Winning Strategies

[caruso]

Ah, good sense from the Wiz, apparently.

The "money management" stop-loss John Patrick malarky is safe enough if that's your thing; however...

Not only can you not "count" on streaks, it goes a LONG way beyond that: streaks do not exist, in any exploitable sense.

It's human nature to try to find order in chaos, recognize the familiar in the foreign or known in the unknown. Unfortunately, these are nothing but mind-tricks, like seeing faces in the clouds. They're "faces" because you recognize them as faces. Unfortunately, they aren't faces.

Yes, "streaks" in gambling exist - IN RETROSPECT ONLY. All you can ever unequivocally state as fact is that you are currently at the end of one! But people say "I'm on a streak"; no, not at all. They are not ON a streak, they are at the END of a streak - because to say the former is to imply some precognitive capacity regarding the future turn of the cards. If you had that, you wouldn't need "streaks"! You'd simply remortgage your house on your guarenteed winning bet, and retire!

But of course you don't do that, because you DON'T have that capacity. All you have is a heightened emotional state resulting from a happy session of gambling. But that session is OVER at any given present moment: it has NO bearing on the future. What are the implications?

If you try to "ride the streak", maybe upping your bets or whatever, what are you REALLY doing? Your simply increasing your losses, because unless you've chanced upon a great single deck game or full pay Deuces Wild or some similar video poker, the house has the advantage. That "hot rush" is in NO way obliged to continue after your next bet. YOU are hot - the cards aren't! Far from winning more, you are in fact LOSING more.

Financial products all carry the famous dislaimer "past growth is not indicative of future performance", or something along those lines.

Why should the PURE mathematics of gambling not be extended the same courtesy?

[jpm]

I knew someone would jump in with the whole 'no such thing as luck' arguement sooner or later. At least the odds were good that it'd happen!

I'd have to respectfully disagree though. Streaks do exist and if you're lucky (no pun intended!), you can recognize and exploit them. Back in April, over the span of 6 days, I hit 3 natural royals at the same casino, same game. Then about a week later, another one, different casino, same game. Then things cooled off for a while till July when over the course of a week I was DEALT a royal on 4 line poker, and about 15 hours later, hit another one, same place, same game (not dealt though). Recognizing the streak, I started hitting a bunch of casinos (and only lost at one for about $100) and 4 days later hit another royal at a different casino. 2 days after that, another at yet another casino. That was one helluva week! The next month it was a royal at one place, followed by 4 deuces on deuces wild at a couple of places over the course of a week. This past week has been similar with slots streak after a bit of a cold streak for a couple of weeks.

I know that mathematics, statistics, etc says there's no such thing as good or bad luck, but I think that there are other forces at work here than just pure odds. I choose to call it a lucky streak. It could be something as seemingly benign as sun spots affecting the RNG on the server, who knows. I'm not going to try to explain it, I'd rather spend the time trying to recognize it and I'm getting better at it.

[tim5ny]

Let,s just sum it up in simple mathematic terms. A casino game is set to pay out a certain percentage. Maybe nobody wins for awhile and the casino takes in lots of cash. A dry spell for the players...but alot taken in by the house. Now the computer says that it,s time to start paying some of this out..according to the payout percentage programmed into it by the house. Now... it,s in a more generous and giving mode until everything tallies out according to the numbers. It may be one or a few huge payoffs...or many smaller ones (which would be considered a "winning streak" by the player. It,s just numbers...that,s all. It HAS to pay out a percentage...but nobody knows when it will.

[tim5ny]

By the way JPM.. I,m sooooo jealous! I,ve always wanted to be dealt a Royal on multiple hand poker. How much was your bet?

[imcasual]

I tend to agree with the hot streak/cold streak philosophy. There are two primary reasons, however, why I don't typically benefit from this belief: 1) I have far more cold spells than hot, so there's a built in imbalance and 2) I have absolutely no self-discipline in my gambling persona and so am forever chasing my losses and throwing good bucks after bad. Okay, wait. There's a #3, too: my hot flashes (lol) tend to be isolated to one casino AND my paranoia kicks in when my luck shuts off making me take each loss personally, sometimes accompanied by a fleeting glimpse of a conspiracy theory! But without question, my most damaging failing is chasing those gone-forever bucks. "Somebody slaaap me!"

