it is irrelevant.] This sounds like paradise - a certain way of winning money! Where's the flaw? There is only one flaw: some of those session will have several losses in a row. You cannot double your bets indefinitely, you will hit either the house limit or your bankrolls limit (let's say that limit is $1,000). 10 losses in a row takes you over $1,000. What are the chances of having 10 losses in a row? Annoyingly, about 1-in-1,000. In other words, by the time you've accumulated 1000 winning sessions of $1, you're about due for a loss of $1,000. Net result: $0. Bummer. You've had 1000 winning sessions, only 1 losing session, and you are net $0. What a waste of effort! [What did you expect on a even-odds coin toss game? Remember Win=TotalBet*Advantage, and what answer do you get when Advantage=0?] What happens if, by bad luck, the $1,000 losing session comes before you've played 1000 winning sessions? What happens if it came after only 200 winning sessions? Obviously you'd be down $800, with no more money to play. You go home a loser (hardly an unusual occurrence in a casino). But what about if the losing session did NOT come in the first 1000 sessions? Ah, now you are a winner. Let's say you've played 1100 sessions and still haven't had the $1000 disaster. You've probably had a few scares, when the bets got to $256 or $512, but 1100 winning sessions and no losing sessions means you are up $1100. What do you do now? You think you're a genius, you're unbeatable, you're invincible. You do NOT stop gambling; if anything you up the odds (you have the really smart idea that if you can win $1100 starting at $1 per bet, why not start at $2, or even $5? What you should do is buy your wife a very nice present (this advice is biased). Gamblers rarely do, it is almost impossible for them to quit while ahead. Obviously (they delude themselves) they are winners (as if it had anything to do with them, rather than blind luck), so quitting would be foolish. Easy money awaits... Casino's do not offer even-odds games. In reality the chance having a 10 run loss is greater than 1-in-1000 (in blackjack, for example, where you only win 46% of your hands (ignoring pushes), the chance of a 10 run losing streak is 0.54^10 = 2-in-1000. In double-0 roulette, it is (20/38)^10 = 1.6-in-1000. Chances are you will hit your bad streak before you have accumulated enough win to cover it. The easiest way to visualize a martingale's effect is as follows (this is based on the mathematical law that a+b = b+a, ie. the sequence in which you add numbers doesn't affect the total). Take your series of coin tosses, and martingale bets. Extract all those bets which were $1 (ie. the first bet of a session). Look at them. I guarantee that approximately half of them are winners, and half losers (it was a coin toss game, so obviously). Now extract all the $2 bets. I guarantee half of them are winners, and half losers. Now extract all the $4 bets.... No matter what you bet, your chance of winning is 50/50 (hardly surprising on a coin toss game). If you bet $4 (which means the previous $2 bet lost), you win half the time and lose half the time. Same for every other bet denomination. In other words, whether or not you won or lost the previous bet does not alter your chance of winning the next bet at all. The next bet will win 50% of the time. Add up the total amount you bet in your sample using the martingale system. Let's say it totalled $1,000,000. Now let's play again. Pull out your coin and bet a completely random amount, either $1, $2, $4, $8, $16 or any other such multiple, up to $1024. Toss the coin, record you win or loss, and the total amount bet so far. Repeat, and keep repeating until the total amount you have bet is $1,000,000 (same as the martingale total). Extract all those bets which were $1 (ie. the first bet of a session). Look at them. I guarantee that approximately half of them are winners, and half losers (it was a coin toss game, so obviously). Now extract all the $2 bets. I guarantee half of them are winners, and half losers. Now extract all the $4 bets.... In other words, betting martingale, or betting random, will produce the same win rate for every bet amount (50/50). And if every bet amount has the same chance of winning, then OBVIOUSLY, the grand total net total win will be the same too (hint: Win=TotalBet*Advantage). The order in which you've placed the bets makes no difference! Casinos win money for several reasons: 1) All their games have a house advantage 2) "Gamblers' Ruin" (this is what statisticians call the effect that in a gambling game, the person with the least money will the the first to hit a bad run, go bankrupt, and be unable to carry on playing). 