OnceDear's Blog

A Ploppy Freeroll Trip

OK. The Freeroll was mine: The ploppy was me. Here is the story, with a twist in the tail.

It all started when I received an email on Friday evening.

Subject: Important Information about [redacted]Casinos.com
You may have experienced some problems when trying to play at [redacted]Casinos.com recently. We’d like to apologise and let you know that we’ve added £20 to your cash balance as a gesture of goodwill.

Erm. Thanks. I hadn't noticed the problems as the account was pretty much dormant.

So, I logged in, and sure enough, I had £20 of cash credit, which I could just draw out and spend on a bottle of JD, if the mood took me.

But it was Friday night and I was just finishing a JD, so I figured what the heck. Fired up RNG blackjack with table min of £1

Played silly little 1,2,3,3,3 progressive for a while, never going below the initial £20 until I reached £50 balance. Had easily an hour of silly fun and here I was with £50 of free money. What the heck!

Went on a 10% per bet spree, wagering 10% of my rounded down bankroll on each hand. So, started at £5 per hand. I was bobbing around between about £30 at £3 per hand and £75 at £7 per hand. After about another 30 minutes, I was at £90 and so I switched back to a 1,2,3,3,3 progressive. Bingo! I stumbled up to £100.50

Now, I'd had nearly 2 hours of free play and I had £100.50 of free money. I was already visualising what I would treat myself to as I put in the cash-out request.

So far so good.

But Saturday night, I got bored, so step forth Mr Ploppy :o)

Cancelled the pending withdrawal and started playing again with 2,4,6,6 progressive.

Stumbled up to £120 and realised that I was being a completely degenerate knob. Requested cash-out again, this time for £120.

Still, I was feeling pretty happy. I had £120 of money on its way to my bank and was heart set on a little personal treat.

Sunday morning, step forth Oncedear the complete knob-head. I wonder if £150 would be achievable from that £120, so sure enough, I again cancelled the pending withdrawal.

What a stupid, stupid thing to do!!!

Gravity prevailed.
100,
75,
50,
down
down
20,
0

Doh!

FFS I'd blown it all. This didn't feel like £20 of free money squandered. It felt like, and was indeed, a nice £120 treat flushed down the pan. I was angry with myself.
Furious.

Mad.

and then the insanity struck.

Freeroll be damned. I would chuck £50 of my own money in, which I did.
Flush: Bye bye my own £50.

Grrrrr!

But now comes the twist. The sickening twist.
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I had £150 sat in my PayPal account that wasn't earmarked for anything. Lets see if I can use that to at least win my own £50 that I'd squandered. Transferred to my casino account.

Remember now, I'd taken £20 freeroll up to £120, then lost it, then dumped £50 of my own money and was now dumping another £150 of my own money.

This was all really rather stupid.

But good fortune prevailed for a little while, and soon I had turned my none-freeroll losses round: Balance reached the £200 that I had 'invested'

The only sensible thing to do now was to cash out and lick my wounds.
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Did I hell. I played on. Doing a 5,10,15,15, 15 progressive.

Now here is the twist.
200
.
220 ( Yayy I was back to that free £20 situation)
300 ( Yayy I was back to being £100 up )
320
OMG. I was now back to being £120 up on the weekend. Requested cash-out.
I'm damned well going to put £200 back in my bank account and I'm spending that £120 on something of an undeserved treat.
But being £120 up on my own seed money was nowhere near as sweet as when I was first up £120 on my freeroll.

Oncedear, once again a lucky tit. A bigger tit than usual, and luckier than I deserved.

Outed Myself As A Counter

Silly anecdote:-

Recent session playing £5 per hand blackjack. 4 players at the table. CSM game with discard tray going up to about 2 decks.

A round came out with NO HIGH CARDS! No Tens or aces.

We all looked at each-other amazed and amused and I mumbled "Wow! after that hand . . . " as I pushed a massive £10 into the circle! Dealer says "Ah. A card counter eh?". I reply, "Yeah. As if that works :o)"

We both grinned.

Fact is, I'm known as a steady BS player, but at the stakes I play, I'm convinced they don't care one jot.

Still, I've taken the sum total of £870 from them over 15 sessions and 6 months.

Just luck and occasional recklessness: Not by counting.

Three Hours Of Fun

That's what I just had. Three hours of really amusing Blackjack, and it didn't break the bank.

