Why You Get Burned Playing With Mr. Martindale

So you wanna play blackjack. You haven't learned to count cards and you're deathly afraid of losing your money. You start playing and soon notice that you there is a "back and forth" with winning and losing with you "rarely" losing more than 4 in a row. So what do you do? You do what most rational people will do, you start doubling up after every loss. It works! you're making money until that day you hit "the drop". You have that 5-10 loss in a row and get wiped out of all your money and go home with that "I can't believe that happened" look on your face. What happened?

I did this. I wouldn't accept the math of playing with Mr. Martindale because I did not want to believe it could happen to me. Let me say up front that you are NOT imagining things. There are many professionals who will laugh at you and tell you that you are falling into some "fallacy" in regards to Mr. Martindale. You are not. Indeed if you graph the number of losses and wins in a row, a pattern does in fact emerge (and must emerge in a truly random game).

The above chart was generated using BJ Apprentice Trainer on IOS. Please note that the random number generator on IOS tends to make this app "Streaky" in that you will notice an either extremely negative variance (lots of losses) or extremely positive variance (a whole lot of winning), but this pattern shows up in actual card games both electronic and live (I have 6 months of win-loss records to prove it).

This one is from another IOS Blackjack app. Same notes as BJ trainer.

What this chart tells you is that your probability of winning a hand after losing a hand increases by about 50% at each step. It's actually less than that but that's not important here. The issue here is that while your probability of winning goes up, the odds of winning are independent of this probability. In a shoe game with a cut card, the odds go up and down depending on what cards have come out (how card counters play). In a game with a continuously shuffled deck (shuffled after every game, particularly electronic ones) the odds are static from hand to hand and you only have the odds presented at a particular hand as to whether stand, hit, split or double.

Therefore you can be in a situation where though the probability of wining a hand is high (near 98% in some long losing streaks), you can be raising your bets while the odds of winning are particularly low such as a deck with an extremely low count or a continuous shuffled deck in which you got a 16 (not an 8 pair) to a dealer 8.

If you're lucky (have positive variance) your probability of winning will align with the odds of winning or you're beating the odds of losing. On very bad days you end up on the losing side of both probability AND odds.

Now lets look at why a full out Martindale system is so dangerous to your bankroll and why it doesn't even make psychological sense. So in a Martindale progression you start with the table minimum, lets say $5. Each time you lose you double up. At best you have no splits or doubles. so you're doing 5,10,20,40,80,160.320,640,1280... On most $5 tables I've played on you hit table max at $500 so you're effectively cut off after $320. But wait it gets worse for some. Say during this ramp up you end up with a split and double? This happened to me once. I was at the table max had to split and double and ended up with all my money on the table and was beaten by the dealer. It could (and does) happen with card counting as well, but a card counter wouldn't have gotten that high without a seriously favorable situation. However; as discussed earlier with Mr. Martindale I was betting probability and could still be hit by odds (though to be fair the probability of winning doubles, when playing basic strategy is over 50%). Anyway, so you're doing the 5,10, 20...thing and you end up doubling that 20 and losing so you now need to double the 40 ahead of schedule Now you're window has narrowed considerably, say you have to double that $80, you see where this is going.

Lets look at what you risked. You're playing table minimum whenever you're not losing. $5. Say you brought enough money to survive a losing streak that take you to table max and you "give up" at that point and start again at minimum. How much have you lost on a "no split-doubles" situation? At a minimum, before hitting table max you've lost $635. If you played the $500 max on that table as your next hand and lost you're out $1135. And even if you hit it, you would still be behind.

Think about it though, you are willing to risk $1100 for a $5 gain? Not a good look. And if you were willing to part with that much money, why did you sit at a $5 table? Better you went to a high minimum table and flat bet. Really. This is the psychological issue with Mr. Martindale. The person using this, particularly a low roller has a fear of loss mentality yet they risk an outlandish amount of money in order to get a very, very small return. It is a classic example of cognitive dissonance. Stop doing that. A professional gambler understands that you risk short term [small] losses to get long term gains afforded by the math.

So now you're $1100 in the hole and you're back to betting table minimum: $5, do you know how long it will take you to recover an $1100 loss at $5 a pop? 220 straight wins. That's about 1 hour of play. And that assumes you don't have anymore drops or run out of money. Of course you're hoping that doubling, splitting and BlackJacks on the higher bets will get you there faster. It might, odds and probability are against it though. I know. Trust me.

