D Day in Vegas
Quote: billryanWhat's the difference between praying in church and praying in a casino?
I will take 800-1 over eternal salvation anyday.
Quote: ZenKinGWell my advantage is much closer to 1.5% than 1%. If i wong in and out solely my edge is around 1.8% but i do play off the top occasionally i would say maybe 20% of the time and i wong out aggressively at -1 if i do play off the top. I also dont know why you used betting 250 a hand FLAT. 2x250 is my max bet and i only put that out at +5 at about a 2.5% advantage.
You're also not taking into account how unlucky it is to get to a new town and COINCIDENTALLY go down big. Ive had only 2 of these big losing streaks in 900 hours and for it to COINCIDENTALLY happen right when i get here. Yea just laughable, pure laughable. You guys can say whatever you want. The fact of the matter is im cursed in life. Everything i have done to this point has been nothing short of failure or under-performance.
Nonetheless your standard deviation is not so-out-of-the ordinary that it isn't out of the blue. Plus if other counters are winning it's evidence against the casinos being fixed.
Even at $2x100 average bet over the 4,000 hands you played your standard deviation is $12,069.16 and by your math you should be up 12,000. That puts you down roughly -1.75 standard deviations or about 3.6% probability. That said, I am guessing you're getting killed when your counts are the highest.
Events are not linked except in your brain. You can coincidentally go down for any reason. But my bet is that you probably need to be more introspective in your play and not get rattled.
And I agree with other posters. Losing $10k of a 61k bankroll does not count as being "cursed" in life. In the game of life, 10k is peanuts. You pay your realtor 20k and mortgage breakage penalties when you sell your house. You pay 10k/year for health insurance. I pay $10k / year for my kid's university.
Cursed in life? Bulls**t. In my opinion:
"Cursed in life" means incurable cancer. It means losing your loved one or parents early in life. It means a long-term painful struggle, like a many year struggle in getting access to your child having a a wife with schizophrenia, or a brother with alcoholism, or a mother suffering from early onset alzheimers, or getting your leg blown off in Afghanistan or Iraq and having to live your life in a wheelchair. Or try being a kid in Africa looking for clean water and a meal, or a teenager in Africa getting AIDs. Or being faced with bankruptcy in America because you're sick. Or being tagged as Trump's press secretary.
And even still, most people would not feel "cursed". You are anything but cursed. By all accounts, you are incredibly blessed.
You are too attached to money. Money is like a river. It comes and goes, and when you die, it's gone, along with all of your other possessions and things that you love. Those possessions won't remember you when you're gone. Your family and friends will.
Speaking of that, Happy Father's day, everyone.
Quote: AxelWolfNow ask him what the catch is.
EC has gone all gangbusters on VP AP's recently, you should be fine for a while, I think it's only people that have been hammering them for a while.
I do see a problem with anything low to mid-level VP/slots or whatever for you. You are down to 8k and have big swings. I can't imagine you are going to sit around and grind out a $100 to $200 in EV.
I disagree with the EV numbers posted here but that is ok. My point wasn't exactly to go all in at the El Cortel with only one player. The point was that this is a very basic strategy that you can do at any Casino if you want to play things Straight like ZK does and the numbers were exactly what you get over there. When I met him I knew something was off or wrong but I didn't realize he had the Curse on him. If I knew that I wouldn't of wasted my money buying drinks and playing pool with him. I wouldn't of shook his hand or came within eye contact of him. I hope it isn't contagious??? Now I know why I have been on a losing streak lately. It has been hard enough beating these crooked no good cheating Casinos for the last 20 years but now I have to spend weeks learning how to get this Curse off of me...thanks a lot ZK!!
I thought everybody knew this. How do you become a proficient highly skilled counter and not discover this secret to greatness is beyond me. Anyway, now you know Zen. Let me know if you can't locate the High Priestess on Bonanza that supplies these to counters when they arrive in town.
Quote: ZenKinGIt's official. Vegas is finally happening. Booked my apartment/hotel stay and put up the deposit. Since I will be leaving in May and the weather is decent throughout most of the country, it looks like im taking the direct route and avoiding the corrupt cash seizing cops in oklahoma and texas. Still not sure if I want to go through Utah or Colorado as there could be some snow possibly, but ill decide when it's time for that. For those that i havent annoyed enough yet, i thought it was worth it to update you guys with another thread of my Vegas departure status. Hopefully i dont run into some horrible variance in the next 2 weeks or perhaps just not play at all and wait for the trip.
