Every Picture Tells a Story

Junket King's Screen Shot - with his explanation:

What you are looking at is the summary sheet fromWin Craps.

The important stuff, as to money, is all onthe left.

First, I always start with a zero balance. That way I am sure to notice the draw downs in stark reality. At the top we see the total rolls and setting it for 55 rolls an hour it tells me how long at a real craps table this should simulate. At a busy table that number could be high but the Casino Manager's Handbook has it over 100 RPH.

Next, on the left, we see Bankroll. It shows how high I got, what my worst draw down was and it computes an average. TheAverage is useless to me.

Next comes the important part."Total number of..." Bets decided = bets which I had working and which weredecided while they worked. In the attached graphic it shows I had a deficit of -193. That's how many bets I lost vs. won. Not impressive, is it? But I was betting box numbers and only one can win at a time. When the 7 shows, all working bets get wiped out. That would be 4-5-6 locations with whatever dollar amount was on each.

Next we have "total amount of..." This is where we see how well a progression can work. Everything is in dollars. You can see that I wagered a total of $15,808. I won $10,024 and lost $8,507. Total net gain is $1517. Now we can divide the hours into the total win and calculatethat I made $63.74 per hour in this instance. What it doesn't show is that when I started I was getting hammered and my $ per hour was hovering at $28-$35 and I was ready to quit. Probably would have it if were a live table. Bottom line is while my bet wins were far exceeded by losses that by applying a progression allowed me to finish in profit.

The draw down (Bankroll: Low) in red - shows the risk I took. That's how much I would have had to dip into my buy-in. Since I use a hefty BR when playing live (or at least hefty to some low rollers) the risk (volatility in this case) is fully acceptable or within normal parameters. It takes money to make money.

Gambling is a business to some of us and we have to structure it like same. The graphic also is centered around a very conservative method. Call it a grind. Were I to use triple my normal BR, my earnings in dollars and the $ per table hour would soar. A larger BR would also allow me to play a bit looser. That would be a plus and a faster earner.

Junket King


Thanks Junket King for the Picture AND the Story.


my friend Scotty at the Horsehose
borrowed without permission
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=132499822&MyToken=a78765aa-2fdb-4e62-9075-bd5afbb79b12



at the bac table in AC
from baccarat_guy
http://smartbaccarat.blogspot.com/


Royal Flush! in AC- Nice!
http://smartbaccarat.blogspot.com/





If any of you have any pictures that tell a story, please let me know. D_Generate

The "Cycle"

THE CYCLE

Part I

Lately I've been focusing my work on a concept I call the "Cycle."

I have posted elsewhere my idea of "going for half" and these two concepts work well together.

I have also written about mathematical expectancy and this is a good place to begin an explanation of the cycle.

All gambling propositions have a probability which can be described in the form of mathematical expectancy. A very simple example would be betting one number, 17 for example, straight up on an American roulette wheel. Since there are 38 numbers on an American roulette wheel, it is said that the probability of the number 17 hitting on the next spin is 1 in 38. The mathematical expectation is that we can "expect" a hit on the number 17 once in 38 spins. The "cycle" for this proposition therefore is 38 spins.

The simple example above is provided merely to illustrate the terminology. The concept becomes a little more complicated when we look at more complex bets, like betting 2 dozens and 2 columns for example, or using progressions.

We all know that the so-called even-money outside bets (like red/black for example) are close to 50/50 propositions. We also know that when you factor in the house edge, your chances of winning any particular "even-money" bet is a little less than 50%. In short, the "odds" are against you or in other words, you are more likely to lose this bet than to win this bet.

We also know that you can place bets that you are more likely to win but that the payoff is less than one to one. For example: Playing 2 columns gives you 24 of 38 chances to win, however the payoff is 1 to 2, you will be wagering two units in hopes of netting one.

My theory about "maximum coverage bets" (and I hope to come up with a better term than that) is that when you employ a progression, your chances of losing your series is drastically reduced.

NONE of this defeats the house edge I remind you. But, I accept that cold fact with all systems.

What I hope to develop here is a way of looking at cycles and maximum coverage bets to allow us to chose bets that will produce small but steady gains with rare losses (which will necessarily be large).

More later . . . .

The Cycle Within a Cycle

Using multiple levels of progression, leads to bigger cycles containing smaller cycles. For example: Suppose your bet was a three step martingale. You are betting on Red and you bet one unit on your first bet, then double after a loss, and again. Your progression is 1 2 4. Each winning series results in a gain of 1 unit. Each losing series results in a loss of 7 units. We know that you can expect to lose a series about once in 8 series. Assuming for this discussion that you are playing a true 50/50 game, a wheel with no house numbers, a wheel with exactly half of the numbers being red. Under these circumstances, you can expect to win 7 series and lose one. This is the first level of progression.