3) Winners almost never stop. House advantage is powerful (of course). It is continually nibbling away (like rake at poker), and it adds up powerfully after a long time. Eg. a Martingale on a roulette table has a 1.6-in-1000 chance of hitting 10 losses in a row, even though it only pays 1000-to-1. You are almost twice as likely to hit a 10 run losing streak than you are to accumulate the funds to cover it. And that only gets worse with longer runs. Gamblers' Ruin is what kills Martingale system. Casino games are nearly always very rapid. A good blackjack player, on a good table, can play over 200 hands per hour. 5 hours is 1,000 hands, So a 10 run losing streak can occur twice in 5 hours on a BJ table. So, "System Sellors" (aka "System Purveyors", aka "Con Men", aka "Idiots") often modify Martingale. With Martingale one single win is enough to offset any number of previous losses. This is a huge comeback (impossible to do it faster). But the risk of ruin is very high. So a slower recovery is often proposed (I've seen Fibonacci series, half-Martingale's, and every other weird combination you could think off). All they do is choose a comeback method somewhere between my two examples of flat betting $1 and waiting for what might be hundreds or thousands of tosses to eventually get back to +$1, or martingale (get back in one single winning toss). Just as a coin toss game's Martingale had 1-in-1000 chances of a 1000-to-1 loss, so do all the other betting schemes cancel out. Always Win = TotalBet*Advantage. [Aside: there is a thriving little industry in Vegas where conmen will 'sell' you a betting scheme. They "Sell" the suckers an impressive looking (on paper) modified Martingale system. You don't need to pay them any money up front for this, they assure you, merely a small share of the easy profits you'll make with the wonderful "new" system. With Martingale (or similar) you will win 80%+ of your sessions. At the end of each day you give them 25% of what you won (keeping 75% to yourself). Hopefully they'll get a few payments from you before, as is certain, you have the big losing day. It's a wonderful little con, and works great from the conmen's point of view (they don't risk any of their money, and don't do any work, merely chasing down their daily payments which is often surprisingly easy from the idiots who think a few winning sessions are due to the wonderful new system). Best of all, most humans are unable to understand that Win=TotalBet*Advantage and Martingale's do not alter this truth in any useful respect.] To improve your win you either have to: 1) Improve your Advantage. This means either to bet more when you are more likely to win (equally to bet less when you are more likely to lose), and/or to play differently to increase the chance of your winning. In BJ counting cards is one such method (as is marking cards, there are a diverse range of ways of improving Advantage). Because, in roulette, BJ, and many others, whether or not you won or lost the previous bet has NO effect on your odds on the next bet, so ANY betting scheme that operates on previous winning or losing data is equivalent to random betting. 2) Appropriately alter your TotalBet. If you are playing a -EV game, the best way to increase Win is to make TotalBet=0. If you are playing a +EV game, you can increase Win by increasing TotalBet. Eg. If you are a competent card counter, and can win on a $5 table, then you'll win twice as much on a $10 table - all else being equal (there are many, non-mathematical issues, such as casino heat). However, Gambling is not so much about maximizing win, as it is about maximizing win/risk. This is a whole topic to itself that I won't start here. To the OP (and any other person who cannot see past the smoke and mirrors): NO betting scheme will affect your long-run expected result. Always Win = TotalBet * Advantage. If you don't learnt how to change Advantage you have no hope of affecting your total Win. Short-term results can be affected by betting systems. But these are useful ONLY if you STOP (and NEVER gamble again in your entire life) after reaching your goal. If I was a gambler, I'd bet against that happening. Something like 80-90% of the gamblers in your local casino will lose today. You can do dramatically better than them (by 30-40%), by walking in, placing one single bet, and walking out regardless of the result, never to return. If you want to gamble, and win, you have to work on improving Advantage. You have to make it so that, simply, more of your bets win than lose. Rearranging the sequence of bets (via a Martingale, or whatever), does nothing constructive. To think otherwise is delusional. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Sandra - you rock.