I managed to get to a 61k bankroll and it looks like ill be well funded going into this 'adventure'. Rent is going to be $800 a month(All utilities included in price) and around $300 a month for fuel(driving) and $300 a month for food, so about 16k in expenses for the year. For bankroll risk purposes i will play to a 50k bankroll and assume about 8k expenses(6 months of blackjack play) as that should be a good conservative estimate of being 'ahead' from my blackjack play, especially since i plan to play and grind out A LOT of hours. Will keep my max bet at no more than 2x300 at big strip casinos and 2x200 at off-strip casinos as i want to try and fly under the radar as much as possible. Will show my max bet once and be out the door. Maybe add in an additional wong-in, but no more than 2 shoes per session as most casinos need 3 shoes to figure out your play. I also plan to hit up 9 stores each day. Each session in the long run should equate to about 45 minutes max with this criteria and should help me fly under the radar, or at least i hope so. Of course i got other tricks up my sleeve to manipulate the pit bosses, but ill refrain from posting about it.
2500 miles to go. Now only if i could find some good sized 'shoes'.
Keep your sessions short. Once you're flyered somewhere you're flyered everywhere.
Why are you playing at Paris? You clearly must not have done your casino homework. If you even vulture in their casino you get added to databases...Quote: ZenKinGJust when I thought this cheating story couldn't get any worse or shall I say funnier, you shouldve heard what a dealer at Paris told me tonight...
This is like, exceedingly common practice in a lot of states. Anyone who's played BJ for a while knows this.Quote: ZenKinGJust when I thought this cheating story couldn't get any worse or shall I say funnier, you shouldve heard what a dealer at Paris told me tonight. I'm still laughing as I type this.
So I go to the dealer, so what do you guys so with the old cards, do you guys send the used cards to the gift shop or something? He goes "yes we do". I was like how long does it take to get there? He says the cards dont go there right away, they go to a PRISON where they then sort the cards first, then send it back LOOL...
I don't think he's referring to playing -EV games at all. Reread what he said as he's absolutely correct on "figuring" out the casino. There are DOZENS and DOZENS of ways to get edges over the casino, eat for free, etc, etc, etc.Quote: ZenKinGWell I hope you're talking about comps through maybe video poker and using promotions/rebates to also get a slim edge. Other than that I'm not gonna play some -EV game like craps and play the pass line to get a few comps...
I've been saying "get more hands" for over a month now.Quote: MaxPenAverage bet of 125(80 hands per X 60 hours)=600K total action.
So you're down like 1 percent on total action? Over less than 5k hands.
Let's see where you're at 10X that...
Not really that unlucky really... 4k hands is a joke. You had the owner and creator of your software (QFIT) even chime in pages and pages back stating that is says ON the software when opened that anything less than like a billion hands should be considered worthless results. You just think you're unlucky and don't realize that you're really not that unlucky. Sure you could be luckier to be up X SD's, but you're no where in your journey yet. You've played a spec of what you need to play.Quote: ZenKinG-9815 / 58 hours played with a max bet of 2x250.
Bankroll now slightly below 48k LOOOL.
Around 4,000 hands played. Let that sink in how unlucky I am...
At 4k hands you could be playing BASIC STRATEGY and still be up more than you're down:
assuming avg bet $150...
EV(4k hands) = (4,000*150)*(-.005) = -$3000
SD(4k hands) = Sqrt(4000) * 172.5 = $11,000.
Shit, with ONE STANDARD DEVIATION JUST PLAYING BASIC STRATEGY LOSING BLACKJACK you could be up $8k. Why do you not get how WORTHLESS your short term results really are?
That's like saying, OMG I lost 5 hands in a row... .42^5 = .013... so that happens only ONE percent of the time OMG OMG OMG... but what you don't realize is that happens 1 out of every 100 hands you play and if you're a pro playing 500-1000 hands per day you're going to see that on a DAILY basis. So you can cry "5%" or whatever all you want, but what you don't realize is you're not unlucky, that's the math and natural swings of the game (as we've been telling you all along). When you realize that, then you'll realize how bad you look for crying "omg 5% of the time..." because it just shows you don't understand the math of the game you're playing and claiming to be one of the best at.
Let me try to clarify something for you, that maybe you don't understand fully... The cards do not care what town you're in. You're giving meaning to something that's meaningless. It doesn't matter that you just moved. It doesn't matter that you just started in vegas or anywhere. You are NOT getting unlucky. These are the NATURAL swings of the game. Period.Quote: ZenKinG...You're also not taking into account how unlucky it is to get to a new town and COINCIDENTALLY go down big....
Ya, but what about the rest of us at this point? (-;Quote: RomesYou are NOT getting unlucky.
Quote: RomesThe rest of these really deserved their own post...
Not really that unlucky really... 4k hands is a joke. You had the owner and creator of your software (QFIT) even chime in pages and pages back stating that is says ON the software when opened that anything less than like a billion hands should be considered worthless results. You just think you're unlucky and don't realize that you're really not that unlucky. Sure you could be luckier to be up X SD's, but you're no where in your journey yet. You've played a spec of what you need to play.