Now suppose you decide to add another level of martingale. After a losing series, your first bet will be 2 and your progression will be 2 4 8. After a win, you will return to your original series.

Now look at the cycle. Y0u have a cycle of 8 series where you can expect to win 7 series and lose one to break even for the cycle. This cycle can be expected to take 24 spins or decisions. By adding the 2nd level martingale, you are increasing your net by +1. IF you experience the mathematical expectancy of a typical cycle, you will end your 24 spins up one unit instead of break even.

OF COURSE, there is another mathematical expectancy of losing back to back series. This other expectancy has another point in a larger cycle where you can expect to be brought back to zero or even (or to a negative amount equal to the house edge) . In the original progression we saw that we can expect to lose one series out of eight. We then added a second level of progression gambling that we would not encounter our one in eight losses back-to-back. How often will that happen? [I have notes elsewhere and I'll return to fill in this gap] This would be the bigger cycle. Eventually, you can expect to be brought back to even (or zero) when the bigger cycle runs its course. By adding yet greater levels of progression you are increasing the size of the cycle and it is my theory that you are increasing the amount of time you can expect to be ahead of the game before being brought back to zero. AND MAYBE - if you have several tactics for stretching out the cycle of expectancy, then you can quit while ahead more often OR change strategies while ahead in the cycle.

More later . . .

The "No Lose" Expectancy

(Which, of course WILL Lose as expected)

As a general illustration of the discussion so far, I offer this example:

For this example, we are playing a wheel which produces 60 decisions an hour. We know that we can develop a system that has an expected loss of one time in 60 decisions. This one loss would be expected to eliminate all winnings from the cycle of 59 wins. If we play this game for only 30 minutes and IF we are ahead at 30 minutes, then we can quit under my notion of "going of half." The question then becomes, of all the 30 minutes sessions that we will play, how many will include the dreaded losing decision. Math would probably tell us half. Real play may show us something different. We know that IF we have one more winning 30 minute session than losing 30 minute session, then we'd be ahead in the big cycle. And if the sessions were kind enough to come evenly spread out, you'd always be only 30 minutes away from being ahead.

If we strip this theory down to it's simplest form, it becomes WAY less attractive. Yet there is something about the more complicated version that I find appealing.

Here is the stripped down version: Suppose we are playing a true 50/50 game and the game produced its mathematically expected results with regularity in the short run. So that if you flat-bet and you encountered a win/loss series like this: W L W L W L W L W L, you would always be just one or two decisions away from a profit. Following through with our example above, you could always quit while ahead and it would be easy to do so.

We find this to be unappealing because we know that Roulette and Baccarat and other near 50/50 games do not produce reliable results in the short run. We know that the 50/50 game is very volatile and that it takes THOUSANDS of spins or decisions for the results to approach the expected 50/50 mark.

My theory is that the smaller the cycle, the more volatile and unpredictable the game. BUT on the other hand, the larger the cycle, the more predictable the game becomes.

I found an Excellent article and example of a No Lose Expectancy System, I'll post a link here when i get my hands on it again.

More Later . . .

Collection of Systems

I came accross a decent list of Gambling Systems on the internet:

http://www.roulettesystemreviews.com/freeroulettesystems.html

Most of the ideas contained in this list are fresh twists on the same old systems contained in every book on gambling.

A few of the ideas there cought my eye and I am going to work with them and I'll report back here.

Please feel free to share any experiences you may have with these (or other) Systems.

Thanks and Good Luck!

10/26 - here's a link to some more systems from the VIP Lounge:

http://starthere.mysteria.cz/

and here:

http://www.freewebs.com/turbogenius/

Paperless Modified Labouchere in 3D

I've been working on a way to keep track of my bet progressions by chip stacking instead of maintaining a paper-trail. This might not be very helpful in roulette and baccarat where scorekeeping is routine. But, my goal is to apply this to Blackjack where scorekeeping is not allowed (and where creative chip stacking seems to make the pit staff nervous).

I am going to present my method in several parts (only because I do not want each particular post to be too long and I may need to write at several different times). Again, this post is really about a manageable way to monitor the progress of your labouchere line(s) without using paper.

The First Component - The Modified Labouchere

Because I am setting out to keep track of a labouchere line without pen and paper, I chose to begin with a very simple modified labouchere which comes from Marten Jensen's book "Secrets of Winning Roulette."

