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odiousgambit's Blog
"The Cooler"December 29th, 2011 at 4:01:28 am Saw this movie recently. Mini-review without spoilers, an old fashioned casino in Mob days employs a "Cooler", a big loser who's luck is so bad they send him in to tables where people are having too much luck to suit the casino. This "cools off" the table; he is considered "the best". He wants to quit, though, and he is so valuable in the mind of the character played by Alec Baldwin that this must not be. So the story revolves around ironic developments thereafter. Good performance by the actors, Alec is good in this one. Contains as good a depiction of action at the craps table as I have seen in a gambling movie; it strictly showed only rolling the 7,11, or craps in the come-out though [perhaps understandably]. Maybe some hard-ways were mentioned. Wound up wondering about this movie, though. How common was the practice of using Coolers in the old days? Does it still happen today? Additionally, according to the movie, any big winner was intolerable and subject to harassment even if it was clear they weren't cheating. They would be back-roomed or worse. Was that really true in mob days? Also, I believe in this movie it was suggested people who were just too lucky would get themselves banned, there was none of this smarter ploy of encouraging them to stay by all means possible. I think I can answer that one myself: the casinos couldn't possibly have been that dumb!! PS: one scene shows Baldwin catching a cheating dice player using a device that fed crooked dice into his palm from his sleeve. Baldwin would seem to be using x-ray vision to spot this! You have to wonder why the director thought that was the right way to show the scene, geez. Comments
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Wincraps looks at BlackjackDecember 7th, 2011 at 5:32:14 am It occurred to me that Wincraps could simulate BJ in a manner of speaking. I took the Wincraps program and altered the chances of rolling a 7 so that the true probability changed [the program automatically adjusts the chances of rolling the other numbers and will give theoretical HE] and by tweaking it got the HE on the don't pass altered to -0.26%, a pretty good game to find I think most of us could confirm. I wanted to see how longer sessions fared compared to shorter ones. So I ran it untill I had 1200 sessions in each case below. Each session was a different size, 300 rolls with approximately 100 come-out rolls included in the first case, for example. I felt this might simulate about an hour at a full BJ table. It has become my opinion that BJ will grind away a player going longer than that so that there is not much else to expect than to be losing, and seldom winning much, if that would be one's luck. I had thought 1200 sessions in each case would be pretty stable. The 1200 sessions with 300 rolls each I did last, and it surprised me that the break-even % went up so much, enough that breaking even plus winning got close to 50%. So I ran it again and got two surprises, win + break-even exceeding 50%! and also thus an indication that my sample size is too small. In other words, there is a degree of sampling error and for any 1200 sessions you don't get enough data to be sure about things. Well, anyway, I'm not sure I will do more than this, but I feel it supports that this grousing about not winning in BJ that we are hearing [including from me] has a little bit of disingenuousness to it. The effect of sitting at a BJ table for long sessions, even at pretty good HE, is really, really trying to get quite lucky, I am now thinking. To expect different results, do something different. Shorter sessions seems to be the way to go, save being an AP. PS: the good news is I have learned how to get data from Wincraps by session, which stumped me for a long time.
