My MG classic blackjack sessions...

[NewOrleans]

I read a crapload of posts about microgaming classic blackjack....
here is my last session
Session 1 -150$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 3lose
bet2 win! lol
bet 5 LOSE!
bet 25 lose dealer blackjack
bet 50 lose dealer blackjack
bet 75 lose dealer blackjack
Session 2 - 50$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 10 lose dealer blackjack
bet 20 lose dealer blackjack
bet 2 win
bet 2 win
bet 3 lose
bet 5 dealer blackjack

LOL no more microgaming classic blackjack

 

[vinylweatherman]

I read a crapload of posts about microgaming classic blackjack....
here is my last session
Session 1 -150$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 3lose
bet2 win! lol
bet 5 LOSE!
bet 25 lose dealer blackjack
bet 50 lose dealer blackjack
bet 75 lose dealer blackjack
Session 2 - 50$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 10 lose dealer blackjack
bet 20 lose dealer blackjack
bet 2 win
bet 2 win
bet 3 lose
bet 5 dealer blackjack

LOL no more microgaming classic blackjack

MG Blackjack is high variance, even at $1 chips, $50 is not enough to keep a session going long enough for a fair sample (unless you hit an upsurge early).

Ideally, you should use Autoplay, and low bets, but a larger starting bankroll. You can program in the number of hands, and gather the stats at the end. Try 5000 hand sessions, and then cut & paste the stats, and then do another 5000. Note your balance each time. You can do this in fun mode (for fun), or real mode if you are prepared to lose money.

You can build up a long term sample of 1000's of hands this way.

 

[tombee]

However.. this seems VERY unbelievable

 

[Jufo]

MG Blackjack is high variance, even at $1 chips, $50 is not enough to keep a session going long enough for a fair sample (unless you hit an upsurge early).

The standard deviation of MG Classic BJ is close to 1. If the game really behaves streaky (wins and losses are more clustered together than what normal randomness would dictate) then such game cannot be random if it doesn't behave exactly the same way as a physical shuffled deck of cards would. In other words excessive streakiness can imply game being rigged even if the long term house edge is unaltered.

 

[vinylweatherman]

The standard deviation of MG Classic BJ is close to 1. If the game really behaves streaky (wins and losses are more clustered together than what normal randomness would dictate) then such game cannot be random if it doesn't behave exactly the same way as a physical shuffled deck of cards would. In other words excessive streakiness can imply game being rigged even if the long term house edge is unaltered.

MG Blackjack, of whatever flavour, is always streaky.

I did an interesting experiment at Spin Palace in 2005, playing Vegas Strip on autoplay at 1 chips. I ran a total of 80,000 hands, and from a starting balance of 3000 I ended up on 3844 - a profit of 844 units on 80,000 hands. I thought this quite exceptional, albeit unusually for MG, in the right direction

It seems I had hit some kind of "sweet spot", so I decided to try 10 chips instead of 1, and lost the entire 844 in less than half an hour.

Had I been playing at max bet 500, and achieved such a run - quite possible presumably, because it happened at 1, and MG casinos tell us the games are random - I would have won some 422,000 (844 betting units) - and quite possibly bankrupted the casino. This is what makes me think the games are not 100% random, and that factors such as bet size somehow make the games play a little differently.

Maybe I should have pressed on with the experiment, going far beyond 80,000 hands to see if the trend continued, however, I took the chance that I had somehow got the software into some kind of mode, and risked my profit of 844 on the hunch. I preserved my initial 3000 of course.

 

[aka23]

The original post contains 20 hands. This is not large enough a sample size to prove much of anything.

However, VW's data is more interesting. A gain of 844 over 80,000 hands on VS BJ is about a +3.5 SD win. Again not rare enough to prove anything, but it would be interesting to see if anyone could repeat an unlikely win on 1-unit bet autoplay.

 

[tombee]

I agree that the sample is too small to prove anything about randomness of winning vs losing hands, but isn't the chance very small anyway that you lose every hand with a bigger bet, and win every hand with the smallest bet.. even losing EVERY bet over 10 due to a BJ of the dealer. Come on.. that chance must be very small even though this is a small sample

 

[pubjoe]

Unlucky.