This MM system has you winning 1 unit on any first bet after the successful cancallation of any line. Although I find it a very appealling and very conservative method, it will not appeal to those who'd rather not bet 6 or 8 units in order to get back to zero after having lost only 1 unit.Jenson sets forth his modified labouchere on page 155. No doubt my attempts to explain his system here will be less effective than studying his text on your own (which I obviously recomend). Nevertheless, the key to the "modified" labouchere is that the line begins with no numbers. You place a bet of 1 unit and if you win, you place that bet again and again. If you lose, your next bet would be the first number in your line and a win there would cancel the line and end the series. So, after your first loss of a 1-unit bet, your would then place a bet of 1 unit to recover. A second loss would be the 1st loss in your line and you would place your next bet at 2 units (then 3, 4, 5, etc.). As with any labouchere, a win cancels the last 2 numbers in your line. Unlike other laboucheres, when you cancel Jensen's "modified labouchere" you have no gain (nor loss) for the series. Your net wins are only from the "first" bet wins after a series, which is NOT a number in your line. Perhaps I can elaborate on this if there are any questions. I assure you it all makes good sense in the Book.

The Second Component is the Segregation of your chips.

I propose segregating your chips into three piles:
1) Your "chip locker"
2) your "win vault"
3) your "labouchere line"

YOUR CHIP LOCKER:

Suppose you buy into a $10 table for $300. You are given 30 red chips and you stack them somehow neatly and together, this area is basically your session bankroll which I call my "Chip Locker". (Not to be silly, but you might want to stack them in 6 stacks of 5 for example and keep those 6 stacks clustered together so that you can easily assess the balance in your chip locker).

You've sat down. You've bought in. You've stacked your chips and you can easily see that you have 30 chips in your "chip locker" which means you are even with the house.

YOUR WIN VAULT:

Now its time to you place your first bet. Move one chip from your locker onto the layout, and you win. Your win/loss record would look like this: W. Take both chips and place one in your chip locker and the other next to your chip locker by itself in an area we'll call your "win vault." As long as you have 30 units in your chip locker (as you do now) and NO chips in your labouchere line (as you do now), the win vault represents your net gain for the session (presently up one chip).

Now place your next bet of one chip on the layout and continue this way until you lose.Lets suppose you lose your very next bet. Your win/loss record looks like this: W,L. You placed your second bet on the layout and you lost. Now you have 29 chips in your locker and 1 chip in your vault for a net gain or loss of zero.

YOUR LABOUCHERE LINE:

Because you lost your most recent bet, you now take a chip from your chip locker and place this chip in your third segregated area, your labouchere line. This chip is the first number in your labouchere line and tells you how much to wager on the next (third) bet. Think of this as being a new labouchere line with one digit "1" represented by one chip. Now place one chip (from your locker) on the layout. For this your third bet, one of two things will happen: you will win or you will lose (pushes have no consequence).

IF YOU WIN (this third bet) (your win/loss record would look like this: W,L,W) - take your two chips from the layout and place them in your chip locker, you have cleared your line, so you place your single labouchere chip back in your locker and notice that you now have 30 chips in your locker and one chip in your win vault. You are once again up by one chip. And you will place a new bet of one chip on the layout but no chips in the labouchere line area because you have NO line at this time.

OR

IF YOU LOSE (this third bet) (your win/loss record looks like this: W,L,L) - take another chip from your locker and place it next to (adjacent and to the right of) your single labouchere line chip. This tells you that your next bet needs to be 2 chips (by adding the only two numbers in the line 1 + 1). So place 2 chips stacked on the layout. Your fourth bet (after W,L,L), is 2 chips. At the risk of sounding redundant, lets look first at if you win this 4th bet.

IF YOU WIN (this fourth bet following W,L,L) - You take 4 chips from the felt and place them in your Chip Locker. You cancel your labouchere line by removing the 2 chips from your segregated labouchere line area and place those two chips back in you chip locker and you are again up by one chip. Notice that you have won 2 bets and lost 2 beats and are up by one unit.

OR

IF YOU LOSE (this fourth bet following W,L,L) - You take two chips from your locker (two chips because that is the number of chips you lost on the 4th bet) and place them stacked next to the two single chips in your laboucher line (now your line on paper would read 1,1,2). Your next bet is 3 chips because the last two numbers in your line add up to 3.

I am going to stop here for now. I hope that there is enough informaiton here to get you going. I hope that you see that any time you clear your labouchere line, you should have 30 units in your locker and pure profit in your vault.Please post any questions.

For the next part of this post, I will be adding my 3D element and looking at a long W/L run to show you some of the benefits of the modified labouchere and this practical method of tracking your progress.I hope you will see this method is easily learned and when diligently applied, you can at all times know exactly how far you are up or down and what you need to do to cancel your current line.

