odiousgambit's Blog

Kelly is One of the Gods, Lesson Learned

In Greco-Roman times they believed if you showed arrogance, the gods would soon humble you. It's 2021 now, but I managed to diss the great god Kelly in an arrogant way, and am paying the ancient price with my online sports gambling. 


I'm talking about the god who's scripture takes the shape of the Kelly Criterion. In defense of my arrogance, I realized kind of late that I was probably doomed to have a problem. As usual, early luck kind of misled me. 


What arrogance? Well, I bragged to my poker buddies that my online gambling was +EV and it was like hitting an ATM all the time [with someone else's bankcard]. The god Kelly heard this. I had built up my online gambling bankroll to about 1100 Darseks* not counting any initially deposited money, which I had withdrawn 'plus some', thus being like an ATM. The 1100 Darseks were pure profit, in other words. I was quite pleased about this of course, and decided it meant I would just be able to withdraw money, no more deposits of my money, ha, and this would continue until the house figured out I was cherry-picking their offers, only wagering a few Ds here and there on random bets unconnected to offers. 


What I didn't realize was, I was setting up a Kelly situation. I've blogged about why I decided not to use online gambling to make larger bets, even though +EV. Declining to deposit more in the face of the offers I was getting** meant the amounts I was wagering on the offers was too large of a % of the 1100 Ds that was basically my bankroll limit. Once the NFL offers came in, picking winners has been pretty tough, just when they upped the number of offers. I've been on a losing streak and my bankroll has been cut to @ 755 Darseks. 


I'm still able to go for the offers, but I'm going to be a little more humble about it. It's not impossible that I'll have to add funds. For now I'm saying I don't think so, but the fact remains you have to win *some* of your bets, +EV or not, no?


* For some reason I don't like to reveal real figures, probably from being embarrassed about what a piker I am. Darseks it is. You can google it.


** you can check out the Wizard Livestream thread to see what they are, typically 

Review: "The Great War of Archimedes"

Quote: wikipedia page on the Yamato

The 2019 Japanese film Archimedes no Taisen (アルキメデスの大戦, Arukimedesu no Taisen, "Great War of Archimedes") based on a manga by Norifusa Mita tells the story of a dispute within the Japanese Navy over whether to fund the construction of aircraft carriers or a new battleship that would become Yamato. The film begins with the sinking of Yamato* and ends with its commissioning

The Wikipedia page says that manga "are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan."

Kai, the math whiz, is a fictional character, I know now. I was fooled by this, thinking that the character was based on a real person, I guess because we see a lot of that with Hollywood. Perhaps I shouldn't have fast-forwarded through the opening credits. I imagine it's likely, though, that the Japanese are simply used to movies made from all kinds of Mangas. Over here, if a movie was based on a comic book, we expect it to be of the outlandishly imaginative super-hero type, well tipped off that it is fiction. This movie, though, shows that such a movie from Japan can seem to purport real history. The smart, adult movie-goers over there may largely just be aware, but others surely are often fooled, some willingly maybe. You have to be Japanese, maybe, to really get this. 

Certainly I realized right away that it was a concocted story, all the elements are there. You just knew things were over-dramatized, for example Kai has a love interest with the daughter of the villain. Thinking it was based on a true story, I found myself quite bothered by other things that had me saying "it couldn't have happened exactly like this". Kai, for example, is such a whiz at things that he becomes a battleship construction expert overnight, producing valid blueprints in minutes. I could go on. 

The math is not really shown in any interesting way. Kai's use of differential equations is shown as critical [without going into what that is], but really what we are to believe is that Kai is such a phenomenal genius that he can do in a few days what normally takes a large team months or years to do. He succeeds in showing that the battleship advocates are fraudulently presenting too low actual cost, having boiled it down to the correlation between the amount of steel used and the ultimate final cost of any ship. There's no easy way to know if any of this has an historical basis [using the internet. ]

I think it is important to know that what we would call nerds are held in high regard in Japan, to be one is to be another Einstein, practically. What I think is likely to be historical is that the Japanese navy realized in the 30s that they really needed advanced engineering and math produced by the universities to build the kind of modern navy that they needed. This is a dramatization of that. The battleships got built anyway, conceded today to definitely not have been worth the cost. How that happened got dramatized as well, and the end of the movie has a twist. I won't reveal it here other than to say I thought it was kind of stupid. However, it also brought out how much Japanese pride was involved with these creations. 

Should you see this movie? I'd say, only if you want an insight into Japanese culture. In this case it's a pretty small reward, but I'm happy enough that I saw it. 


* sister ship Musashi is not mentioned in the movie

Online Sports Cont.

I've blogged about why the idea of gambling online on *sports* appeals to me, even though I fully intend to resist gambling online with *casino games* should that become available in VA. So, to repeat, I looked into it and was considering making bets if the site allowed you to do so without using a smartphone app; this is how I landed at BetMGM. But in the T&C I learned that they reserve the right to make you jump through hoops to get your winnings, and that they report you to the IRS if you win $600 or more. Neither one of these things is acceptable to me. 

