sevencard2003
sevencard2003
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November 23rd, 2017 at 6:22:31 AM permalink
lets say u are in a small casino with only like 1-2 tables. lets say the games are good with deep penetration but what do u do when u go 9-10 shoes without still ever getting one plus count so u can do more than slowly drain chips off betting either the flat minimum or close to it, without ever being able to start jacking up your bets?

how long do u remain before u lose your patience and either quit or bet too much before its the right time? once its been like 2-3 hours still never betting over $5 u will lose it eventually
sevencard2003.blogspot.com
mcallister3200
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November 23rd, 2017 at 7:24:35 AM permalink
Quote: sevencard2003



how long do u remain before u lose your patience and either quit or bet too much before its the right time?



Stick to poker tony. If you even have to ask that last part you're inevitably going to martingale off your bankroll (again).
FleaStiff
FleaStiff
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November 23rd, 2017 at 7:58:16 AM permalink
Quote: sevencard2003

how long do u remain before u lose your patience

If you are going to lose patience with the dice, the cards, the little white ball or whatever, you should not be gambling. That monster roll, streak of successive reds, run of large cards, won't come sooner just because you are getting impatient. Enjoy the game or leave the table.
pwcrabb
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November 23rd, 2017 at 9:52:30 AM permalink
FleasStiff said it perfectly.
"I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a lunatic." Fitz-James O'Brien, The Diamond Lens (1858)
tyler498
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sevencard2003
November 23rd, 2017 at 9:54:20 AM permalink
Not an unfamiliar feeling. Also I'd recommend sticking to your spread. I myself tend to wanna bet more aggressively when good counts are scarce (like 3bets on TC+1 for example) just to get some action. Or less aggressively on very good counts when I've had too many and things haven't gone very well. I guess that's when the discipline is required
MaxPen
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November 23rd, 2017 at 10:09:00 AM permalink
Stay away from Made In China shoes.
BlackjackGuy123
BlackjackGuy123
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November 23rd, 2017 at 10:11:57 AM permalink
The chance of not getting a single +2 true count over 3 hours in a good penetration game is extremely small, even if you are playing at a full table.
sevencard2003
sevencard2003
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November 23rd, 2017 at 10:32:15 AM permalink
Quote: BlackjackGuy123

The chance of not getting a single +2 true count over 3 hours in a good penetration game is extremely small, even if you are playing at a full table.



not when u only play shoe games.
sevencard2003.blogspot.com
Keyser
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November 23rd, 2017 at 10:38:03 AM permalink
Give up on the counting and begin hole carding. The edge is monstrous and there appears to be opportunities everywhere. Especially in Indiana and down in Florida, where the hole carders are blatantly obvious about what they're doing and the casinos are oblivious.
Hunterhill
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November 23rd, 2017 at 5:51:22 PM permalink
Quote: Keyser

Give up on the counting and begin hole carding. The edge is monstrous and there appears to be opportunities everywhere. Especially in Indiana,Florida,Illinois, Iowa,Connecticut Maine,California, Arizona ,Colorado ,Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada,Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Oregon,Washington, Missouri, Ohio,West Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Kansas,and all of Canada, where the hole carders are blatantly obvious about what they're doing and the casinos are oblivious.


Fixed that for you.
Oops forgot New Jersey.
The mountain is tall but grass grows on top of the mountain.
gamerfreak
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November 23rd, 2017 at 5:53:43 PM permalink
If you are playing correctly, the only solution is to play more shoes.
sevencard2003
sevencard2003
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November 24th, 2017 at 3:38:33 AM permalink
i dont understand how holecarding works, who would be willing to meet up in a casino and demonstrate how to win money doing it if i paid them? i would assume in 99.99% of casinos it would be impossible to find a dealer exposing the hole card, and if so u still might only see it one time of 50
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gamerfreak
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November 24th, 2017 at 4:27:20 AM permalink
Quote: sevencard2003

i would assume in 99.99% of casinos it would be impossible to find a dealer exposing the hole card, and if so u still might only see it one time of 50


You know what they say about assuming....
Romes
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November 27th, 2017 at 10:07:17 AM permalink
Quote: sevencard2003

i dont understand how holecarding works, who would be willing to meet up in a casino and demonstrate how to win money doing it if i paid them? i would assume in 99.99% of casinos it would be impossible to find a dealer exposing the hole card, and if so u still might only see it one time of 50

While this is about blackjack, let's take some time to understand why it's just not worth teaching someone to hole card (for monetary gains).

Let's say you wanted me to teach you how to hole card blackjack games. What am I gonna charge you? $10k? Sounds absurd, right? It is... absurd that I would only charge $10k... Well, let's think about it. For pretty even numbers let's assume you hole card a blackjack game at a 10% edge. Okay, you paid me $10k, and I taught you how to do everything you need to do.

So now let's say you play for 10 hours per week (assuming another 30-40 hours for scouting and traveling, etc.) Say you get about 80 hands per hour, and you flat bet $300 per hand... what I would consider average or slightly below average...