PART II

OK - I've been working on this chip stacking thing and the modified labouchere in 3D and I'm not sure how to post my information graphically, but of course I'll try.

I reiterate what I said at the onset: THIS IS NOT A SYSTEM TO HELP YOU WIN<>

The idea is simply to build a grphical representation of your position so that you can comfortably chose the size of your next bet AND decide when to stop playing based on wins or losses. I have been owrking on this because I use notepads to keep my labouchere lines going when I play at home and I've been wanting to become proficient with something I could take into the casino wihtout the need for notes.

Key:
(1) <<<< = one chip
(2) <<<< = two chips stacked
(3) <<<< = thre chips stacked, and so on
-----<<< = the dashes are used to make the verticle lines intersect and have no other meaning


The Modified 3D Labouchere Chip Stacking Method for Blackjack:


As with the orignal modified labouchere, we will bet one unit until we lose. After a loss, we begin a labouchere line with one single digit (one unit). This is represented on the layout by removing a single chip form your Chip Locker and placing it in the Labouchere Line area of the felt. Thus:

(1)

Your next bet is 1 unit. A win clears the line. A loss tells us to add a digit to the line equal to the loss. Thus:

(1)(1)

Now with the 3D concept, you can lose three more bets without escalating your bet. Any win while betting 1 unit clears one chip from the 3D line. Notice that YOU ARE not clearing 2 digits as with a traditional labouchere line. With 4 straight losses (5 counting the intitial loss prior to beginning the line), your 3D line should look like this:

---(1)
(1)(1)(1)
---(1)

Now you begin betting 2 units because you have 2 intersecting lines, each line with 1 unit at each end.A win of 2 units here would clear 2 chips. A loss would require us to add a stack of 2 chips to the diagram:

---(1)
(1)(1)(1)(2)
---(1)

At this point (as with any point along the way), you can chose between betting 2 units and add the loss to the left of the horizontal line OR bet 2 units and add the loss to the top or bottom of your vertical line.

------(2)
------(1)
(2)(1)(1)(1)(2)
------(1)
------(2)

IF you built your line symetrically as above, you'd start betting 4 units on your next bet. However, the above illustration would be how your ships would look if you lost 10 decisions in a row (highly unlikely in perfect basic strategy Blackjack). More than likely, your 3D lines will be more often less symetrical.So what is the point of all of this??In order to appreciate this scorekeeping method, you really have to play with it. The chip stacking element allows you to focus on the cards and your basic strategy decisions. You can assess your overall picture of how much you are up or down by looking at your three chip areas. You can decide how much to bet on the next bet by looking at your 3D lines. The 3D element often gives you flexibility to chose from a smaller bet or a larger bet. As you win, you can shift the remaining chips around so that the smallest denomination is in the center and there is a graduation of chip stacks radiating out in 4 directions. You may find yourself with something like this:

---(3)
(4)(2)(3)
---(3)
---(5)

Here you could bet 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 or 8 in an effort to clear the lines when you are winning and/or balance them when you are losing.Keep in mind that pit staff are often bothered by chip stacking. They are prone to think that you are counting cards. When they see that you are not wildly escalating your bets at the end of a shoe, they should have no problem letting you do whatever you want.


Please feel free to email with any questions!

"Unlikely" vs. "Highly Unlikely"

The Difference Between an “Unlikely Event” and a “Very Unlikely Event”

I have mentioned elsewhere that “math” negates all systems. Or perhaps better put, the reality of systems (that they will not overcome the house edge) becomes apparent when one applies strict rules of mathematics.

But, now I’m looking at things a little differently:

To understand my new theory, let’s look at a very old one. Suppose we employ a very simple martingale system as follows (looking at a true 50/50 decision): We’ll bet one unit on the first decision and if we lose we will double the bet (2 units) on the second decision and then double again after a second loss. This three-step martingale gives us three shots at making a one unit profit. If we lose all three stages, we are out 7 units. This “beginner” approach tends to make us feel comfortable because we “know” that in a 50/50 game, we should be winning more often than one in three hands. Math tells us, on the other hand, that we will break even (no house edge in this hypothetical) because we “should” encounter the full-series loss of seven once for every 7 single-unit wins. As players we know that “in the short run” the 50/50 probability of a win is not reliable and that it would be well within the realm of possibilities to encounter a “bad run” of full-series losses in any particular session.

