Winning blackjack players...

I play at casinos all over the country and I track my blakjack stats, here is what I have for the year so far...225 shoes, 4100 hands played, 46 hours played.

I play $10 min tables, dealer hits soft 17, DAS allowed, resplit As, no surrender.

Biggest win is $225 and biggest loss is $350.


What are the odds that I am up money at this point?

You "should" be down, but only about $265. Variance in BJ is very high, so it wouldn't be surprising at all if you were ahead.

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

What are the odds that I am up money at this point?

Basic Strategy. Try this. I come up with.
The Wizard calc shows a .57% HE with the rules you show.

So EV would be 4100*$10*HE = -$233.7

The standard deviation would be
(square root of 4100)*1.15*$10=
736.4
(1.15 is the SD for 1 bet it could be between 1.12 and 1.18 without calculating or simulating it)

At 4100 hands played, we are very close to a normal distribution assuming you are flat betting.

ev/sd = 0.31735
In Excel we have =NORMSDIST(0.31735) = 0.375480582 or 37.55% chance of being even or ahead
(37.3% to 37.8%)

or you can plug the numbers (ev or mean and sd) into the graph (the 2nd one) at
http://www.measuringusability.com/normal_curve.php
and play with it

Good Luck

Quote: rdw4potus

You "should" be down,

Should be??
Not really. The EV is "down" or negative.
It is just the center of the distribution.
The standard deviation tells us where we should be... 99.73% chance of being between
+$1977.3 and -$2444.7 with -$234 being in the center of all that


For just one player the chance of being "somewhere else" is way higher than what "should be" or the EV.

Say EV is -$234
say +/- $50 so the interval would be -$284 to -$184 = 5.41%
(should be around -$234)

The chance of being UP $250 or more = 25.57% or 4.7 times more likely than the EV range

The chance of being down $700 or more = 26.36%

Quote: rdw4potus

Variance in BJ is very high, so it wouldn't be surprising at all if you were ahead.

And the house edge is rather low if played with good rules and basic strategy. Splitting and Double-down when best to do so. Many BS players back away from doing proper DD and Splits.

Take a 00 Roulette player and play 4100 spins betting the even money bets (say red and black bets or whatever)
The chance of that player being even or ahead is about 0.000369424 or 1 in 2,707

0 Roulette would be better.
is about 0.041707468 or 1 in 24

Just $10 bets on Pass Line in Craps is still better than Roulette, not as good as BJ.
1 in 5.5 or about 0.182578339

of course, one can bet the free odds bet at craps, to actually give a better chance to be ahead than not taking any odds.
$5 pass with $10 odds gives a 37.6% chance of success after 4100 bets (about the same as the OP BJ)
but no need to know any basic strategy plays.

Just take $10 odds when there is a point and kick back and enjoy the action and free drinks.

I guess we need to know if the OP flat bets or is a counter and has a bet spread.
Back to works for now

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

I play at casinos all over the country and I track my blakjack stats, here is what I have for the year so far...225 shoes, 4100 hands played, 46 hours played.

I play $10 min tables, dealer hits soft 17, DAS allowed, resplit As, no surrender.

Biggest win is $225 and biggest loss is $350.


What are the odds that I am up money at this point?

What's your top bet?

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

I play at casinos all over the country and I track my blakjack stats, here is what I have for the year so far...225 shoes, 4100 hands played, 46 hours played.

I play $10 min tables, dealer hits soft 17, DAS allowed, resplit As, no surrender.

Biggest win is $225 and biggest loss is $350.


What are the odds that I am up money at this point?

TakeDown, how do you keep track of you stats?

Thanks.

Keep track on a small note pad, top bet is $40.

Spread bet $10-40, stats now are 56 hours, 5050 hands, 263 shoes.

You didn't initially provide enough information to get an answer to your question. rdw4potus answered that you should be behind, based on the fact that you made no mention of card counting, nor playing with an advantage. Now later in the thread, you do mention a bet spread, which would indicate you may be counting cards and attempting to play with an advantage. I think you need to clarify this before we can really move forward. Are you counting cards and spreading $10 -$40 or is that bet spread based on some other negative EV basis, such as hunches etc?

I am going to assume that the mention of a bet spread means you are counting cards and attempting to play at an advantage. You will notice that I said 'attempting' twice now in regards to playing with an advantage. That is because playing shoe games, which you indicated a 1-4 spread will not provide much of an advantage. If you are playing all hands and the rules and penetration are crappy, you may still be playing a negative EV game. If the rules, penetration are decent, 1-4 might just push you to break even or slightly positive, but in the best case you are not playing with much of an advantage.

For comparison, I spread 1-16, on most shoe games, occasionally 1-24, which affords me a much bigger advantage than you are talking about, and still even playing with a much larger advantage than you I have experienced much bigger losing periods of 30-40 thousand hands in both 2010 and 2011. 30,000+ hands of losing. And each of those years did end up significantly positive for me (upper 5 figures), but that should give you an indication of the type of losing periods possible playing with about a 1% advantage. You are playing far less than 1%, if playing with an advantage at all. So if the purpose of your thread is to ask if it is unusual that you are behind after 4000+ rounds.....no it is not unusual. Sadly that is the nature of blackjack play and grinding out such a small advantage.

Looking at over 7,500 hands so far this year and still ahead money for the year. When would you be betting over 4 x minimum bet? When count is how high on 6 deck games?