 

[Jufo]

I agree that the sample is too small to prove anything about randomness of winning vs losing hands, but isn't the chance very small anyway that you lose every hand with a bigger bet, and win every hand with the smallest bet.. even losing EVERY bet over 10 due to a BJ of the dealer. Come on.. that chance must be very small even though this is a small sample

The player made 9 "small bets" and 11 "big bets". He lost all the "big" bets. The probability of 11 losses in a row (taking account pushes) is:

0.47882^11 = 1 in 3297,

so yes it is unlikely.

 

[winbig]

The player made 9 "small bets" and 11 "big bets". He lost all the "big" bets. The probability of 11 losses in a row (taking account pushes) is:

0.47882^11 = 1 in 3297,

so yes it is unlikely.

This is a prime example of what my old stats teacher was trying to convey to our class.

You can construe the data any way you want to make it 'say' anything you want.

Moral of the story: They didn't lose 11 hands in a row, they lost 11 big bets. The longest losing streak (from the information provided) was 4 hands.

Don't twist the data around...

Side note:

With these rules (1 deck, no peek, double on 9-11, split only once, able to hit aces after splitting them, stand on all 17's), the wizard's calculator -

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shows an optimal return of -0.0307%, and a realistic return of 0.121%; a far cry from the 0.47882 you use...

 

[aka23]

I agree that the sample is too small to prove anything about randomness of winning vs losing hands, but isn't the chance very small anyway that you lose every hand with a bigger bet, and win every hand with the smallest bet.. even losing EVERY bet over 10 due to a BJ of the dealer. Come on.. that chance must be very small even though this is a small sample

If you play enough hands, you eventually see some odd combinations. For example, I've had 20 wins in a row, as well as 20 losses. However, this is expected given the large number of hands I've played. I'd be interested to see, if anyone can repeat anything similar to the results in this thread.

Furthermore, I consider NewOrleans' data a little suspect. The first session with a $150 bankroll adds up to more than $150 in losses, even if all the losses are not double/split and all wins are the maximum double/split wins for classic BJ. Considering the earlier comment about casinos calling him and threatening to "shank" him for his posts, there may be some exaggerations.

 

[pubjoe]

what's so unusual about a 3,000ish-to-1 shot anyway?

 

[Jufo]

This is a prime example of what my old stats teacher was trying to convey to our class.

You can construe the data any way you want to make it 'say' anything you want.

Moral of the story: They didn't lose 11 hands in a row, they lost 11 big bets. The longest losing streak (from the information provided) was 4 hands.

Don't twist the data around...

I haven't twisted the data around. My result answered the following question: What is the probability to lose 11 times in a row with a bet size of 5 or larger. It is completely normal to filter out specific bet sizes from the data to investigate whether the return percentage remains the same with different bet sizes used. I do agree that the play data size is small but that doesn't change the odds.

Side note:

With these rules (1 deck, no peek, double on 9-11, split only once, able to hit aces after splitting them, stand on all 17's), the wizard's calculator -

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

shows an optimal return of -0.0307%, and a realistic return of 0.121%; a far cry from the 0.47882 you use...

You didn't understand what I calculated. 47.882% is the probability of losing a hand in single deck Blackjack.

what's so unusual about a 3,000ish-to-1 shot anyway?

It is not that unusual but if it happens to you more often than once in 3000 trials, that is unusual.

 

[pubjoe]

Cant you see that if you played only 2-5 hours worth of online blackjack in your life, then you'd expect a rarity like that? If you've played much more it would be extremely unusual not for it to happen more than once in an even smaller sample than 3,000 hands.

There are 100s of pages of even more "unusual" results on the winners thread.

 

[tombee]

Cant you see that if you played only 2-5 hours worth of online blackjack in your life, then you'd expect a rarity like that? If you've played much more it would be extremely unusual not for it to happen more than once in an even smaller sample than 3,000 hands.

There are 100s of pages of even more "unusual" results on the winners thread.

You are right about that. But still we didn't see a correct probablility of this kind of game considering the chance of hitting a BJ, at every very big hand and only big hands, not the small... Only probability of losing 11 hands in a row is shown. I also had this before, so I know that's quite possible. But what's the chance of:

20 hands total

5 hands > $10, all lost due to BJ(so specifically these hands, not just any 5 hands)
8 hands > $3, all lost, one due to BJ
7 hands $2 all won.

