Craps Strategy Investment Opportunity?

Quote: guido111

Now the real bankroll, bets and fun can begin.

Actually, it looks like 98steps' system is behaving EXACTLY as a Martingale (which his system is a derivative of) should: lots of small wins, and the occasional ghastly loss, which outweighs all the small wins combined. The system looks its best just before the next big loss, and its worst just after such a loss.

We can thank 98steps' rigid methodology and faithful reporting for this. I actually hope, for his sake, that the big losses continue to come as often as they "should", and that those losses continue to wipe out his wins: that would be the superior outcome. It would NOT be good for either him or his investors if he was lucky enough to avoid the big losses; that would create the illusion that the system was effective. The long-term effect of that would more than offset any profit made from the system test.

mkl654321

Some times I wonder why they keep trying to find a system that will work, when you have small profits and big losses, you are just going to take a beating. Now I will be the first guy to tell everybody on this board I am not a math guy, nor a system players. I get a good laugh out of some of the guys that buy into some of these systems. The only thing I can say is what a great job the guy did that sold them the system, he made money, but will the guy that bought it ever make money? I don't think so unless they just get lucky.

Your buy-in and bank roll dictates your ability to win at craps, small buy-in and bank roll the harder it is to win, because to have to leave your money at risk longer, or press-up your bets! This all depends on your win goal, some players would just be happy to make $50 a day while others are looking for a lot more every time they play, I fall into the this category!

The one thing I found out a long time ago is you need the buy-in to make the money.
Small buy-ins just hurts your chances of winnings.
Where with a good buy-in you can regress your bets down after getting paid off on one of your bets, get your money off the table if you want to do that, then press and spread, with what you just won on one good-sized bet!

I have seen a lot of systems being played by players, and the one thing I have found out is most players will stop playing them because they lost over time!

Quote: superrick

The one thing I found out a long time ago is you need the buy-in to make the money.
Small buy-ins just hurts your chances of winnings.

On the other hand, a small buyin reduces the size of your potential loss (assuming that if you lose your buyin, you're done), but your possible win is still infinite.

What matters is not how much you buy in for, but the total amount of your bets. The more you bet, the more you will lose (odds bets excluded).

Quote: mkl654321

On the other hand, a small buyin reduces the size of your potential loss (assuming that if you lose your buyin, you're done), but your possible win is still infinite.

What matters is not how much you buy in for, but the total amount of your bets. The more you bet, the more you will lose (odds bets excluded).

Once again, this is NOT true. The more you bet (odds excluded) the more is your EXPECTED loss. The ev is not RESULTS. The ev does not determine the shape of the graph, nor does it determine one's chance of winning.

Actually, the biggest determinant of whether a bettor will reach some win goal for a session is the degree of variance in the bet strategy.
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, CA

Quote: goatcabin

Once again, this is NOT true. The more you bet (odds excluded) the more is your EXPECTED loss. The ev is not RESULTS. The ev does not determine the shape of the graph, nor does it determine one's chance of winning.

Actually, the biggest determinant of whether a bettor will reach some win goal for a session is the degree of variance in the bet strategy.
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, CA

That's mere semantics. In the long run, actual results approach expected results. The more you bet, the greater your expected loss. The greater your expected loss, the more you will lose. This, of course, refers to the long run--but the long run is all that is meaningful in evaluating a betting strategy. I realize, of course, that the Law of Large Numbers means that the graph of results will be asymptotic--nearing, but never touching, expected results.

In point of fact, EV IS results, in the larger scheme of things. Casinos structure their games on the basis of EV, and they expect their results to average to EV, because they book so many decisions. If they cared about RESULTS in the short term, they'd burn all the crap tables when they lost money, and build more tables when they won. This isn't a fruitful outlook for the casino, and the analogous attitude for the player would be to sell his house and move to Vegas if he won, but swear on a stack of Bibles never to come to Vegas again if he lost.