[caruso]

(Sorry to butt in and pour my cold water on, but this IS a favourite subject of mine because these misconceptions run SOOOOOO deep into the gambling culture.)

JPM - I didn't say luck doesn't exist, and neither did I say streaks don't exist. Of COURSE they exist; in fact, gambling is ONLY about "luck" and "streaks", ie. short-term volatility. No gambling game will ever realize it's expectation on every hand - it's quite tricky to lose 0.44% of a $10 bet. And if you COULD somehow so do, who would gamble? There's not a lot of fun in sitting down at a $10 minumum BJ table and handing over 4 cents to the dealer every 60 seconds or so, no more than it would be going into the place you buy your dollar lottery ticket and, rather than gambling your dollar, simply handing over your 50 cents "tax" to the salesgirl. It's the "streaks" which make the games playable and attractive / addictive.

The only point of contention is that you can predict the future. You cannot. As an intelligent human being (you clearly are) you know this, and I know you know it; but as a gambler, you screen the information out, which is so intriguing. Why is that? I'm not trying to cure anyone of false beliefs. That isn't possible. Gamblers are THE single most stubborn part of society. They don't "believe" - they KNOW.

Look at Vegas: multi-billion dollar industry, based on gamblers with winning systems. Look at the OC business - same deal, same multi-billion dollar affair, same foundation. All built on winning gamblers. Apart from masochistic addicts, does any gambler consider himself a loser?

Tim5ny - casinos are not set up to pay out a given amount at given times. That's much too complicated. The games simply realize whatever their advantage is. If it's a fair BJ game played well, it's about half a percent; if it's a rigged game played badly, it's about 4 percent. Fair or rigged, just because a given game has been "doing well" for a period doesn't mean that some aspect of the programming will cause it to start doing badly and favouring the players. All these machines do is to keep churning out the cards - up, down or even in random fashion - and generating the house take.

Both these points are attempts to simplify something that's been subjected to complications. But if all players understood the pure simplicity of the matter, neither Vegas nor OCs would exst.

[tim5ny]

Good points Caruso. I can see that someone hit on a subject that you enjoy. I believe you,re right concerning card games. The house advantage is built into card games simply by the odds of you being dealt a winning hand using 5 cards out of a 52 card deck. I,m referring to a slot machine. A slot machine with goofy symbols and 3-5 reels. I don,t believe that they are random. How then could three casinos having the same software and same slot machines have different payout percentages on slots? How can you explain that with the randomness theory?

[caruso]

Slots, yep. Slots are programmed. I haven't the foggiest how the programming works in terms of when the machines payout better or worse, but obviously it's a different concept to the other games that ostensibly work off an RNG.

[hhcfreebie]

Slots are programmed for a certain payout but they also use RNG. The reason they still use RNG for slots is to protect casinos. If someone can predict a hot/cold streak for their slot games, casino will be defeated.
There are many many ways to generate random outcomes AND set the payout.Here is an example.
Suppose a slot is set in the following way for a 5 coin play:
pay: 1000 chance: 0.1%
pay: 200 chance: 0.3%
pay: 20 chance: 10%
pay: 5 chance: 20%
nothing chance: 69.6%
The payout for this paytable is 92%.
You can use RNG to generate a integer number between 1-1000. 1 would be 1000 payout, 2-4 would be 200 payout, etc. Therefor the outcome is random yet the return of this game is set.
The problem is casino has the right to change the payout anytime.
Suppose they change the odds of pay 200 to be 0.1% and nothing to be 69.8%, the return would drop to 84%. You would loose 2x faster and wonder what's going on.
While in a card game such as BJ, they shouldn't alter the outcome in any way. Every card has the same chance of been dealed and you don't have to worry what's the payout would be at this time.