Friday, March 13, 2009

When the dealer keeps beating your 19+ hands, should you sit still and suck it up, or get the hell out of there?

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Your average academic mythemaniac has a simple answer: Save on shoe leather and stay where you are, because running away can't affect the long-term outcome.

There may be a grain of sad truth in that if you are a blackjack player who bets flat or within a very tight spread (1-5 is as tight as the proverbial duck's bum and many punters think they are being conservative and sensible if they narrow their spread still further).

The reality is that while paired wins are a constant, predictable feature of any house game's win/loss pattern (WLP), trends do occur that lock them out for a while.

Bailing out of the current game and taking your NB and LTD numbers elsewhere can never guarantee an improved WLP and the only way to find out if you made the right decision is to slide a substitute player into the seat you vacated and have him track the hands that came out of the shoe after you left.

All you can ever know for certain is that every deadly negative trend begins with a threatening pattern that gets steadily worse, and to avoid a potential (but not certain) disaster, you must take evasive action before you go broke.

Strategy debunkers love to use runaway sims to "prove" that there's no way to overcome the house advantage at casino table games, and the same tool demonstrates conclusively that paired wins occur about as often as paired losses.

When they stop happening, it is smart to back off and go hunting for a more comfortable WLP, even if the only certain benefit is to your peace of mind...your morale, if you like.

No one should ever gamble if they feel threatened or uncomfortable for any reason, so never hesitate to interrupt play whenever the mood strikes you, and resume it elsewhere when you're ready.

Here's the log from the last BST session in Batch #14.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

If what you see here had occurred in the course of output from a runaway sim, the essential assumption would be that the "player" (meaning, in that context, the method) would keep on betting wildly without a care in the world, until the negative pattern ended or his money ran out.

In real life, human beans don't like being kicked in the head or stomped on with heavy boots or being robbed at (metaphorical) gunpoint, let alone all at the same time.

They take defensive action.

The most effective response to a house spike is to simply walk away, knowing that interrupting play for a while can never hurt the long-term outcome, which for the target bettor is yet another session win.

I have heard from some players who prefer to pull back to fixed minimum bets for a while, especially when they are in a busy casino on a wild weekend night and hate to give up their seat. I guess it can't hurt to take a breather by treading water when the pressure's on, and the effects of such a move (or non-move!) are hard to model accurately.

What matters is that no one with blood in his veins plays the way runaway sims require them to. It would, at best, be contrary to human nature.

Just remember the DBO rule: Don't. Bend. Over.

Above all, stay cool and calm and don't take a losing streak personally. It will end. And then, as always, you will come out ahead.

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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