Also interesting to know how big the chance is of hitting 6 BJ in 20 hands, but only on high bets and not on low. (hands 8,9,10,15,16 and 20...) But maybe for this calculating the chance to hit 6 times BJ in a row is the same? Should be very small however.

Try out:

Chance hitting an A: 4/52= 0,0769
Chance hitting a 10+ (-A): 16/52= 0,3077

Chance of hitting both (BJ): 0,0769*0,3077= 0,0237

Chance of hitting six in a row: 0,000000000175518 (= 0,00000001755 %)

And considering that this were ONLY LARGE BETS.. Come on, is that called UNLUCKY??


This off course considering the data is correct (as well as my results)

 

[Jufo]

Also interesting to know how big the chance is of hitting 6 BJ in 20 hands, but only on high bets and not on low. (hands 8,9,10,15,16 and 20...) But maybe for this calculating the chance to hit 6 times BJ in a row is the same? Should be very small however.

Try out:

Chance hitting an A: 4/52= 0,0769
Chance hitting a 10+ (-A): 16/52= 0,3077

Chance of hitting both (BJ): 0,0769*0,3077= 0,0237

Chance of hitting six in a row: 0,000000000175518 (= 0,00000001755 %)

And considering that this were ONLY LARGE BETS.. Come on, is that called UNLUCKY??

This off course considering the data is correct (as well as my results)

I would improve your calculations a little bit:

The probability of BJ is twice as much you wrote because it can be 10+A or A+10:

Prob(dealer BJ) = 4/52*16/51 + 16/52*4/51 = 0,0483

Use Excel to calculate the following:

Probability(6 or more dealer BJs in 20 hands) =

1-BINOMDIST(5;20;0.0483;TRUE) = 0.000273 = 1/3660

If we consider that there were 11 hands with $5 bet size or above and all dealer BJs were concentrated on these 11 hands, the probability for this is:

Prob(6 or more dealer BJs in 11 hands) = 1 - BINOMDIST(5;11;0.0483;TRUE)
= 4,74987*10^-6 = 1/210352

If we only focus on bet sizes of $10 or above (all of which lost to dealer BJ) the probability is

Prob(5 dealer BJs in 5 hands) = 0.0483^5 = 1/3804209

However, like previous poster said if you play large number of hands, such things will happen. I assumed here that the OP only played the 20 hands he posted and that he didn't select the worst run out of larger data.

Also there is a selection bias in calculating probabilities AFTER the event has occured. We should define what we measure FIRST, then do the playing and then calculate the probabilities.

 

[tombee]

Thanks very much.. It's been a while since I've done some statistics. And of course, as with everything.. If you play enough things like this will happen. However I would be very astonished too if that were to happen to me when I begin playing somewhere! But maybe it already did as I rarely keep track of my gameplay.

 

[aka23]

Furthermore, I consider NewOrleans' data a little suspect. The first session with a $150 bankroll adds up to more than $150 in losses, even if all the losses are not double/split and all wins are the maximum double/split wins for classic BJ. Considering the earlier comment about casinos calling him and threatening to "shank" him for his posts, there may be some exaggerations.

In the Ruby Fortune thread, a Palace Group rep showed that NewOrleans posted a misleading quote, which skipped over a key part of the quoted conversation. This adds to my comments mentioned above about the losses adding up to more than the $150 bankroll. I suspect that he also skipped over a key part of the data in this thread.

 

[picassocat]

I read a crapload of posts about microgaming classic blackjack....
here is my last session
Session 1 -150$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 3lose
bet2 win! lol
bet 5 LOSE!
bet 25 lose dealer blackjack
bet 50 lose dealer blackjack
bet 75 lose dealer blackjack
Session 2 - 50$ bankroll
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 2 win
bet 5 lose
bet 10 lose dealer blackjack
bet 20 lose dealer blackjack
bet 2 win
bet 2 win
bet 3 lose
bet 5 dealer blackjack

LOL no more microgaming classic blackjack

What I see here is:

W,L,W,L,L,W,L,L,L,L

and

W,L,W,L,L,L,W,W,L,L

if you were flat betting you would be down 6 units. Losing when the dealer gets a blackjack is irrelevant; a lost hand is a lost hand, but in this short sequence the house did get more than its fair share of naturals.