Math helps us see that although we have a 50% chance of winning the very next decision we also have a 50% chance of losing. When looking at the proposition of winning one of our next three decisions, we see that the likelihood is one in 8. This means that if we play 100 series of 3 hands, we should win 7/8ths of those series and lose one eighth. We will win 7 units for each successful series of three and lose 7 units for every full-series loss (or failure of our system). If we encounter a session where we get the “expected” results, we can expect to break even.

The lure of this system is (in part) based on the mathematical fact that we begin each series of three decisions with a 87.5% chance of winning that particular series. We all would admit that an 87.5% chance of winning anything “sounds” good. We know however that, our 87.5% chance of winning 1 unit is counter-balanced with a 12.5% of losing 7 units. NOTHING we can do will overcome this fact.

So, why bother?

Well, let’s look at this fact from a different angle. Suppose a typical session at a roulette wheel is 300 spins. How many times would we expect to be brought back to zero using the three-step martingale mentioned above? Three hundred spins will produce one-hundred series of three. We “should” win 87.5 of those series and lose 12.5. If we play for 5 hours (at 60 spins per hour), we’d be losing or “brought back to even” 2.5 times per hour. If we only played 30 minutes, we could expect to be brought back to even 1.25 times and if we played for 15 minutes, theoretically, we would not encounter enough decisions (or series of decisions) to have one losing session.

[House Edge: Before you start writing me and saying that I left out the house edge, let me explain that I am trying to keep the math simple for the purpose of this discussion. Think of the game in my example as “no-edge” Roulette. At an American Roulette wheel (using the example above) you would expect to win 7 series and lose 1 series but instead of ending up at a break even point, you would end up down 5.26% of a unit, because of the house edge. If you are interested in the “real” odds on an American roulette wheel, then you need to begin with the fact that a bet of one unit on black has a 47.4% (less than the 50% above) likelihood of winning and if you set out to win at least one decision of the next three consecutive decisions, your likelihood of winning at least one in the next three would be 85.44% (which is of course below the 87.5% in the example below).]

My thought is that we can reduce the “likely” to the “highly unlikely” by increasing coverage of the layout. For example: Suppose we cover 2/3rds of the layout instead of 50% in the earlier example. We know that we can not overcome the odds. We know that we will be brought back to even eventually. However, lets look at the short run. Employing a three-step martingale, we are now betting that we will win at least one of the next three decisions and we have 66% of the layout covered. Instead of losing one in eight series of three, we now can expect to lose only one in 27 series of three.

(Of course we would expect to lose 26 units and once again be brought back to zero. The math would go like this: our first bet would be 2 units, one on each of 2 dozens for example, after a loss, our bet would have to be increased to 6 units (3 on each of 2 dozens) and after two losses, we’d increase our bet to 19 (or 9 on each of 2 dozens). This three-step martingale progression would produce a win of 1 unit for each successful series and lose 26 for each three-step loss.)

Lets go back to our 5 hour session of 300 decisions. Again we are looking at this session as 100 series of three decisions. How many of those series can we expect to lose? The answer is 3.6. How many can we expect to lose in an hour? The answer is: .72.

Now, math tells us that if we play this game for one hour, it is unlikely that we will encounter a loss. We should see 60 decisions and win 20 units. And one might say that we are “due” a loss around the corner.

Stopping While Ahead and Minimizing Volatility

Suppose you played a game where you always won 50% of your decisions in the short run (like in 100 decisions), suppose also that this game rarely produced streaks of more than 4 or 5 losses in a row. It is likely that you could sit at any session and play this sort of game flat-betting and stop when up by one unit. Some sessions would only be one decision long and other might take 100 decisions but under these circumstances you could almost certainly eventually hit a point where you were up by one single solitary unit. One might say that when you quit, you were due a loss on the very next decision. Being only up by one unit, you were due to be brought back to even. Never the less, with minimal volatility, you could always play until up by one unit. Eventually you’d get ahead.

Now shift back to the game where you are expected to lose 27 units in one decision and win one unit for each of 26 decisions. Using my theory of stopping while ahead and minimizing the volatility, you should have many opportunities to stop when ahead by less than 26 units. Of course, if you started out losing, you’d have a long row to hoe. But math tells us that each bet you place has a 2 in 3 chance of winning and the likelihood of losing three such bets in a row is less than 4%. The chances of getting into a point where you are ahead by half of a successful series (win stop of 13 units) are very good indeed.

Final Thoughts

As with all systems, any play based on the ideas contained here needs to play well capitalized, and as always, successful players need to be disciplined and patient.

[PS – No doubt, these ideas have been around in one form or another for many, many years. I do not claim to be presenting any sort of original breakthrough. These ideas merely represent my current thoughts on a better way for me to look at the sobering application of math to gambling systems.]