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

I play at casinos all over the country and I track my blakjack stats, here is what I have for the year so far...225 shoes, 4100 hands played, 46 hours played.
I play $10 min tables, dealer hits soft 17, DAS allowed, resplit As, no surrender.
Biggest win is $225 and biggest loss is $350.
What are the odds that I am up money at this point?

100 percent chance that you are "UP". 90 percent chance that you are up by 346 dollars.

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

Looking at over 7,500 hands so far this year and still ahead money for the year. When would you be betting over 4 x minimum bet? When count is how high on 6 deck games?

I'm glad to hear that you're ahead at this time. Fasten your seat belt because 7500 hands is is fairly meaningless.

Get your max bet out at +4 or +5. This can be fine tuned slightly depending on your playing style. For example do you back count? Wong out? What is your betting spread for that 6 deck game?

Quote: TakeDownDaHouse

Looking at over 7,500 hands so far this year and still ahead money for the year. When would you be betting over 4 x minimum bet? When count is how high on 6 deck games?

As 1BB stated, a fairly common practice among card counters is to get your top bet out at true count of +4 to +5. For 6 deck games, I generally use +4. You don't want to wait any longer than that, because the plus TRUE COUNTS of +5 or more happen pretty infrequently at 6 deck games. Now, because you are playing such a small spread (1-4), I would recommend getting your top bet out even earlier, like TC +3, to try to help overcome so many hands played at negative EV.

One thing that you haven't mentioned is penetration (the amount of cards played before the shuffle). This is extremely important in 6 deck games because any really good TRUE counts are more likely to occur near the end of play just before the shuffle. For example, with a 6 deck game that is dealt 4.5 decks before the shuffle, which is pretty common and average, a true count of +5 or greater will occur 2.76% of the time or 2.76 hands per 100. But if you can find a game dealt an extra half deck to 5 decks before the shuffle, a TC of +5 or more will occur 4.07% of the time of just over 4 hands per 100. That is nearly a 50% increase in the number of most favorable situations. Conversely if the penetration is just a half deck worse, where only 4 decks are played before the shuffle, a TC of +5 or more will only occur 1.7% of the time. So a 6 deck game with 5 decks dealt before the shuffle has more than double the most favorable situations as a 6 deck game with only 4 decks dealt before the shuffle. So if nothing else, try to play games with as deep a shuffle as you can find.

I missed the 1-4 spread and looking back I'm the one who asked what the top bet was. Oh well. It's not enough.

None of the mathematical analyses presented are correct. They fail to include the fact that you have never had a winning session greater than 225, or a losing session worse than 350. I would say any simulation run on the number of hands you played would thus have to eliminate any short term variances of over +225, and 'over' - 350. Since your biggest loss was greater than you biggest gain, I would say you were even more likely to lose over the time mentioned than the simulations would show. However, if you had a 'stop loss' or 'stop gain' number which were not identical, then who can tell anything....

Quote: 1BB

I missed the 1-4 spread It's not enough.

Probably not, but without knowing the exact rules, penetration and playing style, I wouldn't definitively state that. You would be surprises how little it takes to turn a game at least to break even, especially if you escape the negative counts.

A few years ago, my final year of playing AC before I moved to LV, I would encounter an older gentleman periodically at the tables at Borgata. Borgata had the best games at the time, so I played there often. Too often. The $25 tables at the time were S17. I think the only S17 games remaining in AC at that level. The older gent wagered either $25 or $50, every hand that he played. With such a small spread, it actually took me quite a while to figure he was spreading with the count.

I took the train to AC at the time and I had also seen the gentleman on the train a few times, so one day on the train, I sat next to him and struck up a conversation. He surely knew I was a counter, as I am sure it was easier for him to figure with the spread I was using. Anyway, I told him that he was not spreading nearly enough and was still playing a losing game. He confidently, almost defiantly assured me that I was incorrect. He told me that he used to play the $10 tables which had worse rules and were more crowded and would spread $10-$50 which earned him about $5 per 100 hands. Ok, not much of a spread there either, but half your minimum wager per 100 hands. That sounded reasonable and possible to me. So he went on to say that he now plays the $25 tables spreading $25-$50, (yes only 1-2). But he didn't play any true count of -1 or more. Playing the $25 tables, there were enough tables for him to continually hop around and he would also work in bathroom breaks at just the right time and occasionally just skip rounds. I had observed him exit and take breaks a few times, so I knew this to be true. Anyway he claimed that this style of play earned him $7 per 100 hands played, which was more than his win rate at the $10 tables with a bigger spread. He also earned more comps playing the $25 tables, which allowed him to eat his big meal each day courtesy of the casino. And finally, there was no heat what-so-ever. No one is going to think anything of someone spreading 1-2 in green. It all sounded good except, that I was sure the old coot was mistaken and off his rocker concerning his figures. I was sure he was still playing a negative EV game.

So, I went home and fired up Norm's software and ran a few sims, tinkering slightly with the exit points and sure enough, they all came back showing win rates of $6-$8. Now of course, risking that money for such a small win rate wouldn't be to my liking, I think that would be acceptable to very few players. But it was fine with this retired gent who made a few bucks while earning his free meal almost daily. It was quite an eye-opener for me, though. I was truly amazed, astonished of just how little it took to turn the game profitable. Now of course, not playing most of the negative counts had a lot to do with that. More than one might initially realize.