Lets go back to the charts above. Since we see about a 50% increase in probability that you'll win a hand after losing, lets take that out to 5 hands. Even though the probability of any one win streak is actually about 42% we'll round that up to 50% for easy math purposes. So you have 50% probability of winning that first hand. 75% probability of winning the hand after that loss. An 85% probability of winning after that loss. 95% probability of winning after that loss. 97% probability of winning after that loss. Lets look at what that looks like over 100 hands (roughly half hour of play): 50 losses at one win streaks
25 two losses in a row
15 three in a row losses
5 four in a row losses
3 5 losses in a row.

For 200 hands or an hour's play:

100 one hand losses
50 two losses in a row
30 three losses in a row
10 four losses in a row
6 five losses straight.

That's a lot of losses. Put some splits and doubles in there and the losses can mount.

Now lets go back to the psychology. What most people get from this is that when they play, the 3 five losses in a row per 100/hands will happen sometime near the end of 100 plays. They think that they can play 50 hands and therefore avoid "the drop". It doesn't work that way. If you're lucky (that's positive variance) you'll never see five losses in a row during a session. If you're unlucky the 3 five losses in a row will happen at the top of your play and wipe you out in the first 10 minutes of play. I've had both happen to me. Worse still, since these numbers are averages, when you account for variance you may well end up with 60 two losses in a row, 20 four losses in a row and 15 five losses in a row. Something that can be particularly devastating to a session bankroll if one uses pushes as a reset.

A note on pushes. How do you account for pushes in a loss in a row scenario. A push is neither a win or a loss. Strictly speaking, the hand after a push is no different than the first hand played in a session. Why? because when you started, there were no wins or losses prior to your hand. This is particularly true in continual shuffle games where odds do not change as cards are dealt. In cut card shoe games this is not as true. We know this because card counting tells us that when the counts are high, pushes happen more often than in low counts. So if you are unlucky, you lose three times in a row, hit a push, and are sent back to your minimum bet. Since pushes account for around 10% of events, in a 100 hand game you're going to have your progression stopped cold by a push and you'll be eating that loss. And if that loss is high enough, your minimum bets will not be enough to recover, even with a win streak and you'll slow bleed your bank.

I hope this helps anyone out there who is starting out and thinking of playing with Mr. Martindale.

Phil Ivey Falls Victim to Clueless "Justice System"

So yesterday I saw that Phil Ivey lost his case against the Crockfords Club.

The club said Mr Ivey had broken its rules by using an "edge-sorting" technique to spot advantageous cards.

Mr Ivey had consistently argued that he had merely used a legitimate advantage...

The club said Mr Ivey had broken its rules by using an "edge-sorting" technique to spot advantageous cards. Mr Ivey had consistently argued that he had merely used a legitimate advantage.

However, Mr Ivey contended that the technique was not a form of cheating because it did not involve dishonesty. He said that he had merely exploited Crockfords' failure to take proper steps to protect itself against a gambler of his ability - and he was therefore entitled to his full winnings, rather than just having his initial £1m stake returned to him.

A little bit over a year ago I would have had no clue what edge sorting was or what "advantaged play" was and just taken the casino's word for it. Today I know a whole lot better and this case should have never gone against Ivey.

The casino's argument in a nutshell is that a player cannot use all available information that is readily observable by any player AND dealer in order to "win". In other words, the Casino argued that the court should find that a Casino is the only party allowed to "stack the deck" in their own favor. This decision shows that the court had no clue about what advantaged play is vs what cheating is.

Lord Hughes saying it was essential that punto banco remained a game of pure chance with neither the casino nor the player being able to beat the randomness of the cards that were dealt.

This statement in and of itself shows that the judge had no clue as to how card based games work and how casinos work. Casinos "beat the randomness" of cards dealt by doing things like changing penetration of shoe games (in Blackjack). They do things like "preferential shuffling". In addition the casino's edge is modified by the rules they impose at a table. In the case of Blackjack, they do shit like pay 6/5 instead of 3/2 for a natural. This increases their edge by over 800%. Casinos use things like continuous shuffling machines (CSM) in order to stop people from counting cards. When one counts cards, one is observing the flow of cards to determine when the advantage has passed from the casino to the player (or vice-versa). This isn't cheating because any and every player (and dealer) can see the cards. Cards aren't modified in any way. no outside device is used. There is no third party relating information. There is no cheating. There is simple observation. That only a few people have the intellect and/or motivation to do it doesn't make any difference. The player is simply using his powers of observation and his knowledge of mathematics to make a more informed play. That is what is meant by "Advantaged players". This information in no way guarantees that a player will win a particular hand or even win a particular session. Just like even though a casino has a mathematical edge, players still "win" in the short term. So back to Phil.