I've explained it similarly before although without all the x and y stuff that tends to turn people off sometimes (I'm easily confused). But one aspect of what Sandra is saying that I have also explained goes like this: If you bet a total of $10k on a game with a 1% disadvantage it doesn't matter whether you bet a little bit at a time, or mix it up, or whatever. Your expectation is still to lose $100 (1% of $10k). So if you bet exactly $100 on every bet for a total of $10k in bets your expectation at the end is -$100. If you bet it in a progressive-type way of $100, $200, $300, $400 (starting over whenever you think it's best, whether you won or lost or are 'playing with house money' or whatever) then once your total of bets reaches $10k your expectation is still -$100. Notice that if you mix it up in ANY way it doesn't matter. formula A: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 100, 200, 300... will have the same expectation as formula B: 300, 100, 500, 900, 50, 200, 400, etc It doesn't freaking matter what order you place those bets in. you can try to avoid this effect as much as you like by varying it in whatever way you choose. You can't escape this fact and whatever logic you choose to try to justify any progressive betting scheme as being 'better' than another is going to be flawed. Once you reach a grand total of $10k in bets at a 1% disadvantage your expectation is -$100. Most of the arguments promoting such progressive-betting 'schemes' are not unlike a fish at your poker-table saying that he's "due" for aces (and is suddenly more likely to get them) because he hasn't gotten them in his last 348 hands. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
sandra's coin-flipping exercise is pretty cool too.
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
So Martingale system doesnt work to win lots of money easily?
[img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Try it!!!
Maybe the magical powers of the martingale will work better for you!! Enjoy!! |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
I understand that 1% -ev is 1% of all bets lost but if I am entering a session with $20 and if I win I play until I am bored (usually when I start losing) If i lose my $20 I go do something else
So far it seems to be working very very well (I haven't played poker today just blackjack and I have made far more then I could in a week of poker at the .50/100 limit..) Also does anyone know the odds of being dealt a winning blackjack.. i.e. you have blackjack and dealer does not |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
I understand that 1% -ev is 1% of all bets lost but if I am entering a session with $20 and if I win I play until I am bored (usually when I start losing) If i lose my $20 I go do something else So far it seems to be working very very well (I haven't played poker today just blackjack and I have made far more then I could in a week of poker at the .50/100 limit..) [/ QUOTE ] Man, I don't know what else to tell you... people have been doing what you have been doing for centuries, and no one has been able to sustain long-term a win rate. Good luck.... |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
Oh I know just interesting to me especially this its been working really good recently.. btw if you find $1 blackjack in vegas you are awesome least I could find was $5 and a sign that said $2 blackjack inside (I think on fremont downtown) and well the table was no where to be found...
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
odds of getting a blackjack are about 1:21 (depends on number of decks though).
i would say that the dealer would have a blackjack when you have a blackjack roughly once in every 21 occurances (although actually less than that since you are taking a T and an A from the shoe that he can't get). The chances obviously increase significantly when the dealer is showing a T or an A. I agree with Mitch Evans regarding your insistence that everything is working great for you on this whole blackjack thing. You are playing a negative ev game. You claim to understand this. But then you claim that your little betting system is giving you better profits then you ever could at poker. Well, yeah. If I played the slots or roulette and ran hot I could make more too. Same if I played the lottery. Your recent blackjack wins have everything to do with running lucky at the right time (most likely when you happened to place a larger bet out there) and zippo to do with how great your betting system is. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
oh I know but the thing is this strategy seems much better then a regular $1 betting system or however I used to play because I never used to win..
