[Godot]

Well, I cant sleep and I kind of feel better after writing that.

Ok…well on with the story. I had proceeded to donk away my entire bankroll playing No limit online, a situation which many of you I’m sure are familiar. I was feeling pretty low about myself. I thought I had discovered my true calling. I was wrong, I just didn’t know it then.

I read up every book on gambling I could get my hands on. I felt like I would come back better than before, knowing how and why and how to plug the leaks in my NL game. However, I got sidetracked and started to look into other forms of gambling. I became obsessed with gaining an edge no matter how small. For example, I read that statistically, the number 1 dog or horse is the statistical favorite, not by much, but a favorite nonetheless. When I was in Vegas I went to a sportsbook that had about 40 simulcast dog races from across the nation. I decided to place $100 on every 1 dog ( I had read this in a book, I forget which though). I actually came ahead about $600. I tried it again I lost about $900 that time. After several repeated trials I ended up about $400. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk and the huge outlay of cash it required. However, I did notice something while looking at the dozens of races. I saw that there might be other opportunities to exploit any small edges in dog racing. I realized in certain situations when one dog scratched and there were several long shots you could theoretically guarantee yourself a win if you bet on all the dogs. It worked thusly: by betting each dog depending on the odds, let’s say you want to win $500 on the winner you would bet like this: if dog 1 was a 4 to 1 favorite you would bet 125 to win, if dog 2 was a 25 to 1 favorite you would bet 20 to win, if dog 3 was 20 to 1 favorite you would bet 25 and so on and so on until you had every dog covered. Now this only works if your total outlay is less than what you expect to win. No sense in better $600 to win $500. Therefore, usually one dog had to scratch or there had to be several longshots for this system to work. Not surprisingly, this situation is not too common, and if you bet big enough to actually win real money the odds get skewed and you could take a bath.

After that realization, I decided that there had to be other edges in gambling that could be exploited. Having so much free time, I read voraciously and thought of ways to exploit any house edges. I decided that I would teach myself card counting. I tried to learn to count cards, but there were so many conflicting theories on the best way. I wasn’t convinced that basic card counting could provide enough of an edge. Besides it seemed like a dreadful grind. It seemed that if online blackjack didn’t use continuous shuffle it would be easy to program a bot to count cards and play perfect strategy for you. I suppose that is why they have continuous shuffle online. I read the book “Bringing down the House” about the MIT students who took Vegas for millions. I wanted to do that, but I didn’t have the patience or the mathematics background to replicate a system like the MIT group did (it was never fully revealed in the book, besides it required an enormous bankroll). Arrogantly, I decided I could come up with a system, despite having no mathematical background whatsoever, just a desire to exploit an edge.

Well, I came up with one. I decided in my years of playing blackjack that over extended periods of time you come upon lucky streaks. Eventually you will win 6 or more hands in a row. Problem is you never know when that hot streak will end so people are afraid to increase their bets. I decided that in order to maximize those streaks and the power of doubling I decided to try some progression blackjack. Basically, flat bet til u win. Then let it ride. Then let it ride again. Sounds simple, right? Basically at a 100-5000 spread blackjack table it only takes 7 wins in a row to hit the table max, less if you win a blackjack or a double down or a split. So I would flat bet 100 and try to get to table max. And then win again with table max and again. Usually I would stop at 8 wins in a row. 8 wins in a row meant $10,000. If you could do that twice in one nice it usually meant you were up a fair amount. So over a 10 hour period I would lose a bunch of minimum bets, but when I did win I won big. And I modified basic strategy a bit. I was thinking of the meta-game. Basic strategy accounts for the best chance of winning a particular hand. However, I figured that the best way to keep a win streak going would not to hit on stiff 15 and 16s, even against Tens and Aces. I would only hit on 12, 13, and 14s. I modified that sometimes and never took a bust card. The reason for that was paradoxically, although hitting a 14 would give you a higher percentage of winning that one individual hand, it would also decrease your odds of stringing a long win streak. Basically, I was trying to get up big before the inevitable Risk of Ruin caught up with me. After all, even with a 49% disadvantage you could go 1 million hands and still be up against the house. Obviously as that number approaches infinity your probability of being up approaches zero. However, the long term mathematically, compared to a human life span is enormous. I have read about people never having a losing year playing blackjack by only using basic strategy, while statistically unlikely, it is well within normal statistical standard deviation.

At the same time, I also concocted a plan for running up a large stake playing poker online. Something that is unique to playing online. The ease and availability of moving games. I decided that I would treat playing poker online like a tournament. The blinds go up, but then so do the pots. I decided to take several shots at my virtual tournament. I would buy in for say $400 and play $400 NL table. Once I doubled or tripled up I would move up to the next limit and so on and so on. It was like a big long tournament, except I got to determine when the blinds went up. Once again, progression betting. I know this is not sound poker strategy, but I didn’t see much difference between this strategy and playing a $400 buy in tourney. The only drawback being that the competition got tougher and tougher as the limits went up. However, if you are in the mindset that it is a tournament you wont feel as bad when you bust your $5000 because you only invested $400 to start and you had a shot at a whole lot more.

I then looked into the stock market for edges. For example scanning all the wire looking for bad news that could negatively impact an industry and shorting the stock in that industry. I also tried to come up with an idea that I called currency “float” that exploits the differences in foreign currency, but that idea requires too much money and may not be legal anways. The reason I post all this is because I want you to be aware that I wasn’t a complete degenerate. I tried to gamble with the best of it and was often trying of thinking in terms of paradigm shifts and meta-game theory. This was when my head was somewhat still clear.

Cont’d

Still Waiting for Godot

P.S. I’ll probably start a new thread for my next installment