Ivey and his companion who has perhaps the best eyesight on the planet used the physical properties of cards used by casinos in which cards of a certain value (I'm assuming the higher ranked cards) are thicker at the edges than cards of lower rank. Because they could observe this difference during play, they could make bets that corresponded to the likely hood that either they or the dealer would get the "desired" card and therefore win the hand. Edge sorting is not an unknown phenomenon. A casino that fails to secure it's game to guard against such an observation is negligent of protecting it's game. That's not cheating and that's not Phil's problem. The casino's claim that by asking for the deck to be turned a certain way, Phil was cheating. I disagree wholeheartedly. At no time was Phil in control of the deck of cards. The house was. The house should have had a blanket rule that said that the cards will not be turned for any client. They did not do so. Why not? Because the casino was hoping to get Phil for a couple million. It was the casino's greed that caused them to lose to Phil. All the dealer had to say was "no" and that would have been the end of that.

Let's examine one important part of the decision process here:

There was no doubt, she added, that the actions of Ivey and another gambler, Cheung Yin Sun, interfered with the process by which Crockfords played the game of Punto Banco with Ivey. Stephen Parkinson, head of criminal litigation at Kingsley Napley, the law firm that represented Crockfords, said: “This is one of the most significant decisions in criminal law in a generation. The concept of dishonesty is central to a whole range of offences, including fraud.

“For 35 years, juries have been told that defendants will only be guilty if the conduct complained of was dishonest by the standards of ordinary, reasonable and honest people, and also that they must have realised that ordinary, honest people would regard their behaviour as dishonest.

How did Phil "interfere" with the process? He made a request that could be denied. Crockfords acceded to his request. How is that interference?

Secondly this "ordinary, honest people" part shouldn't be a part of the proceedings. most "ordinary" people have no idea what the casino edges are. Most ordinary people are happy to be raped at button push by the casino in order to get "comps" or "have fun". Most ordinary people have no idea that many slot machines take nearly 5 cents of every dollar they feed it or how fast that 5 cents adds up. Most ordinary people do not understand the amount a casino with 6/5 or 1:1 Blackjack makes off a player. Ordinary people have no clue and therefore are a bad standard. You know what else an "ordinary person" would do? If they found a slot machine that was miss-programmed and was paying out every 5 spins, they would sit there and spin like mad until someone made them stop. In other words, the ordinary person would take advantage of a broken machine without thinking they were cheating. Why? Because they would say that the casino should have either programmed the machine correctly or turned it off. They would say that they saw and opportunity to win and took it. When was the last time you saw an "ordinary person" complain to a casino when a machine appeared to be paying out too much?

Right.

I understand that casinos need to protect their business interests. I get that. Matter of fact, I want them to protect their business model so that other people lose their money so I can continue to get paid off Blackjack. But they should be required to take responsibility when they fail to secure their games. And this case could have been avoided with a simple "no." This decision could mean that a casino could grant a request to turn cards knowing that if they player wins any large amount of money, they could just deny the payment knowing the court will side with them.

But if the courts are so interested in 'honesty" how about outlawing 6:5 and 1:1 Blackjack?

Stories From The Field

Long time no post. Wanted to share some of the foolishness I have encountered at the tables. First up: Splitting 5s.

I remember when I first started playing Blackjack. All I knew was that 21 won. Get a 17 or better and you can split like pairs and double down. While I split 10s left right and center it never occurred to me to split 5s. Well in late August I ran into someone who it occurred to. I know, I know, other people's play doesn't affect your overall EV. Maybe. Maybe not but when you have a large bet out and the dealer doesn't break because the person who misplayed "took" the cards, the loss is the loss. Personally, I don't mind losing to the house, I DO mind losing to another player. Anyway, here's how it went down:

Count is high. I go for it. I get an 18. Not the best hand, but it's against a dealer 5. Dealer MUST draw regardless of what the hole card is and this is a stand 17 game. The odds are very much in my favor. I see the pair of 5s to my right. "Double down" I say to myself. One card out. Nobody else needs to draw. Next thing I know the 5s are split. First card out is a 3. Then an Ace. OK 1 -1 card out. Count is still high. next card is a 10. Here comes mistake number 2. This MOFO hit a 15 against the dealer 5. Next 10 card is out. Bust. what does the dealer flip? an 8, next draw 7. 20 stand. This was the dealer's hand to lose. Going by basic strategy, the 3 was coming out anyway. The dealer would have gotten the ace for a 6-16 and then the 10 for a 16 and then the next 10 to bust. Instead everyone on the table lost money.

