Pushing bets on streaks

Last weekend, I experienced two monstrously beautiful shoes during which, heads-up against the dealer, I lost I think about 3 hands and won the rest. The thing is, there was absolutely no reason for that to be happening -- TC was around zero the entire time. He just kept hiding 6s and 5s under his dealer 10, drawing to 17, etc etc. I kept betting $50 but man do I somewhat regret not pushing more, like an earlier story about someone who kept pushing his bets during a streak and cashed out $80k after (eventually) betting 2-3k a hand.

So here's the question. You're on this streak. The dealer seams to always bust or lose. Count is neutral. And this keeps going and going for 10-15 minutes. What would y'all have done? keep it at $50 and take rake in the ~$3k or so, or push bets?

I would have done exactly the same with no regrets.

Quote: arcticfun

Last weekend, I experienced two monstrously beautiful shoes during which, heads-up against the dealer, I lost I think about 3 hands and won the rest. The thing is, there was absolutely no reason for that to be happening -- TC was around zero the entire time. He just kept hiding 6s and 5s under his dealer 10, drawing to 17, etc etc. I kept betting $50 but man do I somewhat regret not pushing more, like an earlier story about someone who kept pushing his bets during a streak and cashed out $80k after (eventually) betting 2-3k a hand.

So here's the question. You're on this streak. The dealer seams to always bust or lose. Count is neutral. And this keeps going and going for 10-15 minutes. What would y'all have done? keep it at $50 and take rake in the ~$3k or so, or push bets?

I would have pressed a little bit, for cover. At TC 0 it doesn't cost you much. If you are moving your bets up when the count goes up, it looks strange if you aren't increasing your bets while on a massive winning streak. (If you are a player who always flat-bets no matter what, it's no big deal)

That also means that if the count goes negative you have to get up and leave the table. But I do that anyway.

Quote: arcticfun

So here's the question. You're on this streak. The dealer seams to always bust or lose. Count is neutral. And this keeps going and going for 10-15 minutes. What would y'all have done? keep it at $50 and take rake in the ~$3k or so, or push bets?

Definitely push bets, just like I did before learning to count. It's extra gravy, if someone's tracking your bets against the count, you look like another progression bettor, and on your really good days, the pack goes favorable and you can jack your bets even higher without alerting the pit. To keep flat betting 50, 50, 50 ... during a hot streak looks very unnatural. It's even worse if the next shoe goes massively positive and now you're increasing bets whereas you refused to during a recent hot streak.

If the pack heads south, and you lose a bet, that's a good time to take a "restroom break".

one trip, I was down to my last $25 after getting beat up at blackjack and craps. so, for a change, I played pai gow poker. I never lost. I won or pushed enough hands to get back to my original $400 bankroll for the day just flat betting(that's 15 wins, perhaps 5-10 pushes, no losses). and I was the only one winning like this. I always had just enough to beat the dealer. during the streak, a regular at pgp, rode my bets for upwards of $300-400 per hand. he even paid my commission on wins, so I actually made out a little better than I should have. he had several stacks of green and black when I left. even the 2 dealers that dealt the hands couldn't believe the streak. first loss, and I cashed out. I do regret not pressing a little more, but I was happy to break even for the day.

I like the idea of streaks and taking advantage of them, but how do you know when you are in a winning (loosing) streak !? I mean how many hands do you call a streak !?

I see people keep doubling their bet when they win, once, twice, three times, four times.... ! To win five hands in a row isn't it 43%^5 = 1.5% chance, is that a good odd to raise your bet... !? I don't get this part, but I understand raising after you lost 3 or 4 times in a row, 48%^5=2.5% is the chance of loosing the next hand, but 97.5% to win it !? (Though that 2.5% could mean loosing your bank roll quickly too.)

Then again they say the chances of the same numbers come in the lottery the next week is the same - I think I need to read up more on my stats knowledge to get all this.

Anyway, I always wonder when a streak is really a streak, when does it begin and finish, who knows... !? Until afterwards.

I will usually increase my bet after a couple of wins in a row, then I will keep adding chips if the wins continue. If they count is in my favor, I will ramp up quicker but I have had some really high bets in very negative counts.

Quote: aruzin

I see people keep doubling their bet when they win, once, twice, three times, four times.... ! To win five hands in a row isn't it 43%^5 = 1.5% chance, is that a good odd to raise your bet... !? I don't get this part, but I understand raising after you lost 3 or 4 times in a row, 48%^5=2.5% is the chance of loosing the next hand, but 97.5% to win it !? (Though that 2.5% could mean loosing your bank roll quickly too.)

This is absolutely and totally incorrect. The probability of losing 5 hands in a row before making the first play is .48^5. But the probability of losing a fifth hand, given four losses, is still 0.48 (assuming infinite deck), NOT 2.5% or whatever.

Quote: arcticfun

This is absolutely and totally incorrect. The probability of losing 5 hands in a row before making the first play is .48^5. But the probability of losing a fifth hand, given four losses, is still 0.48 (assuming infinite deck), NOT 2.5% or whatever.

You are correct, my explanation was not right above. Although I never considered an infinite deck, I was thinking about 6 deck shoe.

It's about 30 years since I studied statistics properly, Bayes Theorem is not just a bit fuzzy but completely faded in my memory. Although I deal with simple concepts regularly at work, variance, standard deviation etc., I still have problem understanding a lot of stuff.

For example we are talking about steaks and sequence of events. For simplicity let's look at the coin toss, every event has 50% possibilities of head or tail. Now throw a trillion coin tosses, draw a chart of occurrences of consecutive sequences of 2 heads or tails, 3 heads or tails, 4 heads or tails .... 100 heads or tails and so on. It should form a perfect bell shaped, normal distribution graph centred at 1 and the 100 consecutive events should be way down the skirts of the bell. That says, there are not so many occurrences of the 100 heads or tails coming up - I can't remember the formula to say exactly how much away from mean it is for 50% coin toss chance.

So this is a concept of streaks, or am I mixing up things. Is that correct that long streaks of events in a truly random system is less likely than small ones, isn't that a similar concept in BJ game. Dealer should bust about 30% of the time, though, of course she could go on and not bust for 20 consecutive hands, very true, but how often should that happen, and should we not scratch our heads when it does !?

Now I have no idea how and if it is possible to make money out of this on BJ - probably not as the sample sizes are too restricted, but that bell shaped normal distribution graph should apply for random enough events.

(BTW, please feel free to correct me, in fact I have read some stuff on internet, but don't quite understand why no one mention this at all when talking about Gambler's Fallacy or Gambler's Bias etc. - it's true it's hard to make money from it, after all you are not betting on occurrences of streaks, sequences etc., but the concept of likelihood and unlikelihood of sequences occurring is well understood statistics....)

Streaks always end when you press the bet.....at least that been my experience. Never second guess a winning session.

Quote: winnawinna

I will usually increase my bet after a couple of wins in a row, then I will keep adding chips if the wins continue. If they count is in my favor, I will ramp up quicker but I have had some really high bets in very negative counts.

How the heck do you consider yourself in AP if you're betting like this?!?!

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Quote: Ibeatyouraces

Camouflage back in the day.

That definitely makes sense, although he didn't mention it. Maybe he'll clarify.