Hourly EV = (80*300)*(.10) = $2400.... so in 10 hours of play you'll make $24,000 (in EV) per week. In just ONE week you'll have made almost 150% of what I charged you, and then you'll go on to do this week in and out after the fact. So you could see how teaching someone a skill like this could net them A LOT OF MONEY. If someone taught you this skill why the hell wouldn't they charge you something like $100k? And after all of this there would just be one more person out there, doing this, potentially burning games, or teaching others and spreading the information which would eventually KILL all the games. Not good for business.

p.s. If you want to pay me $100k I'll teach you how to hole card blackjack. No joke, serious offer.
Playing it correctly means you've already won.
Ibeatyouraces
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November 27th, 2017 at 10:44:20 AM permalink
Quote: Romes

p.s. If you want to pay me $100k I'll teach you how to hole card blackjack. No joke, serious offer.


I'll do it for $75,000. 😎
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Romes
Romes
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November 27th, 2017 at 11:38:13 AM permalink
Quote: Ibeatyouraces

I'll do it for $75,000. 😎

Ha, usually how it happens =P.
Playing it correctly means you've already won.
Ibeatyouraces
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November 27th, 2017 at 12:00:27 PM permalink
Quote: Romes

Ha, usually how it happens =P.


Yep. 😁

I feel fortunate. I learned for free.
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gordonm888
Administrator
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November 27th, 2017 at 3:04:04 PM permalink
1. Your hole card analysis does not factor in the time you spend scouting to find a dealer who frequently shows the hole card.

2. It does not factor in that it is rare that a dealer flashes the hole card on every hand.

3. It does not factor in that you must often wait awhile until the first base seat opens up - meaning that some fraction of the time you are playing at a disadvantage.

4. It does not factor in the dealer's breaks when you playing against a non-flashing dealer. Indeed, many casinos rotate dealers between tables in a pit every 30 minutes, which may require you to follow the dealer from table to table. And then you may be constantly waiting for the first base seat to open up.

The biggest barrier to hole-carding is not knowledge of "how" to do it - it iis finding quality opportunities. This is a "your mileage may vary" situation, I guess.
So many better men, a few of them friends, are dead. And a thousand thousand slimy things live on, and so do I.
racquet
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November 27th, 2017 at 4:33:35 PM permalink
Not to get the secret of hole-carding without paying for it - whatever you charge - can you describe it in general terms?

I assume it means that you can see the dealer's hole card and thereby know his two-card total.

Is the AP secret figuring out how to do that (leaning into the table, mirrors, reflectorized duct tape...) or rather having a basic strategy based on the two cards?

Clearly a BS chart would need some deliberate camouflage. You can't hit your hard eighteen hoping for an ace or deuce because you know the dealer has a hard nineteen. You can't surrender your nineteen against a dealer ten because you're aware of the other ten under the top one.

Initially I thought that what you would teach is how to SEE the hole card. But okay, now that you KNOW what it is, what to do... what to do.

I've seen a game where both dealer cards are shown face up. On purpose. They take away the obvious advantage by the dealer winning ties, blackjack pays even money, and of course no surrender. When it's out in the open, of course you hit your nineteen against the dealer's twenty. But that's got to be a hole-carding giveaway.
Ibeatyouraces
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November 27th, 2017 at 4:37:50 PM permalink
That's the beauty of scouting. You typically learn things on your own.
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gamerfreak
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November 27th, 2017 at 5:07:26 PM permalink
Quote: racquet

Is the AP secret figuring out how to do that (leaning into the table, mirrors, reflectorized duct tape...) or rather having a basic strategy based on the two cards?


Any device like you mentioned would be outright cheating w/ jail time, not AP.

It's more common to see a hole card on deck games. It's more common on certain types of shoe games, but that's all I'll really say about that....
racquet
racquet
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December 2nd, 2017 at 6:31:32 AM permalink
My point was that there seems to be two parts of the process: getting to see the card; what to do now that you've seen it.

Knowing that the dealer has a nineteen, you can't hit your hard eighteen hoping for an ace or a deuce - instant attention. So the second part of the game is figuring out what to do. I can see some occasions where the knowledge is useful - standing your soft eighteen against a dealer ten because you know he has a seventeen - taking insurance anytime you see a dealer blackjack is coming.

Speaking of cheating, does the Ivey Rule apply here? Is knowing the hole card because the dealer lets you see it the same kind of cheating that happens when you know what's next out of the shoe because of edge sorting?
Ibeatyouraces
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December 2nd, 2017 at 7:34:55 AM permalink
Quote: racquet

My point was that there seems to be two parts of the process: getting to see the card; what to do now that you've seen it.

Knowing that the dealer has a nineteen, you can't hit your hard eighteen hoping for an ace or a deuce - instant attention. So the second part of the game is figuring out what to do. I can see some occasions where the knowledge is useful - standing your soft eighteen against a dealer ten because you know he has a seventeen - taking insurance anytime you see a dealer blackjack is coming.