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
oh I know but the thing is this strategy seems much better then a regular $1 betting system or however I used to play because I never used to win.. [/ QUOTE ] Drawing conclusions from invalid sample sizes. www.wizardofodds.com |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
[ QUOTE ]
oh I know but the thing is this strategy seems much better then a regular $1 betting system or however I used to play because I never used to win.. [/ QUOTE ] Casino games have 4 common attributes: 1) house advantage 2) very fast 'rounds' (so the house advantage can 'bite' many times per hour). 3) easy to learn (so idiots can pick it up quickly, idiots being their target market) 4) very high variance. To discuss the last point further. High variance means, in English, that the results are highly erratic, ie. fluctuate wildly. Gamblers remember their wins but forget their losses, and get hooked. A very low variance game, eg. where hand after hand you get back 95% of what you bet, would be very boring and very unprofitable for casinos. No one would get hooked. ALL casino games are high variance around a house advantage mean. Even among all the casinos' high variance games, BJ is especially variable (whereas Poker is among the lowest varianced of games) For the same +$10 EV/hour, a poker game might have a standard deviation of $50 to $75 (variance of $3600 say), whereas BJ will have a std dev of $600 (variance of $360,000, ie. 100 times worse). This has a huge effect on human perceptions. In fact, with BJ, it pretty much destroys human abilities to judge. To explain: When I have run BJ simulators (which I have done a LOT of), wanting to get an EV of certain betting systems and bet spreads, I wouldn't even glance at the simulation results until the simulator had run over 100 million hands. Even runs of a few 10's of million hands would show noticeable fluctuations due to 'small' sample size. Bear in mind that it takes about 5 years for a full-time BJ professional to clock up just 1 million hands. What I am saying here is that your personal BJ experience, over weeks and even months, bears absolutely no resemblence to statistically likely EV. Your results will be utterly and totally dominated by luck, rather than statistical likelihood. Therefore you simply cannot judge whether one betting system is better than another betting system, unless you use both of them for at least 5 years each (and preferably about 50 years each). Poker, OTOH, will usefully approach EV within a few months of play. Your current level of BJ experience is statistically worthless. Either play for another 5 to 10 years then get back to us, or program your betting system into a BJ Simulator and run a few 10's of millions of hands and tell us the results (hint: you will prove the house advantage as you are varying your bets independently of any useful variable, ie. you are not counting, etc). Your statement is as silly, statistically speaking, as saying you've flipped a coin 3 times and seen that heads come up twice as often as tails, and so your Head betting strategy "seems much better". |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
This is NOT meant to be a defense of Martingale (or reverse) as a long term profitable strategy. However, if my plan is to go to play some blackjack, with a predetermined maximum loss, then there should be a strategy which gives a higher likelyhood of a big win. It seems that a doubling when you are winning strategy gives the best chance of accumulating chips. Yes, this comes at a higher risk of busto, but my risk of busto approaches 100% anyway, because I'm playing the amount I buy in with, with the hope of a big win. If doubling when losing gives a small chance of being slightly ahead with a large risk of ruin, wouldn't the opposite give a small chance of a big win with a large risk of ruin? This is all in the short run, assuming that I am on the good side of variance for a few hours.
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Re: Blackjack Strategy
You have authored two superb posts in this thread!
Many thanks for taking the time amd making the effort to lay it out in such an easily comprehensible fashion. Myrt........ |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
I think my system is better:
I bet 0 dollar on the first hand. If i loose i double the stakes for the next hand, if i also loose that hand i double again.... Has been working perfect so far. Currently i am about even. |
Re: Blackjack Strategy
No I am just saying it is an interesting idea and it is nice to be making some "significant" money off of blackjack for once instead of dropping 20 here 20 there in just playing $1 at a time...
its intersting obviously it is not perfect other wise everyone would be a million and doing it Perhaps I am just running good plus using the charts most of the time for this but it is still enjoyable... |
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