I don't get to the casino so often nowadays, but today I was in the mood. Local Grosvenor £3 min table. got there at 5pm only one other player at first.

I'd got £400 in my pocket and had decided that £200 was expendable.

Bought in for £50 in £5s. Started playing £5 a hand. OnceDear <> High Roller !

After very few minutes and a few good doubles and splits, I was at £100, never actually having gone below £40. Too soon to go home. Target set at £150 :o)

So, I started to play silly beggars, doing a 5, 10, 15, 15 progressive. After a total of about 20 mins, I was at £150, so I excused myself while I had a bar snack.

Because I left my chips at the table, and maybe because there were few staff on, they left me 'on the screen' as though I was still playing, this clocking up points. Yayyy.

After my food, I was almost tempted to buy some more chips to ensure that I really was still getting points, but it would have looked a bit odd.

So, back to it: £5, £10, £15, £20, £20 progressive, I ebbed and flowed my way through 3 dealers and still sat at about £160 in chips.
Then a nice newbie dealer came on and I soon found myself with £187.50 in chips. What to do? Should I Marty for the £200?

Nooooo. Been there done that. I wanted a bit of time in play, so no Marty tonight.

I was having fun, so I stuck with a mix of £5, £10 and occasionally £15 bets in no particular pattern.

Could I reach the magical £200? Could I hell! I could not get that extra £12.50 to save my life. But I was ticking over OK.

Then. Another dealer. As it happened, the last one for me tonight.
He was just having golden luck. I just kept getting hands to split and resplit and double and at £10 to £20 a hand, he was slaughtering me with his 21s and Blackjacks.
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I stumbled down back to my original £50. Dammit. ( OK. £52.50 if we are going to be pedantic)
Kept playing at £10 a hand.
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And there I was. With just £22.50 in chips where once was £187.50 What a darned fool. But I had enjoyed the ebb and flow and had way over two hours of fun behind me.
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So I went all in with that last $20 ( held back the £2.50 if you must have all the details :o)
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Blackjack. Yayyyy. I had my £50 starting roll back.
In with £25. Win.
Again.
Another Win.
Hells teeth, I'd turned that sniveling £22.50 into £102.50 and was 100% up on the session. Shall I go home?
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Then, I can only describe the rest of the play as nuts. Fueled by Adrenalin and free caffeine, I was like a man possessed. Even the dealer seemed to be having a sugar rush.

£25 a hand straight betting. This is me in high-roller mode!
Bankroll=£127.50 (that pesky £2.50)
Bankroll=£152.50
Bankroll=£127.50
Bankroll=£152.50
Bankroll=£127.50
Bankroll=£152.50
Bankroll=£177.50

Phone rang. It was the wife wondering where I was. Rejected the call.
Rejected the call again. Not like me :o)

FFS. Surely not.
Went back to £5, £10, £15 progressive.
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and there I was. . . £202.50
Handed the £2.50 over as a tip ( Last of the big spenders :o)
Cashed out my £200 for a net profit of £150 on the session. All that on just a single £50 buy-in.

I never expected that. Well, at least not when I was down to that last £22.50.

Dealer errors? Only caught two that affected me, one where he tried to pick up my £20 on a hand that I'd won. And one where the newbie dealer asked me if I wanted to take more cards after splitting aces. She had to confirm with the supervisor when I pointed out that I was not allowed to do that.

Card counting. . . I practiced a bit it was a 6 deck CSM with a discard tray that got emptied at about 75 cards, so not worth the effort. True count never reached 2 in any case, but it was OK to practice.

But tonight was the very essence of what I think it should be like. Playtime was value for money. Food was value for money. Banter with dealers and players was ongoing and friendly. And I came out far enough ahead to afford another session next time the mood takes me.

Oncedear = A lucky Tit once more.

100% Risk Of Ruin !

Tonight's visit to the casino, I had the pleasure to be entertained by a LUZER of the highest order. I'll call him Mr Pink after his tie. Mr Pink seemed to have the sole objective of going home broke. He was a spectacular success.

But I'm still trying to fathom out what goes on inside the head of guys like Mr Pink. I doubt he's a member here.

Scenario: Provincial UK casino with one £3min blackjack table open. Mr Pink at seat 3, some young fella at seat 5 playing minimum and I buy in for £50 in 5s and sit at seat 1. A high roller here is usually the guy that bets £25 a hand. Sometimes me. :o)

As I join, Mr Pink has just gone all in with about £100 and is being paid a Blackjack. I say Hi and congratulate him on his timely win. He mumbles something about being 4 grand down tonight.