Mind you, the count was still high, so I bet high again only to get a surrender hand with lots of 10s on the table, which effectively ended the player advantage. I left after that. Of all my losses to date, THIS lost has affected me emotionally the worst because it didn't have to happen. So a note to you newbies out there. You might be playing against people trying to make a living playing Blackjack. You may want to experiment and "have fun" with your low bets, but you could be costing people money.

Story 2: Standing on a 4.

Since I am now playing hours at a time I get to observe a lot of people with questionable skills come and go at the tables. I now play at places where their play has a negligible but not totally zero impact on my outcomes so I don't stress about that. A lot of people are playing short games. I get it, I did that for a time too. And no, they aren't Wonging either. This week we had the guy who sat down and bet 25 bucks with his first hand. On a $10 minimum table. Here I was thinking he had serious bankroll and the sense to go with it. He gets dealt an Ace 3. He makes a lot of negative noise, mainly about how he didn't get a Blackjack and then stands. I felt myself beginning to ask him why, but I have learned that what people do with their money is their business.

The Astounding Fail of Astana

So as usual I'm following the Tour De France and I have never seen such a spectacle as the one that is team, and I use that term VERY LIGHTLY, Astana. Fabio Aru brought the pain and stuck it to Team, and I use the term STRONGLY, Sky and grabbed the Yellow Jersey off Chris Froome. Where were his teammates? somewhere down the mountain having a leisurely ride. Aru was fortunate to not have a flat or any other mechanical.

Then the next day Team [sic] Astana was nowhere to be seen as Aru valiantly defended the yellow. And these are professional cyclists? Today after the finish, one of Astana's riders [sic] was asked about Aru and he looked like a fucking 10 year old kid with a smirk on his face. "Well he couldn't keep my wheel so...". Umm Aru single handedly. Single. Handedly. Put Astana in podium position and this guy was talking like Aru was just being lazy. Aru is beat. He's beat because the other riders for Astana are having a leisurely ride around France, perhaps taking in the sights and flirting with women on the sidelines. Who the fuck knows.What we do know is that they weren't riding up front giving 110% for the man in fucking yellow. At this point everyone but Aru should be sent home, where they can chill and relax on their own time, because clearly they haven't come to France to win any races.

At this point Aru has to do what got him this far: Pretend he's on team Sky and ride (or die) with them wherever they go. All of his victories have come by treating team Sky as his personal lead out train. It's his only hope. It's going to hurt but this is Le Tour. Here's the deal: The race is so close that Sky has to respond to anyone who is within striking distance so all Aru has to do is follow Sky. If the rider is a threat to Froome he is also a threat to Aru, Sky will respond to any threats to Froome so no one important is going free. Follow the Sky train and don't get unhitched.

A Note On Negative Variance and Knowing When To Get Up

So yesterday I got one of my subscription e-mails from a Blackjack website. The contents really bothered me and I think it is something that needs to be discussed like my last post about budding addicts.

First thing:

I thought, no biggie, if I play and hit some neg variance, I can still pull money out of brokerage account as a short term margin loan and just liquidate stock to pay it off so I pay nothing on it.

Now I'm not one to tell anyone how to finance their bankroll, however personally, unless Blackjack is my full time job, I'm NOT taking out a loan of any sort (cash advance, credit card credit loans, etc). I'm not liquidating anything in my retirement funding. I would strongly suggest not even THINKING about this. Personally, unless again you are doing Blackjack for a living, your ONLY source of bankroll finance should be money earned from your 9-5. That's my opinion.

Two:

First shoe I play, TC goes high and I get KILLED. At the end of the shoe I had $800 left so I played some DD and got back up to around $1300.

My motto is:

Play what you can beat and what's paying you.

If I'm getting hammered at a certain table and move to another one where I get my money back (and then some), I'm not leaving the table that's paying me until I'm either bored or it stops paying me. I don't understand why this guy left a good (paying) game to play one that was negative. Which brings us to one major point:

I go back to the 6deck game and it was fresh shoe waiting for me with the same dealer who dealt when the first high count shoe got me. I sit down and was playing table minimum when the count shoots up like crazy. It was about 1.5 decks in and I’m already at a +22 so I’m doing my max bet. With the high count out, I somehow still ended up with neutral upcards and dealer always ended up getting a 10 upcard. I proceed to get cleaned out of all the money I brought with me.

This happened to me the first time I took my counting game to the casino and upped my bets. Of course I was counting incorrectly for the game I was playing (see posts about "this is not blackjack"). But the same thing happened. I've also encountered this in practice play. This is called negative variance. If you hit it, it can clean out your trip bankroll and do it quickly. A high count does not guarantee wins! Let me repeat this:

High counts, and odds in your favor do not guarantee wins

But this gets worse:

At this point there were still 3.5 decks left, so I do my best speed walk to the ATM hoping to get back before someone jumps into my high count. At this point, my card gets DECLINED!!!

