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

The GEICO Cuck Commercials

Have you seen them? I'm sure you have. There are two of them thus far. I suppose the first one was testing the waters. The second one went straight into misandry land. Let's recap.

In the first commercial a guy is with some girl. They appear to have been out on a date. He discovers that his battery is dead. Been there. Not a nice feeling. As he is about to say something to the woman, he is shushed.

That's the first problem. Where does a woman get off shushing a grown ass man? In HIS car? Well I assume the latter part.

Bitch you better put that hand down.

That's just the beginning. I wish a chick would shush me. But this is 2017 where manliness is in the direct line of fire. So apparently chick has the GEICO app. This app apparently allows her to call GEICO to arrange for a jump or new battery.

Ummm so this guy is unprepared? Really? OK, not all of us carry a jumper battery in the trunk. But he can't call for a jump? He doesn't have GEICO? He is THAT unprepared? What the fuck?

Not content to cast men in this light, the next GEICO commercial goes for the jugular.

In this commercial a man and his family are on the side of the road with a flat. Now lets assume that the car is not running run-flats that went past the 50 miles recommended by the manufacturer or had a sidewall blowout. This car has a spare.

Once again, this man turns to his wife and is immediately shushed. Again, What. The. Fuck? She then shushes the child in the back. Children get shushed. Grown ass men don't. Period. But it gets worse.

So the wife brings up the GEICO app to declare that they have a flat. A man with tools shows up and changes the flat.

What. The. Fuck? Who are these men who are incapable of changing a flat? No seriously? Forget for a moment that apparently he too, doesn't have the GEICO app to call his damn self. Since when do grown ass men not know how, or have the strength to change a tire?

And what is worse is that this wife gets to call another man to do the stuff her husband is supposed to be able to do.

So lets review all that's wrong with these GEICO commercials:

1) Grown man is shushed by the woman he's with.

2) Man is unprepared for automobile emergencies.

3) Man is apparently incapable of basic automotive fixes.

4) Wife/Girlfriend has another, more capable man on call to do what "her" man should be able to do.

And people wonder why Trump was elected.

BlackJack: Play What You Can Beat

If you listen to podcasts and watch videos and read books you'll come across a line that says:

Never play 6:5 BlackJack

Why?

Because 3:2 Blackjack pays more. The math is easy. you bet $10. Get Blackjack and you get back 25 (original bet plus $15).

In 6:5 Blackjack you bet $10, get Blackjack you get back $22 (original bet plus $12).
I have been known to play a game that pays 2:1 on all pays, including BlackJack. Why? Because it pays.

Question:

Which is the better way to risk your bankroll:

1) A 3:2 game, H17, Resplit Aces, DAS, Surrender, Split any pair,Double any hand No peek, continuous shuffle, 8 decks where you are losing money.

2) a 2:1 game, S17, D 10-11, No Surrender, 1 Deck, continuous shuffle and you are making money. A lot of money. If you answered "1", then you must like giving your bank away. Yes you could think that every time you get Blackjack the casino is "taking" 30% of "your" money. But would you rather the casino take 30% of your BlackJack wins or take your bankroll?

I know what I'd do.

Here's what I've discovered. If a table has HORRIBLE rules, there is usually a reason for it and that reason is the game is very beatable and the casino doesn't want to be wiped out by those who figure it out. A beatable game is a game worth playing. A game that takes your bank is not. Period.