But then I see how it probably happened. He continued to play like a complete and utter knob!

For each hand played he was, without fail, wagering all of the chips in front of him, split roughly 50:40 between the main bet and the 21+3 side bet with the odd £5 on the PP side bet.

At no time did he hold back chips in case of a need to double or split.

At no time did he in fact double or split!!!!! Never!!! He'd ignore BS and stand a 13 against a 10. He'd hit 19 ( and get a 2: jammy sod ) He was a complete ploppy, but a ploppy with money. And there was I playing £5 a hand in the seat before him, just hoping that one of my borderline plays like hit 16 v 10 would annoy him. Praying also that he'd get the odd pair of aces against 6, just to see how he played it.

Inevitably, every couple of hands he'd reach into his pocket to re-buy in for £200 to £300, which he would immediately slide into the circle and promptly lose..

And he wasn't even getting mediocre luck. LOL. never a winning side-bet and his 19s were getting trounced by dealer 20 or 21. I just kept ticking over my modest pile of ten £5 chips, ebbing and flowing.

Mr Pink was hemorrhaging Cash. He couldn't win a free coffee. Every time he had, say a 14 or 15 hand, he would gesture as though walking early from the table, but sometimes he would win and stay.

This went on maybe 15 minutes as I watched him throw away at least another £4K. until he finally bought in and instantly lost with what was clearly his last four hundred pounds. He just threw that down with a grumble of 'You might as well take it all"

I can only imagine that if he had a streak of good fortune or a few winning side-bets, he would have thrown those chips back onto the table as though insulted by the opportunity to win.

After he eventually stormed out, broke, A chat ensued at the table and it was confided that he'd just lost significantly more than he'd stated. Possibly about £10K

I played on for an hour or so and cashed out £10.50 up. Yayyyyy.

So, what madness is this. The guy did not seem to be having much fun. Winning ( what little he did ) did not seem to please him: Losing seemed to quite reasonably annoy him. But he just seemed to play to lose. Is the narcissism of being a high roller of so much value to such a guy. Was it maybe an expression of conspicuous wealth, in which case why grumble when he lost?

He didn't even seem drunk.

Debunking d'Alembert With Excel

It's been suggested that playing a Roulette wheel using a d'Alembert progression is a road to riches. Apparently it's child's play to beat the house edge.

So, as a little exercise, I've created an Excel workbook which illustrates dramatically how a playing d'Alembert progression will strongly trend towards bankruptcy, with a probable initial negligible profit.

Here's the way I played it.

The game was European Roulette with single 0. If you are a masochist modify it for American Roulette.
The first bet is on red, purely arbitrary. I wagered only on Red or Black. Modify for odd/even if you wish or other 1:1 propositions outside bets.
Whenever the result was Red, the next bet was Black. Modify if you can be bothered. It makes no difference.
Whenever the result was Black, the next bet was Red.
Whenever the result was Green 0, the next bet was the same as the most recent bet.
I assigned a starting Bankroll of $1,000,000 ( You can vary that in the model. )
I decided an initial wager of $10 ( You can vary that in the model. )
I decided a progression increment of $1. ( You guessed it )

Whenever a bet won, the next bet was $1 less than the previous bet, or $1, whichever was the greater.
Whenever a bet lost, the next bet was $1 more than the previous bet, or total remaining bankroll, whichever was the smaller.
The model simulated potentially 50,000 spins.

Child's play indeed.
So, download the workbook and open it in Excel. You may need to enable editing. It has NO MACROS.

HERE IS THE WORKBOOK

To run the simulation, simply put the cursor into any empty cell and hit the Delete Key. After a fraction of second, the simulation will complete and the chart and results table will repopulate.

Generally the bankroll starts out with a modest increase of value of a few times the initial wager. Pretty soon it heads downhill with an accelerating downtrend as the wager size increases.

I've yet to see the simulation succeed in doubling the bankroll with the parameters as set. You can change those parameters and I assert that whatever you set them as, you will lose your bankroll more often than you double it.

HERE IS THE WORKBOOK

It's nothing sophisticated and does not use macros, so is safe to run in excel 2010 or later.

I'll leave it online a few months. If the owners of admins here wish to, they can host it themselves, subject to leaving it unchanged and attributing to me by name.

Here's an example result.