Re: New Player Needs Some Advice

thepixelfreak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...

> You know, now that that I think about it.. I'm less inclined to follow 
> the BS and will never count because it takes all of the fun away. And 
> like I said before, the wife and I have beaten the odds rather well 
> drifting in and out of the BS logic. In fact we've done considerably 
> better than the logic of the 'BS + counting tehnique'. We're well into 
> the plus side of a 95% standard deviation of the expected win of someone 
> playing the pure BS plus a Hi-Low Balanced count over nearly 50 hours of 
> play. All that without counting and a very small bankroll? We must be 
> pretty lucky..

Let me try to parse this:

start with the easy part:
"the expected win of someone playing the pure BS plus a hi-lo balanced
count over nearly 50 hours of play"

This of course depends on the rules, bet spread, number of decks,
penetration, number of count-adjusted play variations, etc., etc.,
etc., but let's keep it real simple and call it 1% of total money
wagered.  Let's also keep it real simple and call it 100 hands per
hour.  So this "expected win" is 50*(avg. bet).

So far so good.  now it gets hard:
"We're well into the plus side of a 95% standard deviation of
{50*bet}"

As written this makes little sense.  It could mean a lot of things -
but in the context of the post I THINK he means they are in the
rightmost 5% of the bell curve centered at "50*bet".  Z=1.64.

Given the 5000 hands assumed earlier, one standard deviation is about
1.6% of the total amount wagered, or about 80*bet.  To get to the
rightmost 5%, you need to be +1.64sigma above the mean, or about
"131*bet" above the mean or about +181*bet.

Meaning they won more than 181 times their average bet over 50 hours
of play.  (could have just SAID that...)

Anyway, since they're playing admittedly sub-optimal BS (he doesn't
say HOW sub-optimal), let's (for simplicity) say they're playing at a
1% negative expectation (which is probably where most 'near-optimal'
BS players (who play their stiffs pretty well but don't know doubling
or splitting strategy very well) fall).  Hence their expectation over
50 hours is -50*bet.

At this expectation, their +181*bet result is 231*bet above their
expectation, or about +2.89sigma.  The probability of seeing a +2.89
sigma event is about 0.0019, or 0.2%.  This is twice the probability
of winning the 'daily number' three digit number game played by most
state lotteries.  Lucky?  yes.  "Proof" that counting doesn't work? 
Certainly not.

> 
> I think I'll keep it somewhat something of a gamblers game.. Statistical 
> mathematics are not quite up to par for the task. 

Why not?

> The true believers of 
> the Basic Strategy would say that what other people on the table do or 
> don't do has no effect on the outcome of any one persons hand. 

No they wouldn't.  They would say that what other people do on the
table has no effect on any one person's EXPECTATION.  Other players'
actions MOST DEFINITELY effect the outcome of any one person's HAND.

> We've all 
> seen the falacy in this. Maybe if we were all computers running 
> monte-carlo simulations of all possible permutations and had the time to 
> run the simulation then maybe that holds true. For average joes and 
> janes, I suggest knowing the BS and playing 'on the fringe' is more 
> exciting and _CAN_ be very rewarding..

Okay, but now you've changed the subject.  Playing "hunches" can
indeed be great fun.  I went to the horse track in berkeley once and
had a fun afternoon.  I even won some money!  I'm sure there are
horse-betting professionals out there who say what I'm doing is silly
(bet on the horse with the goofiest name), but I wouldn't use my
'success' as 'proof' that their systems are ineffective or that mine
is valid!

> 
> thepixelfreak