This week Bob and I dip into the mail bag to answer listener questions.
We welcome your questions – send them to us at [email protected], or you can find me at @RWM21 on Twitter.
podcast
Click to listen – Alt click to download
Show Notes
[00:00] Introduction
[00:31] iTunes broken link and how to report time sensitive show problems
[02:11] Noises Off at Super Summer Theatre
[03:37] Royal Caribbean and MGM status match
[05:23] Why is GWAE only an hour long?
[06:00] Where is the best play to live as a new card counter with a small bankroll?
[07:54] Is traveling to get free play worth it?
[10:57] Should someone is always carded play rated?
[12:44] Will Eldorado honor Caesar’s Seven Stars offers?
[15:35] How should listeners network?
[20:46] How to avoid heat at table games?
[22:45] How can a listener help people get bets down?
[23:52] Bob’s blackjack history.
[25:35] How should a player deal with an unresponsive host?
[27:07] Tropicana in Atlantic City voucher policy
[29:41] How can players manage terms of service risk with off-shore online casino bonuses?
[32:55] Question about video poker speed and comps.
[37:42] South Point Casino September Promotion – City Lights Shine bottles, free video poker classes
[39:24] VideoPoker.com – gold membership offers correction on most games
[41:14] Was a baccarat tracking system successful due to luck?
[42:29] How does Bob log his gambling activities?
[46:58] Is it to late to learn how to beat video poker?
[48:45] Blackjack Apprenticeship
[49:47] Variance in a two million hand FPDW sample.
[52:54] What is the best way to play promotional chips?
[56:55] How can you exploit a game when the information is scarce?
Never miss another post
Re: timestamp 49:47, down 25 quad deuces after 2 million hands, as Bob said, 10% possible just by luck alone. But, this could also be an indication of player errors, for example missing some individual deuces on the draw, or making holds like 7h228d or 7s228c, hearts and diamonds (red) or spades and clubs (black) are easy to confuse in low res and if tired and playing too fast.
Got to love listeners asking about being connected to some of the best players in the game via one email message to judge character and skill. Hey Bob and Richard can you send my resume over to James Grosjean and get me an introduction. My vision is 20/15 and I am short. LOL
Another comment: It’s a common gambler’s fallacy that if you play long enough you should get the average result. This probably comes from drinking too much gamergirl bath water. Any gambler should know that that’s not how the math works. Instead, you should expect a RANGE of possible results. I suggest +/-3SD which is 99.7% of the possible results (there are still outliers). Assuming you play like a bot and never make a mistake, the quad deuces cycle is 4909. For 2 million hands the average result is 2,000,000/4909 = 407. 1SD=sqrt(407)=20. 3SD=60. +/-3SD range = 347 – 467.
Upon hearing the advice for the upteenth time I downloaded the demo for VP for Winners. Set difficulty to Advanced so I could work on the hands that give me the most problems in Bonus Poker.
Got the following: 10c 5c 9d Kc 7s
Held Kc 10c
Software said it was an error.
Thought I was nuts, checked the chart, K,10 is higher than K alone.
The analyze button shows K alone as having a higher EV.
What gives?
Thanks.
Penalty cards, that’s why. You don’t mention the payable, but even in 8/5 BP, you dont hold K,10 suited if another card of that suit is in the dealt hand. The 5c makes the the lone K superior. Change the 5c to 5d and now K,10c is superior
Thanks Larry. Yes, it was 8/5 (why play anything less? 😀 ). I was thinking penalty card but thought it would be noted by the software. *shrug* . Deviations everywhere!
It’s most likely because the flush pays 5. I checked the same hand in 9/5 JoB and the same play is resulted. In 9/6 you’d still just hold the K in that hand, but not just because of the 5c, but also because of the 9d.
Liz, if you play long enough, your results should approach the expected value as mentioned. What a lot of people don’t understand is why that happens.
If I play 1 cycle of 9/6 JOB, the expected return is 99.54%. If I have a bad run and only get a 95% for that one cycle, I am quite a bit below expectation. I play another cycle and my return for that one cycle is 99.54%, the expected long term result. Now, my 2 cycle return is 97.27%. I approach the long term average because as I play more hands, deviations from the expected value get smoothed out by the sheer volume, NOT because I should have a better expected result for cycle 2 relative to the expected value.
“Deviation from the expected value”, that’s called SD, always INCREASES with the more hands you play. It doesn’t get magically “smoothed out”. SD = sqrt(variance x hands). That’s why the ROR of a 100% return game is 100% for any finite bankroll. What does happen if you play with an edge is that your chances of winning increase with the number of hands played. That’s the concept of Nzero, which is the point where the edge catches up to 1SD. Nzero=variance/edge^2 hands and the chances of winning are about 84%. At 4Nzero the chances improve to about 98%. Still a 2% chance of losing at a positive expectation game after playing a lot of hands. That’s why they call it gambling.
Re: [27:07] Tropicana in Atlantic City voucher policy
My wife is afraid to go back to the High-limit room at Tropicana in AC. She had an unpleasant encounter with a suit. The suit had a name tag that identified him as a security supervisor. He publicly accused my wife of ‘bill stuffing’ and he said that this was illegal.
I do not believe that creating large vouchers is illegal and I told her so. However, she is still afraid that Tropicana is watching out for her. She does not want to be confronted like this again and won’t set foot in there again, at least, for the time being. I am not even going to try to get her to go back when there are so many other paces to play in AC.
PS: Bob knows us because we hung around with him quite a bit during a two-week Adriatic cruise in May 2010.