Blackjack - Casinos Suck - Page 5

Not according to Wikipedia on card counting.

First point - slots are bad. No skill required, just dumb luck.

Blackjack on the other hand is a game where you can play well and win regularly. Buy a blackjack book and learn to play - these aren't betting strategies (they're different) - these books are about whether to sit, stand or hit if you've got a 3 and a 10 and the dealer has a 10 and a 5 etc (stand), or try an online trainer.
http://www.hitorstand.net/game_m.html


When I sit down at a blackjack table and lose 4 or 5 hands in a row. I get up an leave. Walk over to the bar and chill for half an hour. Then go back to the table and try again. If the dealer is still winning too many (in my opinion) I'll leave the table again.

I know it sounds stupid, but anybody who has spent time at a blackjack table will have seen this. Regardless of how good your hand is the dealer either matches you (blackjack for example) or beats you. Then the time comes when the dealer keeps busting or you keep getting great hands.

My approach is to be in the game when the tide turns. Double up, split and go for gold. The run won't last but you can sure make up a fair bit of ground when it happens.

The other rule I always play is that when I have doubled my money - I stop playing. Cash in and have a few drinks. If I decide to play again, it's like starting over, but only with the same starting amount as my original pot - the rest stays in my pocket.

In all of my trips to casinos (maybe 50 or so times) I have only ever walked out with a loss once. And that was a couple of years ago when I sat down at the table and the tide was already in my favour. I was $200 up after 10 minutes (playing $5 and $10 hands this is a lot). The problem was that the dealer then started winning and I walked away - good so far. But I had only been there for 30 minutes and didn't want to go home yet. I had a few drinks and decided to play again. After playing and walking back to the bar maybe 10 times I realised that my luck had been done. I had dipped into my winnings and was then down by my starting money and half my winnings; I finally decided to go home.

Moral to my story is: make you own rules and stick to them. Wins and losses. It's a bit like buying stocks actually.

So if you have walked away from blackjack tables a winner 49 times out of 50, that's a 98% success rate. My main problem with believing this is there seems to be no basis for your system to statistically do any better than a 50% success rate. And if that is true, then winning 98% of the time after 50 attempts would be about as likely as flipping a coin 50 times and calling heads or tails right 49 times. I never learned much about statistics, but my guess is the odds of doing this are in the neighborhood of 1 in 2 kajillion. Of course if I am wrong and your system continues to work that well, then you have a fairly easy way of making boat-loads of money. BTW, have you had a chance to read any of my previous posts in this thread?

Baccarat statistically has the best odds..but people always think Poker and Blackjack are "the games" because there is mutual competition.

People fail to realize that. Your most baller casino rats, usually are baccarat players (because you have the best odds in the house of winning), even though your poker and blackjack players are more high profile...

This is very nearly always true. Only a tiny percentage of gamblers will ever get better odds than baccarat by counting cards at blackjack or by playing video gaming machines.

But baccarat? Folks eyes glaze over when they hear that. Heck, even "Casino Royale" nixed the big baccarat scene in favor of texas hold em for the movie.

Yep- baccarat FTW

But no one knows...

This primarily has to do with the marketing of a movie and then possibly the marketing of poker (edit: to make casinos more profit).

Nope. I never called it a system - otherwise I would package it and flog it on late night TV. It's a set of rules that I apply to my own gambling.

I never said that I walk away from the table 98% a winner. I said I leave the casino 98% a winner - actually I do remember one other time I walked away losing (96%). I have walked away from tables with only a few bets left, but waited by the table for the tide to turn and then jumped back in - call me opportunistic.

Everyone who has ever gambled knows that at times you're up and at times you're down. This should not be in dispute. My approach sees me walk away from the table when I am up by the prescribed amount (usually double my money). The single biggest cause of people losing is that they don't know when to walk away and take the profit. Someone else in this thread made a comment about not knowing when to take the win.

As for the percentages I could tell you about the two nights in a row I walked into a casino and put $5 into a slot machine as I was walking past (we call them poker machines or 'pokies') and won $500 and $350. What would be the odds of that? Or the time I split aces twice and got three aces and ended up with two blackjacks and a twenty (or similar). What are the odds?

I'm not sure what your comment about coin tosses has to do with this.

I read your posts and your views are fine. The house advantage is based on the assumption that you will sit through the good times and the bad times. I walk away at the bad times, and I won't chase losses.

I don't gamble frequently enough to consider this a way of making money, and I have certainly never claimed that these are sustained. I haven't been to a casino in about 3 years, but in my personal experience I am without any doubt in the positive. Not by nearly enough to fund my life, but gambling has certainly funded a few very good nights with friends. I'm pretty sure that if I gambled more the closer to the house advantage I would get. I've been dumb ass lucky.

These experiences have been over the past 20 or so years. I am not suggesting that anyone else should adopt my approach - it's worked for me. These are my experiences.

How so? Can you please explain what you mean by timely selection.

Playing pokies from 5 bucks and winning 350 is damn unbelievably lucky and rare occasion. The most I ever won by putting 5 bucks in a pokie machine I think was around 80 bucks.

But you are very right about not knowing when to quit. As a matter of fact before I came home yesterday, since it was early I just went to a pub nearby and used 25 bucks to play pokie.