Call me superstitious or whatever you want. This too was a bad omen. Negative variance at the table. Declined bank transaction. It's time to leave.

So the only option was to pull the $600 I had from my debit card, fortunately I don’t have to pay ATM fees from my bank. I got back to the table and nobody had sat down yet (asked first to make sure) and bought in to do more max bets. Get cleaned out again, now with no cash available to me and I was forced to leave a RC21 shoe with 3 decks left.

Why did he think he was going to recover? Because he was looking at the RC (~6-7TC) rather than the fact that he was experiencing very bad negative variance. Question: Why did he NOT stay at the table where he was winning? Question: Why did he ignore clear evidence that he was playing a losing game (High count or not, it was a losing game) and NOT LEAVE THE PREMISES?

Personally, I think this guy is headed down the road to gambling addiction. I don't care that he was "only mad that he had to leave a table with a R21". The fact is that the table was EXTREMELY negative. He left a profitable game to play one that was a drain on his bank.

I hope that the people at the website he wrote to discussed this with him. I hope his friends mentioned it to him.

Advice to Budding Gambling Addicts

So the other event that I need to speak upon that happened this weekend.

As I was cashing out my last EV for the evening a young man who was shabbily dressed in an oversize jacket (I know it's cool in casinos but still), shorts, socks and sandals was hanging about looking a bit agitated. I'm always aware of who is around me due to the fact that you have people exiting with rather large sums of cash and I don't want to be the victim of some lookout boy. So if someone looks kinda shifty I change my exit behavior. Trust me, people have been stuck for their bankroll. Anyway, as I cashed out the young man asked me for a buck fifty. I wasn't sure I heard him correctly so I gave him a quizzical look.

I need bus fare. I lost a lot of money.

I told him no and thankfully he didn't press the issue.

Don't let this be you.

There's two things here. 1. Anyone who is under control, knows to separate their gambling money from their "life money". Secondly, you come with what you can spend and you leave if it goes up in smoke. Re-up and come back. Why would one spend one's way home?

I won't say that I've never gone on tilt after a major loss and thrown 20 bucks into a slot machine before exiting. But that was $20 bucks I had to spend and in no way affected my life. Going on tilt (getting emotional) happens. It is imperative that you learn to smooth out the emotions if anything to make sure you don't stress yourself ill.

But the main reason I didn't give him the buck 50 is because there was a large chance that since he saw no problem in spending his get home money that he would spend the buck 50 I gave him on yet another grasp at a losing game. a buck fifty represents 4 slot spins. I knew that, he knew that and I wasn't going to feed his habit.

Gambling addicts are like any other addicts. You don't help them by feeding their problem. Don't give them money. Tough love is the only way out. He's lucky it was warm out and if he was in fact one bus ride away from home, he had a nice long walk to think about his problem. Maybe next time he'll get a metro card that doesn't work in the Casino and he'll have a way home on those [many] losing days.

Don't let this be you. The house has an edge over the vast majority of people. All those bells and lights are there to distract you from this fact. Don't get distracted. Know your limits. Stay in your limits and know when to go home!

Don't Be A Loser. Take Advice

So I need to share an experience I had this weekend. Previously I've discussed my issues with certain electronic Blackjack systems. Not one to be deterred, I've been studying the game and it's quirks. So I was playing over the weekend.

One of the things I do is wait for a "shuffle" which for this game I assume happens when the avatar changes. This way I'm not jumping into a game that may be losing (50-50%). So this guy comes up to play while I'm waiting. After 2 losses he wants to raise his bet to $100. The avatar changed before he could make this bet. Here I started to play, minimum bet. This guy gets mad that I jumped in on "his" game. He actually said:

I was gonna play a hundred but you jumped in

*sigh* So I informed him that my play has no affect on his play and asked him if he read the rules.

I don't need to read no rules

Why would you not be interested in the rules. Rules affect your edge and therefore your expected value? So I bring up the rules, specifically the part about separate decks for each station and told him to read that.

I ain't gotta read no rules

So he took his $100 and went to another station, where from the looks of it, he lost it. I made my EV and cashed out.

Look. There are very few advantaged players out there. Among them, there are very few who are willing to share advice. Now, I don't walk around announcing I'm an AP for obvious reasons, but on occasion I'll give basic advice, and since these particular tables are designed to distract the DP (Disadvantaged Player) I tend to at least get them to look at the rules. So look if someone is giving you advice, it's likely you're doing something that is costing you money. You should listen. Don't be a loser