Quote: mkl654321

That's mere semantics. In the long run, actual results approach expected results. The more you bet, the greater your expected loss. The greater your expected loss, the more you will lose. This, of course, refers to the long run--but the long run is all that is meaningful in evaluating a betting strategy.

But no player is in it for the long run; no one can bet that long or that much.

Quote: mkl654321

In point of fact, EV IS results, in the larger scheme of things. Casinos structure their games on the basis of EV, and they expect their results to average to EV, because they book so many decisions.

That is true for the casino, and it's true for the players, taken as an aggregate, but it is NOT true for any given player, and you know that.

If they cared about RESULTS in the short term, they'd burn all the crap tables when they lost money, and build more tables when they won. This isn't a fruitful outlook for the casino, and the analogous attitude for the player would be to sell his house and move to Vegas if he won, but swear on a stack of Bibles never to come to Vegas again if he lost.

The player is not a casino and he/she is not ALL the players. Every player has a chance to come out ahead, and intelligent players know that, but also know that that chance diminishes the more they play. You seem to have blinders on when it comes to variance and skew, although you understand the terms. It is virtually certain that some players will be lifetime winners, not because they have figured out some way to defeat the house edge, but just due to positive variance (luck).
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, Ca

Quote: goatcabin

But no player is in it for the long run; no one can bet that long or that much.
You seem to have blinders on when it comes to variance and skew, although you understand the terms. It is virtually certain that some players will be lifetime winners, not because they have figured out some way to defeat the house edge, but just due to positive variance (luck).
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, Ca

Oddly enough, YOU seem to have blinders on when I talk about the "long term", even though I'm sure you understand the term. Long term does not mean a billion billion outcomes. It means enough outcomes to smooth out the effects of variance, with the goal of approaching expected value. For me, that may mean 1000 hours, or 800,000 hands, of video poker. When I say I regard only the long term as meaningful, it means I will NOT stop and assess my results before I reach that long term perspective--I will not Singerize, and stop and assess my results every 400 hands.

Another thing you're not considering is that for most people, myself included, "long term" is somewhat subjective. For the casino, or for anyone making +EV bets (which might include stock market or bond investors), the long term is a not sharply defined, but nonetheless meaningful concept. It means we won't attach undue importance to what happens today, or this week.

I'm sure there's a mathematical expression of the long term, in that an increasing number of trials causes results to converge on the mean to such an extent that the mean is, for all intents and purposes, reached--it's not unlike the sum of an infinite series approaching 1. Of course I understand that those results are virtually certain to not fall ON the mean, but as a practical matter, for casinos and APs, close is good enough.

Although the lottery is completely -EV, everyone who has won is a lifetime winner.

Quote: mkl654321

T I realize, of course, that the Law of Large Numbers means that the graph of results will be asymptotic--nearing, but never touching, expected results.

Not that it matters much for anything, but it's not assymptotic. It fluctuates around the expected value, crossing it many times back and forth. As the number of experiments grows, the amplitude of fluctuations becomes lower.

Quote: goatcabin

But no player is in it for the long run; no one can bet that long or that much.

If a hundred thousand players make a hundred thousand bets, that's your "long run".
What you are missing is that your "long run" does not have to be constructed only of bets, made by you. If that large devastating loss is supposed to happen "in the long run" when you use martingale, there is no reason it won't happen to you on your very first bet.

Quote:

That is true for the casino, and it's true for the players, taken as an aggregate, but it is NOT true for any given player, and you know that.

A given player may get lucky for some period of time. Or he may get unlucky. There is no way to tell for sure which way your luck will swing, but because it is a -EV game, the distribution is shifted to the left, meaning it is more likely, that you'll get unlucky than that you'll get lucky.

The simple truth is that, long run or not, you are more likely to lose than to win, and the longer you play the more likely you are to lose, and the larger bets you are making, the more is the amount you are likely to lose.