I was winning $150 (175 if you count my 25 bucks) and for some stupid reason I kept playing (I usually stop or at least leave with 100 bucks winning) and after 4 hours there (it was supposed to be a short visit) I was down 350 bucks in total, but then when I was down to my last 50 bucks, I put it into the machine, bet 1.25 per press, and luckily I won close to 400 bucks. Then I played a bit more and went home maybe with just 25 bucks ahead. Phew.

But I think the hardest thing to have for a gambler is discipline. Unfortunately at times I don't think clearly and ended up with huge losses.

It is true that it's near impossible to walk away winning 98% of the time. I am a card counter. I win about 2 out of three time. But if you are playing seriously like I did, there are many rules to go by. Because you are working on a statistical average, you'll need to play mostly one on one to maximize hands per hour. Also you have to be physically fit to play. Counting can be very fatiquing. I no longer play more than two hours per day.

I have never been kicked out. But I have been followed and shuffled on. I was showboating to my friends and was also running lucky. I won $3,000 in less than 15 min on $25 min bet. After that no matter where I go they always shuffled up. I asked the dealer what's up. She told me she was told to shuffled on every bet I placed. I now play dumb and occasionally make some bad play intentionally.

Guys. Yes, I have been very lucky at blackjack? Impossible? No, because its true. Improbable? Sure, but it's still true.

I'll provide another example. I have an uncle who only ever bets on one horse race of the year, that's the Melbourne Cup (in November) in Australia. In the last 20 odd years he has only failed to place a bet that has NOT paid a return only a few times (and he has won the trifecta twice). That means that he has a success percentage in the high 90's - on that particular race. If you broaden the view and say that he wins 95% of the time he bets on horse races you would clearly think that he should bet more and make a living from it. The fact is that because he only bets on that race, which has a lot of information published about it, he has been able to achieve an excellent success rate.

The more times he bets on other races the more likely it is that he will lose. This will reduce his overall success rate quickly, but it won't alter his success rate for THAT horse race.

My comments related to my experiences playing blackjack. I didn't mention the 50 times that I have walked away from slot machines (pokies) at clubs (not casinos) $50 or $100 down.

So, I have a high success rate at blackjack (lucky me) mostly because I walk away when I'm winning. Think about how many times when you've played blackjack that you've been up, and then gone down. I stop when I am up. This is the 'system'. Casinos want you to stay at the table, because they know the longer you play the more likely you are to lose. They comp you drinks and all sorts of stuff to keep you playing.

dj_mocok has provided a personal account whereby if he had stopped he would have been very much ahead, rather than continue to play and end up marginally ahead.

I have a low (but expected) rate of success on slot machines. This, on balance, means that I am probably about even on my gambling.

The title of the thread is about blackjack and casinos. It's not about overall gambling. I was providing my experience in relation to the topic.

Before jumping on someone, perhaps you should consider the context of the response.

Cheers

I see your point, if one chooses to define a "system" as that worthy of being flogged on late night TV. However, I referred to the rules you posted (whether you called them rules or not) as a system since I define "system" as a set of rules a gambler uses that governs play and non-play. I meant "system" in a very broad connotation, as in anything from simply "I play to have fun" to card counting. For example, if one plays to have fun, their first rule (whether cognizant of it or not) is to play to experience "fun" and then their implied second rule is to cease play when no longer fun or done having fun. Another example, "I will play only X amount of money until it is gone." The first rule here is to continue play with X amount of money plus any subsequent winnings. The second rule is to cease play when this supply of money is lost. Many casual gamblers make up rules that govern their play and non-play, don't even realize it and that having done so constitutes use of a "system", albeit, not likely one worthy of being flogged on late night TV.

You're right, my bad. However, this does not in any way make your experience any more likely to have happened, and it does not make it any more likely you or anyone using your system would have anywhere near this kind of success rate in the future. It's practically just as unlikely to walk out of a casino 96% or 98% of the time a winner as it is to walk away from a blackjack table with the same success rate.

Whether everyone who has gambled knows this, is irrelevant and this is not in dispute.

This is a partial description of your system, which as far as I can see still leaves the house with an advantage. And so if used, a success rate of less than 50% should be expected.

This is a common fallacy and your quote above shows you used it in support of using your system. This fallacy and your system completely ignore the fact and consequences of the house advantage. If it is true that your system statistically results in less than a 50% success rate, the following example is true. If you take 100 people and give them each $100 dollars to bet and they each use your system (which tells them when to quit), statistically the 100 people will lose more than $5,000 and walk away with less than half the original bank roll of $10,000. Reason: the house has the advantage, that is, a greater than 50% chance of winning. If instead your system has a success rate of 96% or 98%, than these 100 people statistically should walk away with something closer to $19,000.

The fact that events happen in gambling that have long odds does not change the fact of the house advantage and that most who gamble lose money. Observations of such long shot events outside of a larger context which includes losses and the house advantage is what casinos commonly use to lure people to gamble. Your posting about your winnings in this way helps the casinos foster in gamblers the illusion of having more control over the outcome than what actually exists. Which would you expect to see on a casino billboard -- "Over $2 million paid out this month!" or "Over $2 million paid out and over $2.7 million taken in... thanks for accepting the house advantage!"

IMO your system statistically should work no better than 50/50 (like flipping a coin) or have no better than a 50% success rate, and definitely a success rate no where near 96% or 98%. The likelihood of you or anyone using your system of repeating your 96% or 98% success rate would be a long shot, roughly the equivalent to flipping a coin 50 times and calling heads or tails 48 or 49 times correctly with only 1 or 2 times called wrong.