Literally because I was blogging about it, though, I felt I had to see what would happen if I deposited $10 and tried to get it back later. I could kiss ten dollars goodbye, fine. 

To make a long story short, though, things are going fine there. Since I don't want to win enough to get reported, I've just been betting small, making sure I come in well below the threshold. Meanwhile, they consistently make offers to entice you to bet, and these are often indisputably +EV. I was soon just finding that I'm withdrawing money and never making any more deposits.  After getting an odd hassle with the first withdrawal, I seem to have passed muster and gotten myself tagged as a non-concern with any additional ones. These withdrawals are fast and no trouble using Paypal. Of course, consider that with me they are small, too; I don't know what would have happened if I tried to withdraw big winnings. 

There was a recent period when good offers kind of dried up, so I thought "they're on to people who just glom on to the +EV offers and don't much bet otherwise". But it appears that they were just waiting for football season to start, now they're coming again and I am on not on any non-grata 'list' it seems. They even plopped $15 into may account and said 'happy birthday'. Those birthday boy funds require betting one-time-through, but hey, fair enough. 

I have stayed well below the $600 threshold and for football season will increase my bet size somewhat. Who knows, maybe they'll change on me, I certainly don't trust them fully after they put out a T&C with that kind of crap in it. At this point it's just fun to play. Too bad the state and the Feds want a piece of me, like they do all gamblers, or I could bet more. At the same time, I'm the type of gambler who can have fun being a piker.

UTH Mnemonics

Some mnemonics to assist your UTH play. My play has just naturally come across these, so I thought i'd share.

See if you fit the category, 

this is you: The Wizard Simple Strategy is as far as I can go

You just have a kicker to consider at the 1x decision point. Should you bet your kicker? The dealer can't have certain better kickers if they are on the board [because you then both have them]

-The board is an unpaired rainbow picket fence. Call that 'situation one' which goes along with 'one card' ........... only 'one card' that outranks yours can be missing from the board, if two are missing don't bet.

-The board has one pair. A pair is 'two cards'........... only 'two cards' that outranks yours can be missing from the board, if 3 are missing don't bet.

-The board has trips. Trips are 'three cards'............ only 'three cards' that outrank yours can be missing from the board, if 4 are missing don't bet.

-The board has two pair ......... two pair, take care . Count the outs

>>>

Or is  your game up one level?

this is you: I Recognize When You Consider "Playing the Board"*

Your hole cards and the board cards have made you consider it's time to 'play the board' at the 1x decision point

If you know your hole cards are now irrelevant, which cards to consider, and that The Dealer Total Outs follow the 18+ rule instead of the 21+ rule, these *less* clever mnemonics should help. 

-No pair [or better] on the board. No pair means No Play, fold

-Board has one pair or Trips. A 9-card or less in the relevant cards means instant fold. Otherwise count the outs [or check out the Super Simple Strategy Blogpost]

-Board has two pair or 4 OAK. count the outs [established situations can be learned, but no easy mnemonics]


* this expression seems to confuse people, it comes from Grosjean's work. To play the board means to consider that the board has the best hand and your hole cards are irrelevant. Thus the dealer and you possibly have the same hand and will push. The dealer still has outs and you count them. However, some decisions are instant such as there being no pair or better

No Succession, Super Simple 18-21 UTH

The discussion made it occur to me that there are certain things to be gleaned from the strategy where you use Succession, that you can use even if you are someone who has a great comfort level with counting the outs and want nothing to do with Succession. I have especially found that it is quickly picked up for the common situations where you 'play the board', and on this last statement I'd say if you don't agree, you're hard-headed. 


>>>


For the 'Can Outkick', 21+ outs:


Get this sequence down: K,Q,J,J 


Then get this one down: rainbow, pair, 2 pair, trips .......... Which represents unpaired rainbow board, board with 1 pair, board w/2 pairs, board w/trips, resp. 


Absent cards on the board that outrank, the K,Q,J,J cards, or better,  that respectively go along with the other are instant-decision bettable. In all other situations including the presence of outranking cards, count the Total Dealer Outs. 


Note that if you do have the K,Q,J,J for the respective situations, the presence on the board of out-ranking cards expands the possible bettable kickers. In other words, you don't have to count the outs unless you're checking for lower kickers than K,Q,J,J 


>>>


For the 'Can't Outkick' 'play the board',  18+ outs:


Get this down, A-J  ............... where A-J means Ace thru Jack in any combination


Then this: Board with one pair and Board with Trips


Absent those same same cards being present in the pair or trips, the cards that are not part of the pair or the trips need to be that A-J, otherwise fold. With the presence of A-J in the pair or the trips, count the outs, fold if 18+ . Any other scenario on the board, count the outs also


Note that the bettable cards never include anything more expansive than A-10 no matter what as long as we are talking about these two cases only. A 9-card or less as one of the kickers is an instant fold. 


>>>


There are exceptions but this is a simple strategy. I've tested very thoroughly with the Wizard calculator but will happily stand corrected if you can show it