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WWII InterestDecember 5th, 2011 at 7:55:47 am As the proportion of associates at work etc. gets younger, it's getting more rare now to find other people interested in WWII, so it is kind of cool to be able to discuss it in this forum. Do you have books you would never lend to anyone? In the case of WWII, I have two I would never lend, The Two-Ocean War by Samuel Morison and The Luftwaffe War Diaries by Cajus Bekker. I was checking out the second one to see if I might start a thread on night fighter radar, but found I was remembering some things wrong. Anyway, one thing led to another and came across this interesting statement I thought I would share about American research in radar in WWII: "over 2.1 billion dollars were spent on the development of radar. This was about as much as was spent on the development of the atom bomb." I was certainly aware that American research paid off. It played a huge role in defeating the Japanese. As far as the Germans go, they were quite advanced in radar but were shocked to find out the British were roughly as developed technologically and were advanced in actual application. I had thought that the Germans were the first to deploy radar in night fighters, but evidently not [the internet helps!]. Quoted Link Comments
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"He never bothered about mathematics at all"November 22nd, 2011 at 5:20:59 am Talking about Einstein, one of the most surprising things about reading Walter Isaacson's Einstein was to learn that Einstein avoided advanced math in his early education. All the pictures of Einstein you see today generally show him at the blackboard writing some seemingly impossibly complicated mathematical equation. But it seems he was a student adequate in math, yet not much interested in it. The book says later in life he realized this was a great mistake, that math is essential to understanding and theorizing in Physics. Nonetheless the book relates how he made little effort to do more than the minimum effort in the discipline while attending the Zurich Polytechnic, skipping most of his calculus classes for example. To show this was not being a case of already having mastered the material, his worst grades were in Math, maintaining a 4 pt average in a 6 point system. Clearly he makes up for this later, though the book does not make clear how [at least I don't remember and can't find it now]. The quote about "never bothering" comes from one of his Zurich P. professors. I have to tell you that it is my opinion that this attitude today would devastate anyone planning to have a career in science. I have a nephew who claims to be quite interested in Space and the study of the Universe, but I am hardly sanguine about his chances of making this his career. He is attending a private Christian school; I have heard nothing about any interest in math and just know he is not getting the math background he would need, even though on the face of it it could be possible since they have him taking calculus. I have pondered whether to tell his father my brother, he better start getting special tutoring to get him to the level of a couple of years in proficiency in college math by the time he graduates from high school. This leg up for someone who has not been described as a straight A student would be extremely helpful. If he was a natural at math, ready to pick it up at any level no sweat, I think I would be hearing about it. I guess I will just keep my mouth shut, am I going to offer to pay for this tutoring? Plus I could be wrong; perhaps things are different today, they evidently were in Einsteins day. And maybe it will just happen that he will find himself taking off in a different direction with his studies, and this is all then forgotten. I worry about it though; after all the percentage of people dropping out of college is still quite high. There are plenty of landmines. Why start with plans for going into a profession that are greatly flawed? Comments on the personal situation are welcome. Comments
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10x Craps ExploredNovember 7th, 2011 at 3:33:24 pm I've been puzzling over a paradox of the Craps world: games can be found that offer substantial free odds, up to 100x, but it is very infrequent to hear that someone takes advantage. Mostly in this forum someone will talk about what they do with other completely different bets; occassionally there is a report on working with 10x or 20x free odds, usually at a table with the remarkably liberal exception of $1 minimum on the line. As someone has been quoted as saying, the casinos don't like to gamble, so that would explain why there clearly is great resistance out there amongst them against offering large-x free odds, only doing it to be competitive. Investigating what casinos are risking, it is a chickenshit attitude for sure, yet somewhat understandable: I'm finding a player religiously sticking to 10x or more can't be guaranteed to be have actual losses over a considerable time period, or even in his lifetime. Assuming there isn't some silent sizeable legion out there doing it, you might think there would be more players trying. Clearly one problem is bankroll; I wanted to check out what might be needed to really take chances with some reasonably comfortable amount to lose. After all with negative expectation this is the equation in any case. There is now a craps table within driving distance for me that offers 10X free odds for $10 bets, but I was shrugging it off as exceeding my comfort level for my craps gambling and have skipped it on trips where I could have engaged in that kind of wagering. But it has slowly dawned on me that I was wrong to think that there was no way to manage this without 'gambling more'. It would certainly be true if I maintained my old pattern: playing for about 90 minutes a session, two sessions per trip. A hard critique of this old pattern was already underway. I was starting to experiment with shorter sessions, to increase the chances for coming out ahead with a session. Finally I've decided that an extremely short session placing the large bets with the 10X odds would make a certain amount of sense. 