The Adventures of MDawg II

When it comes down to just a couple or few players left, especially towards the end of the tournament, everything you mention matters a lot, but at blackjack tournaments too not just baccarat.

Bets may not be changed before the deal, and must be placed sequentially. Once the chips are down, that's it, and tournaments generally also have a "no string betting" rule, so that whatever you place over the circle must be bet (at least to the limit) with no changes.

In some tournaments a die is rolled at each table to determine who goes first, in others it depends on the random seat assignment made at check in which depends on which slip you draw blindly out of the box. So yes, as time goes on betting sequence makes a big difference, especially on the last hand unless it is a secret bet (where each player writes down the exact bet on a piece of paper and all secret bets are revealed before the final hand). As players get wiped out, that affects the betting sequence too, obviously. So let's say there will be 15 hands and a certain number of players and you go first (or don't), you may be able to calculate rapidly if you will bet last (assuming no secret bet applies), but as people get wiped out along the way, "who bets last" will change.

But yes, as you allude, betting sequence matters a lot especially if not many players left or more especially - just two left - and it matters if one player has less chips, but also if both players have about the same chips.

In general for a tournament, especially blackjack,
-If behind bet opposite of your enemy, if your enemy bets big, you bet small, if your enemy bets small, you bet big.
-If you are in the lead, mimic your enemies, bet the same way as the people trying to catch you.
-Don't wait until the very last hand to catch up. Make the move when there are about 5 hands left.

For baccarat you also have hand selection available (bet Player or Bank), whereas in blackjack both of you, you and your opponent, either win the hand or don't, with the only variance being if one of you gets a blackjack, double down or split opportunity (assuming you have enough chips left to double or split anyway, if you are going all in).

In Baccarat sometimes I will bet opposite my opponent on a hand, or even big hand, simply because that will move the tournament along quickly in a direction that will either move me far ahead or behind, and that sort of thing is what is called for at that time. Sometimes too on the final bet even if it is secret you just know that everyone is going to bet one side, and so you bet the other, just because the math based on the final chip standings dictates that you may win only if that other side wins.

I've also seen a player place an obscene amount of chips on the tie bet for the final hand, because the player is so far behind that only an 8:1 hit will allow advancement to the next tournament level. Most tournaments have strict limits on side bets, and I've seen only the tie allowed no other side bets (no Tiger 6, etc.) in baccarat tournaments, but at at least one casino's tournaments they have no limit every single hand - all in, any amount on Bank, Player or tie any hand, which is a little crazy I think.

Quote: MDawg

-If you are in the lead, mimic your enemies, bet the same way as the people trying to catch you.
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This may make a huge difference if a tournament gets down to two people, and the one who has even a tiny bit less chips than the other bets first all in. Then, if the player going second has any brains, and especially in Baccarat, he will mirror the bet on the same side (thereby reserving as unbet whatever chips he is ahead).

That way, either the tournament goes on, and the chip leader remains the chip leader, or the tournament will end then, and the player betting second will win because he will be left with some chips.

Obviously, in such situations it is a bad idea for the player who is ahead to go all in if betting first, because it will give the trailing player going afterwards the opportunity to end the tournament in his favor, by betting opposite big or small, or same side, small.

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?

Quote: MDawg

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?
link to original post

No. I eschew all vaccines and all other medical treatment unless I believe it is necessary for me. If I catch a cold, I catch a cold.

The only two vaccines with a provable net benefit for human life are for smallpox and for rabies.

Quote: MDawg

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?
link to original post

Going to wait until October. Flu protects for 6 months, and waiting until Octber extends protection well into next spring.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: MDawg

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?
link to original post

No. I eschew all vaccines and all other medical treatment unless I believe it is necessary for me. If I catch a cold, I catch a cold.

The only two vaccines with a provable net benefit for human life are for smallpox and for rabies.
link to original post

Tell us you know mothing about disease prevention and human medicine, without actually saying you know nothing about disease prevention and human medicine.

I feel no side effects and while most everyone we know has come down with the flu or covid at least once, some more than once, over recent years, we have not.

