Am I just plain unlucky?

[Darcus]

It has been one of those weeks for me! I have just finished a session at Grand Aces using their $110 match bonus BJ excluded.

Starting with $220 and betting $5 a pop ($1 five coin maximum) as about 2%-3% of my total stake and playing full pay JoB. After playing 165 hands I had lost the lot never been up at any point, all winning hands being 3 of kind or lower except for one flush and one full house.

I don't usually play VP so I use a strategy card to make sure I play ok.

Is this a normal bad streak? Any pointers would be helpful as I am not a great statistical mathimatician (or speller for that matter!).

As an aside the terms and conditions stated that the WR was 15x (D+B) which should be...hang on....$3300, but when I made the deposit a box stated that I needed to wager at least 3200% of the bonus which is...hold on again...need to take my shoes off for this one....$3520! Then the other box which show how much you have left to wager stated $3630? It kept creeping up from the original T and C's.

Just thought I would point this one out.

[DealerBusts]

Its quite normal to be honest. Unless you hit those 4 OAK then you're going to find that your balance goes south. Even with those 4 OAK, you are still going to need to hit those Royal Flushes now and again to boost you back up.
We're talking about about 91.7% payout if you don't hit 4OAK or higher.

[GrandMaster]

Once I hit three 4OAK in less than 25 hands. It did wonders for my bankroll.

[Darcus]

Thanks for that. I'm not over familiar with VP so that puts my mind at rest. I guess I've just not been in a good mood today with everything not going my way. Just lost $200 out of $300 bonus in 110 hands of BJ so everything is looking sour at the moment.

Can anyone tell me how to do the SD calculations for BJ so I don't have to whinge in public everytime I lose

I saw it in another thread being discussed but can't relocate it.

[GrandMaster]

For any gambling related mathematical question your first port of call should be the Wizard's site, www.wizardofodds.com. A word of warning though, video poker has a very skewed distribution, a large part of your expected return and of the variance is due to the royal flsuh, so the usual method of using a normal distribution as an approximation is not valid, unless you play hundreds of thousands of hands.