Thank you for yet more very interesting contributions.
I initially set out to see if "Practice Mode" and "Real Money" would produce similar results. We had two players playing with AUD and two playing "Fun Money". Over 100 games each results were close enough to call them "same", so that satisfied us that we can experiment without spending too much of the kids inheritance.
Results on a day to day basis have been very different however. I have just finished playing 65 games and "busted" 81 times to the casino's 65. As a result I lost A$100.00. However at 50 games player 52 and casino 50 and I was exactly square, neither winning or losing.
While I accept arguments regarding 1,000's or even millions of hands these figures have no practical value for the "mug punter" which is the class I fit into. What I am trying to do, with your help, is attempting to gauge the "mood" of the software.
If it could be left exactly as it was half an hour ago I would rate it to be a "Fair Bet" but this is certainly not always the case.
Which is EXACTLY what we would expect from a random game of Blackjack.
The idea that one should leave the casino if the software is in a "bad mood" is more about the human side of gambling. It creates a strategy that pushes the player into taking a break and coming back later rather than getting sucked into the "chase of losses" that is the downfall of many.
Upon return, the software may well be "in a better mood", but this can be explained by the random nature of the game, individual sessions can have very different characteristics, and it's all down to the maths of a random system, rather than the software having pre programmed "moods".
If the software DID have a non random component, a smart player would clean out the casino, so implementing non random games would be VERY dangerous for a casino. If you could predict the "mood" of Blackjack from an initial 15 hands, you would be able to clean out the casino over the long term.
Someone has tried this before, the notorious "Cipher" and his Blackjack predicting and beating software. All those who got sucked into his scheme ended up getting badly burned. He began to ask people to just give him money and he would "invest it" in his team of in-house players who would play Blackjack on their behalf and the winnings, less commission for Cipher, would be returned. Funnily enough, it was at this point that his sure fire system failed to deliver, and all the money was lost at Blackjack (so he claimed at the time).
His software and system APPEARED to work over a short "mug punter" session of relatively few hands, but in reality it didn't, it was all smoke and mirrors and clever marketing.
Treat it as a bit of fun, but don't expect to find the "Holy Grail" at the end of your research.