Quote: MDawg

I feel no side effects and while most everyone we know has come down with the flu or covid at least once, some more than once, over recent years, we have not.
link to original post

I don't really mind catching those things. It's part of evolution. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses evolved with us and as we catch them and attenuate their more aggressive strains we use evolution to force them to be less harmful. I'm willing. If I catch a flu that knocks me down, I stay home. But if my flu barely causes symptoms, I go out and behave normally, so that those around me may too catch the one that barely causes symptoms.

We also seem to re-up our immunity when we are exposed to something to which we still have immunity from the last time we had it. A pediatrician has sick kids coughing and sneezing and puking on him all day every day. Why isn't he sick all the time? Vaccines against these endemic diseases aren't particularly effective as they are constantly evolving and I would rather my immune system learn from what is out there in the real world today.

Our viruses might be accelerating our own evolution too. Colds make you cough and sneeze so that you spread them, right? That's how natural selection in infectious microbes works. So why aren't there any VDs that make you horny, or make you sexually irresistible? I hypothesize there may have been at one time, and as that viral DNA spread around it became part of our own cells and those cells now work on their own to make us horny. Like it or not, the colds and flus are going to be with us forever and maybe instead of trying to fight them in vain, we should see where they are taking us and gently guide them.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: MDawg

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?
link to original post

No. I eschew all vaccines and all other medical treatment unless I believe it is necessary for me. If I catch a cold, I catch a cold.

The only two vaccines with a provable net benefit for human life are for smallpox and for rabies.
link to original post

So measles is no big deal?

Quote: KevinAA

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: MDawg

"Coronavirus math" thread is closed - so I post here.

We just got the new covid vaccine (just came out this week) plus the annual flu. We do travel a lot and I'm around a lot of people when in Vegas.

We're both in excellent health and no pre-existing medical issues.

Anyone else bother?
link to original post

No. I eschew all vaccines and all other medical treatment unless I believe it is necessary for me. If I catch a cold, I catch a cold.

The only two vaccines with a provable net benefit for human life are for smallpox and for rabies.
link to original post

So measles is no big deal?
link to original post

Let's look at some numbers to see if it is a big deal! Explain these graphs:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/measles-cases-and-death-rate

There was no rubeola measles vaccine available until 1963, and you can see from the top graph that the rate of measles cases in the population dropped to nil in the years following 1963. Score a point for the vaccines!

However, looking at the bottom graph and the fatality rate, how the heck did the fatality rate from measles drop to nil in the 1940s, despite the infection rate peaking in 1941? Something had to have changed. Better supportive treatment of patients with severe cases of measles could be a contributor, but the supportive treatment for measles is just hydration and fever control, with ice and aspirin but people knew about that in 1919 as there were a lot of febrile diseases back then, and there were certainly no antivirals available in the 1940s. So applying deductive reasoning I have to conclude that the virus changed- evolution of the virus and its relationship with us and our immune systems, and vaccination came after that change and thus could not be its cause, as effect must follow cause. I'm not going out of my way to be provocative or politically incorrect in saying this, I just can't find my way to any other conclusion without being intellectually dishonest.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

The only two vaccines with a provable net benefit for human life are for smallpox and for rabies.
link to original post

you're forgetting the polio vaccine. Use of that one nearly eradicated it worldwide [edited]

Yet even though it was nearly eradicated, they still give the vaccine to kids, isn't that ammo for the anti-vaxers? I am a supporter of recent decisions to start doing a kinder, gentler assault on our kids by the mad scientists.... even though I readily myself will get vaccinated [though no longer do for Covid]

correction, smallpox is eradicated, polio is still endemic in hell holes

Vaccines build up immunity without having to come down with the disease. (Well rabies vaccine might be one exception, it is taken after exposure.)

Some of what AutoMonkey is saying might apply better to antibiotics - that it is best to avoid them unless the body is unable to clear the bacteria without the drugs. In such cases too someone is already sick so a decision may be made to ride it out or fight it with drugs. And yes if the body is able to beat it without the antibiotics broad spectrum immunity might be developed, plus resistance to antibiotics avoided.

But I don't see how coming down with covid or the flu is better than beating it outright. With viruses I think the better path is to take the available vaccines.