90 minutes at a $5 3x4x5x table means wagering about $3600 per session for me. Alternatively, playing at a $10 table laying 10X free odds, counting not by the number of bets on the line, but instead counting the times that a point gets established, and counting to 20 of those decisions, means about the same in wagering. I'm thinking the experience of the very short session gets balanced by the excitement of the larger wagers, and I am definitely finding that shorter sessions are fitting fine with me, and it feels like smarter betting too. So far I have proved to myself I can keep a certain discipline about limits to wagering if I set my mind to it. One thing I have been able to confirm is that 10x odds takes you into a different universe. I am used to 3x4x5x, and when playing that way I find I am focused pretty much on the line action, with streaks of craps or 7-11 being a bummer or a thrill depending on which side one is betting. I find myself sometimes skipping free odds bets, or not taking the full amount, and certainly almost always failing to call these 'on' during the come-out, all because the line bet just seems the focus. Going the max with 10x free odds, however, all that changes. Lose 3 or 4 bets in a row on the line and it's "who cares"! It's more clear that $10 a whack just isnt going to add up. Once you put up your 10x free odds, another thing becomes clear: this is where the action matters. And IMO there is no longer any doubt that the dark side is the way to go. For me the losing streaks that 'playing right' dish out are too hard to take with the bigger money out there, and there is no doubt that you want your free odds working all the time: that's automatic on the dark side. BTW 5x free odds, I have found, keeps elements of that 3x4x5x experience, with just a taste of that other universe. I also believe the excitement is enough without going to the DC box, although I concede that assumption may not hold. Dabbling with 10x is in the cards for me, but what about being a steady, frequent, long session 10x player, chancing that very favorable long run? I decided to try 100 different players on Wincraps going for 10x odds through 50,000 rolls [not come-outs]. I chose 50k as an amount that represents the most rolls I am likely to see for the longest period of gambling over the years that I might still be up and kicking. For me this means gambling several times a year but not as often as once a month, with a limit to how many sessions each trip as well, but going at it hard each session. Something might surprise me, but as far as I can tell I likely will see less than this 50,000 rolls for the rest of my life [certainly this would be different for other players]. I set up the Wincraps to have one unit on the line, I'm thinking this will give us constant dollars over decades. As inflation grows the minimum bet will go up, and the gambling bankroll should also go up. The table below shows this Wincraps experiment with the 100 players. I have listed whether the player came out ahead (W) or lost money (L) but alternatively lost money but came close to breaking even (GBE for gambler's break even). With Comps it is breaking even, Wincraps valuing it at about 60 units, but I am calling it a GBE at -50 or better to adjust for the fact that Comps do not exactly equal money. Since for me the time period is decades I would be happy indeed to only be down 50 units anyway. It occurred to me that the real question is bankroll and ruin. Yes, some players get the W or GBE, 37% to be exact, but whether they got to see it to the end depended on that bankroll quite often. I decided for the first 33% of the rolls that if a 500 unit bankroll held up, that was good, not busting 700 units running total for the next third, and not busting 900 units at any time, that would be a sustainable situation for me, and if exceeded I would have to consider that as Ruin for my bankroll. How another person with a better bankroll could do became a question, to make it easy I just looked at whether a flat bankroll would last. I decided you need a 1500 unit roll, out of my league but represented in the last column. Out of the 37 W's and GBE's, the smaller bankroll went to Ruin 12 times; in other words, only 25 times out of the hundred players did a small version bankroll get to W/GBE without Ruin. 63 are losers 'period'. Some of those L's do not experience small bankroll Ruin, however. If you went with the liberal definition of "worth it" as not experiencing Ruin [after all it is negative expectation] then you can count 30 as players who probably enjoyed themselves whether they came out ahead or not. For players with a larger absolute bankroll, $15,000 in today's money for a $10 table, then 73 of these players with that roll on them could be considered to have gotten the play they wanted [again, possibly for decades depending on player]. Of note is the fact that the larger bankroll avoids Ruin for 11 of the W/GBE's. But Ruin for the large bankroll still occurs for 27 players, some of whom you just wouldnt want to be [g]. This was a lot of work and probably shows how crazy I am [g]. In Summary, for the bankroll I am going to be comfortable with risking, Ruin occurs too often to think that this might be worth a shot. A dabbler on a more limited basis looks like the deal for me. 30 players out of 100 "enjoying themselves" is not an inviting prospect.
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