At 4k hands you could be playing BASIC STRATEGY and still be up more than you're down:
assuming avg bet $150...
EV(4k hands) = (4,000*150)*(-.005) = -$3000
SD(4k hands) = Sqrt(4000) * 172.5 = $11,000.
Shit, with ONE STANDARD DEVIATION JUST PLAYING BASIC STRATEGY LOSING BLACKJACK you could be up $8k. Why do you not get how WORTHLESS your short term results really are?
That's like saying, OMG I lost 5 hands in a row... .42^5 = .013... so that happens only ONE percent of the time OMG OMG OMG... but what you don't realize is that happens 1 out of every 100 hands you play and if you're a pro playing 500-1000 hands per day you're going to see that on a DAILY basis. So you can cry "5%" or whatever all you want, but what you don't realize is you're not unlucky, that's the math and natural swings of the game (as we've been telling you all along). When you realize that, then you'll realize how bad you look for crying "omg 5% of the time..." because it just shows you don't understand the math of the game you're playing and claiming to be one of the best at.
Let me try to clarify something for you, that maybe you don't understand fully... The cards do not care what town you're in. You're giving meaning to something that's meaningless. It doesn't matter that you just moved. It doesn't matter that you just started in vegas or anywhere. You are NOT getting unlucky. These are the NATURAL swings of the game. Period.
I did all that analysis for him a page ago and determined that his standard deviation based on 4,000 hands (n= 4000) at playing 2 hands is 1.903 x the bet size at each hand is about 120.695 times his average bet.
He is claiming a 1.5% advantage which I think is bulls**t. But nonetheless at an average of say $100/hand x 2 / hand that is 800,000 bet with an expected win of 12,000 +/- $12,069.
That puts him at about -1.81 standard deviations below normal or about the 3.5% percentile. Sucks but nothing to prove cheating. Just the wrong side of variance. It is quite possible that PA gave me false confidence and that his buildup of 61k back home made him think that he had an advantage he didn't have.
My feeling is that the heat and nervousness is blowing his count, his betting / spread is wrong and that his advantage by not wonging out early and coming in cold is pushing his edge lower. But he will claim the opposite. He also said something big was going down on Friday. Apparently there was a change of heart.
I hope the guy is ok.
Quote: PokerGrinderThis thread has become my morning crack fix. I wake up read the D day thread, have a giggle, shake my head, maybe one more giggle while shaking my head and then I move on with my day. Thank you ZK for the comedy, it's much appreciated.
I felt like this for the first few months. After that I lost interest and didn't check on the site for months. After that I came back and D Day was the second installment. I followed on and enjoyed it up until the other day when he was claiming God is cursing him compared to the rest of us who struggle every day in these Casinos. I am starting to feel like he is just trying to get attention now and I'm not amused anymore. Honestly he has plenty of information and he should be able to figure it out even if he has to take a break from BJ and do some other things with less earning potential. I do check back to see what happens as my interest now is how much he is up or down and if Gaming laughed at him when he put in a complaint.
Quote: MrVYeah, it's kind of like "I once felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, but then I met a man who had no feet."
I felt sorry for myself because I wasn't blessed by God, then I met a man who was cursed by God
Quote: TomGI felt sorry for myself because I wasn't blessed by God, then I met a man who was cursed by God
There a scene in the horror movie "Pumpkinhead" where the dead kids dad tries to get the witch to stop the beast and she doesn't. He goes on to say "God damn you" to which she replies "He already has."
Quote: AxelWolfI think something big did go down Friday, he has been silent and I even texted him regarding something that would have been of concern to him.
I hope the guy is ok.
More likely his vacation is over and he is driving back home to sleep in the basement.
That's a bit concerning... Hope everything is alright as well.Quote: AxelWolfI think something big did go down Friday, he has been silent and I even texted him regarding something that would have been of concern to him.
I hope the guy is ok.
He appeared to be carrying a box of pre shuffled cards, which had been taken from a table that was about to open.
You can always tell a Zen King, but you can't tell him much.
Quote: ontariodealerzenking if it helps you at all (and I don't think it will), the casino's profits go up with the preshuffled cards as there is more hands played and less down time for the dealers....also the dealers toke rate rises for the same reason. So the casino's have no need to cheat you, they are already making more money with the preshuffles. Also, the cards purchased from asia instead of ohio (although quite inferior) and much cheaper so again more profit. Thirdly, after the cards are placed in the shufflers the machines counts the cards and recognizes if there is any discrepancy. YOU ARE NOT a victim of cheating, just modern technology at work.
And this coming from a dealer. He must be in on it. What's your cut?
Quote: boymimboAnd this coming from a dealer. He must be in on it. What's your cut?