COVID is out of control in Texas and other southern states right now. I don't have a map at the moment but it's really bad. My area seems OK for now. I'll get the shots next month. A previous Governor would block cars from those southern states from entering the state, but there's a presumption of vaccination now unlike in the Spring of 2020.

It's possible to get POTS from COVID, where your heart rate skyrockets when you stand up and blood pools in your legs. There's no cure.

The COVID vaccine just improves your chances of not needing a ventilator in the ICU, it doesn't stop you from getting sick for weeks at a time.

Well we went from this sort of thing in mid-2020 with mandatory masks and plexiglass barriers at the tables




to business as usual.

Quote: MDawg

Vaccines build up immunity without having to come down with the disease. (Well rabies vaccine might be one exception, it is taken after exposure.)

Some of what AutoMonkey is saying might apply better to antibiotics - that it is best to avoid them unless the body is unable to clear the bacteria without the drugs. In such cases too someone is already sick so a decision may be made to ride it out or fight it with drugs. And yes if the body is able to beat it without the antibiotics broad spectrum immunity might be developed, plus resistance to antibiotics avoided.

But I don't see how coming down with covid or the flu is better than beating it outright. With viruses I think the better path is to take the available vaccines.
link to original post

A clue about these diseases comes from an interesting fact about 3 diseases that have been mentioned here, smallpox, measles and polio, in that they do not have any extant animal vectors. So where did they come from? It's possible that they come from animals that are now extinct but were once coexistent with humans like the woolly mammoth and passenger pigeon, but being there are not a lot of pathological zoonoses it is much more likely that they originated within humans as a mutation of something that came from some other species.

During the coroney baloney we all heard about the R0, the reproduction number of viruses, but what they did not clarify is that it is not just a characteristic of the virus. It has as much to do with the community it is present in, that community's behavior, and varies for individuals depending on that individual's role and behavior within their community. The starkest illustration of this was with AIDS. If you are part of the community which has the behavior of sharing needles with drug addicts, the R of AIDS relative to you is very high, and from your perspective it's an epidemic. If you are part of the community that entertains itself by bending over in a public toilet the R of AIDS is also very high for you, and for the guy standing behind him it is significantly lower (although in reality that guy is more likely to be a needle guy too, so the two factors are not independent). For a woman with the hobby of shopping herself around in the ghetto, anything getting stuck in anywhere, the R of AIDS is also high from her perspective. But if you are not in any of those categories AIDS was just something they lecture you about on TV, your behavior and your community don't give the virus a R of anything near 1, which it needs to spread sustainably.

We don't spread rabies among us because that's spread by biting, and there aren't many of us who do that, unlike the world of rodents and bats which are community animals that bite one another as communication. If it ever became normal for us, maybe you would just casually bite the person sitting next to you at a baccarat table, then rabies spread among us would become reality. But human behavior over history has changed profoundly in many ways, starting with being hunter-gatherers, then learning agriculture and becoming sedentary, domesticating animals so we have physical contact with them without killing them, faster means of transportation so that we can spread whatever we have around before symptoms develop and we realize we are sick, and so on; every change like this changed the ways and the likelihood of a different disease spreading, and we then evolved to counter that.

So what I propose is that these diseases which have only humans as a vector are fairly new, and every time we changed our behavior, things like living in cities, working in factories, mass transportation, children attending schools in classrooms, switching from one-room schoolhouses to classes where all the kids are the same age- and each of these changes changed the reproduction number for something that dropped in from another species, that without that change would have fizzled out without even a historical mention, but the change in our behavior gave it an R greater than 1 for us and a new disease popped up. Other changes like mastering fire and cooking our food, sanitation for human and livestock wastes, quarantining known disease carriers, inventing soap and hand washing, they made other diseases less infectious and some became extinct or modified themselves into something less virulent that needed to be more subtle to spread. How vaccination fits into this isn't always clear, as vaccination is also a behavior, and I think that it could be helpful, ineffective, or harmful to us depending on a bunch of factors, some of which we cannot accurately predict. Thus I accept everyone making their own decision, as there is no one in any better position to make it.