Speaking of cheating, does the Ivey Rule apply here? Is knowing the hole card because the dealer lets you see it the same kind of cheating that happens when you know what's next out of the shoe because of edge sorting?


It's not cheating because the dealer doesn't let you see it.
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racquet
racquet
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December 2nd, 2017 at 9:15:45 AM permalink
My impression is that the "Ivey Rule" a term which I just coined, means that both sides in a game agree, implicitly or not, to abide by a certain set of rules.

Phil Ivey asked, and the casino agreed, to an arrangement that allowed him to "cheat." But the casino argued successfully that both sides implicitly agreed to follow the rules, and that Ivey was not "allowed" to alter them. I probably misstate the technical details, but essentially the established rules made edge-sorting a form of cheating.

Applying the same logic, isn't hole-carding just like what Ivey did, regardless of whether the dealer, or the casino, "let's" you see the card?

Which gets off my original question (gee, that never happens in this forum...) about how you APPLY your knowledge of the hole card, whether it's cheating or not.
mcallister3200
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December 2nd, 2017 at 10:55:08 AM permalink
No it is not the same. There is legal precedent about if seated at the table and not using a device since 1984 I believe at the golden nugget.

IMO numbers in romes post is an exaggeration of reality to extrapolate/assume consistency, and is also just using example of premier premier games, unrealistic to consistently have IMO from what I've seen. Gordon's following post more realistic about some of the challenges, not that they aren't out there. After cover and other costs factored in (track every round, # misses, breaker etc) by far most BJhc game plays overall edge for me has been graded 2-5% range. Have never had one grade in double digits, the best of the best have been close. EV has tracked at around 90% after a few years of full time play so I think I'm estimating it realistically.
Last edited by: mcallister3200 on Dec 2, 2017
Ibeatyouraces
Ibeatyouraces
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December 2nd, 2017 at 11:41:08 AM permalink
Quote: racquet

My impression is that the "Ivey Rule" a term which I just coined, means that both sides in a game agree, implicitly or not, to abide by a certain set of rules.

Phil Ivey asked, and the casino agreed, to an arrangement that allowed him to "cheat." But the casino argued successfully that both sides implicitly agreed to follow the rules, and that Ivey was not "allowed" to alter them. I probably misstate the technical details, but essentially the established rules made edge-sorting a form of cheating.

Applying the same logic, isn't hole-carding just like what Ivey did, regardless of whether the dealer, or the casino, "let's" you see the card?

Which gets off my original question (gee, that never happens in this forum...) about how you APPLY your knowledge of the hole card, whether it's cheating or not.


Again, no it's not. You've never had a dealer accidentally expose the hole card only to have the supervisor allow that card to be played "face up" for the whole table?

And to answer your question. I suppose it depends on how often you're getting it. If it's just a one off mistake, do what you need to do to win. If the dealer is a regular flasher, then you have to adjust and be discreet.
DUHHIIIIIIIII HEARD THAT!
racquet
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December 2nd, 2017 at 2:45:30 PM permalink
Hole carding is different from what Ivey did, I acknowledge. He made an arrangement that was in effect all the time, whereas the hole-carder is simply seeing something, maybe just now and then, that he can use to his advantage.

But back to my original question - once you know what the hole card is, what can you get away with doing with this information?

If the hole card is exposed and everyone knows that it has been, then of course I am going to hit my hard nineteen against the dealer's exposed hard twenty. And yes, I have seen that happen.

But if I have hole-carded a hard twenty, and I am the only person at the table that knows about it, including the supervisor, I CANNOT hit my hard nineteen. Not unless I want to cause the hole-carding dealer to get watched VERY closely.

"Adjust and be discreet" is common sense.
TomG
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December 2nd, 2017 at 3:34:59 PM permalink
With perfect hole card strategy the player has a 13% edge. That is pretty straight forward. We could then come up with a strategy that isn’t perfect, but won’t give you away. Standing on a 14 against an 8 won’t draw any attention — there are still quite a lot of basic strategy deviations that are completely normal. Conservatively, that would almost cut your edge in half. Then there are the real-world issues that would most likely cut your edge in half again. But that’s still a 3% player edge, or maybe $6 per hand or $300 per hour without risk of getting caught. That’s on the low end.
racquet
racquet
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December 3rd, 2017 at 6:20:07 AM permalink
Assuming you can see all the hole cards? That's probably not going happen. I can recall seeing a hole card maybe once or twice in many years. Granted, mostly shoe games, but that's the only way they deal out here.

I can't get from here to the numbers that I see earlier in this thread about it being such a big deal. Tweaks to BS in order to account for the hole carding is not done easily in the middle of the casino environment, with so great a consideration having to be given to the deviations that need to also be applied to avoid heat. Just now and then. Maybe one dealer, who takes breaks, and probably doesn't hole card every time. After all, wouldn't management be just as capable of seeing it happen as we are, and find that error before the dealer gets out to our table on a consistent basis?

Not for me. Can't see it being worth it.
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