Has it been answered by OD who got first?
Fu***** mob infested town
Quote: ZenKinG-10,640 LOL. You guys can say its legit all you want. Once bankroll hits 40k I'm quitting.
Fu***** mob infested town
Keep your bankroll separate and pay yourself each night based on the EV you are earning. Use what you pay yourself for living expenses. Don't freak out about the bankroll fluctuating as long as you are calculating your edge correctly and playing correctly.
Quote: ZenKinG-10,640 LOL. You guys can say its legit all you want. Once bankroll hits 40k I'm quitting.
Fu***** mob infested town
Keep your bankroll separate and pay yourself each night based on the EV you are earning. Use what you pay yourself for living expenses. Don't freak out about the bankroll fluctuating as long as you are calculating your edge correctly and playing correctly.
Quote: ZenKinG-10,640 LOL. You guys can say its legit all you want. Once bankroll hits 40k I'm quitting.
Fu***** mob infested town
Yes, tuck and run back to Jersey, because no mobsters there.
If only you had a dollar for everytime you said you were done.
Quote: ZenKinG-10,640 LOL. You guys can say its legit all you want. Once bankroll hits 40k I'm quitting.
Fu***** mob infested town
It was confirmed that Las Vegas casinos cheat their customers a while ago. What possible reason was there to continue playing other than to watch thousands of your own dollars burn?
Dude, you're cursed.
Quote: ZenKinG-10,640 LOL. You guys can say its legit all you want. Once bankroll hits 40k I'm quitting.
Fu***** mob infested town
just change your name to varmenti and have a nice day.
Quote: RSBe sure to pour about 2-3 cups of water into your gasoline tank, as the summer approaches. Don't want your car overheating or nothin.
That is just stupid. Everybody in Vegas knows to use ice cubes.
Quote: DRichThat is just stupid. Everybody in Vegas knows to use ice cubes.
Nitrogen ice cubes, to be precise.
Quote: ontariodealerjust change your name to varmenti and have a nice day.
Varmenti was at your casino, wasn't he. I remember going to that casino to see if I could find him.
Quote: ontariodealerwas there all the time then just disappeared off the map.
She has 5 Facebook pages 2 of which are back related. He hasn't posted in either of those for 2 years and his other 3 she has never mentioned a casino a single time. It is just truly odd.
Zen where is our update. Did you go on a heater or did you start driving home?
To make matters worse there is a bug infestation in my apartment now and my hand has swelled up badly the size of a grapefruit. Last week i alsp got bit but it didnt swell up like this. I don't know if it was bed bugs or some type of spider bite this time. Dealer freaked out when she saw it and said I look poisoned.
You just couldn't get off to a word start if you tried. Like I said I have to work twice as hard as the next guy just to be even. Some guys are just cursed. Its alright even with adversity I'm still unstoppable.
Quote: ZenKinG-8800. Did not play for 3 days after winning back 1700. Now the first hour I play I lose 850.
To make matters worse there is a bug infestation in my apartment now and my hand has swelled up badly the size of a grapefruit. Last week i alsp got bit but it didnt swell up like this. I don't know if it was bed bugs or some type of spider bite this time. Dealer freaked out when she saw it and said I look poisoned.
And still I advise: You MUST reduce your average and max wagers if you are to avoid crashing and burning. I fear your idea of 'working twice as hard' actually equates to taking ever more reckless risks.Quote: ZenKinGIts alright even with adversity I'm still unstoppable.
Your previously estimated ROR of 0.5% always did strike me as wayy over optimistic.
Ditto.Quote: OnceDearAnd still I advise: You MUST reduce your average and max wagers if you are to avoid crashing and burning. I fear your idea of 'working twice as hard' actually equates to taking ever more reckless risks.
Your previously estimated ROR of 0.5% always did strike me as wayy over optimistic.
Does not sound like you are playing with an RoR of less than 10%...
Quote: ZenKinGYou just couldn't get off to a word start if you tried.
WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!
I mentioned before, when I got back into counting in '08, I ran just as bad from the get go albeit lower stakes. I was down nearly $2000 and a month and a half in on a $10 game before things turned around.
Quote: ZenKinG-8800. Did not play for 3 days after winning back 1700. Now the first hour I play I lose 850.
To make matters worse there is a bug infestation in my apartment now and my hand has swelled up badly the size of a grapefruit. Last week i alsp got bit but it didnt swell up like this. I don't know if it was bed bugs or some type of spider bite this time. Dealer freaked out when she saw it and said I look poisoned.
You just couldn't get off to a word start if you tried. Like I said I have to work twice as hard as the next guy just to be even. Some guys are just cursed. Its alright even with adversity I'm still unstoppable.
scorpion got you in your sleep.
