By Henry Tamburin
Have you even wondered, “Who is in control” when you play blackjack in a casino? Is it you or the casino?
I know that most players sometimes feel the casino (a.k.a. the dealer) is controlling their destiny. I mean how many times can the same dealer draw that one and only card that beats your hand? However, believe it or not, you have a great say in your destiny at the blackjack tables.
First let’s look at what the casino controls when you play blackjack, then we’ll look at what we, as players, can control.
The Rules
This is no trivial point. Casinos in most gaming jurisdictions in the country are free to implement whatever rules they want at their blackjack tables. This includes the number of decks of cards, whether or not the dealer stands or hits on soft 17, whether or not surrender is offered or resplit of aces or multiple pair splits or double down after pair splitting, and so on. Yes, the casinos can control how much of an edge they want to have in blackjack by picking and choosing the different playing options they allow at their tables.
Gambler’s Ruin. Players who discipline themselves to play in blackjack games with the more favorable rules using the basic playing strategy and a simple counting system will win a lot more money in their lifetime then the player who opts to play blackjack in “any old casino” using a seat-of-the-pants playing and betting strategy.
They even control how many cards they will allow to be dealt from the dealing shoe by their policy on the placement of the cut card (which has a great effect on a card counter’s edge). They can make their blackjack games very tough to beat, even impossible to beat, or give players a competitive blackjack game.
The Betting Spread
Another not so trivial point. Casinos dictate for the most part what minimum and maximum bets they’ll allow at their tables. The maximum bet that is allowed in most casinos is far less than the casino’s total bankroll. Therefore, the casino controls the odds of having a lucky player “break the bank’ by having a bankroll that far exceeds the maximum bets they will allow at its blackjack tables. In fact, the “risk of ruin” for a casino is virtually nil.
Easy Credit
Casinos make it easy for players to get access to betting money. Playing on credit is relatively easy to establish. Lose all your cash? No problem there are plenty of ATM and “credit card to cash” machines conveniently located throughout a casino.
Exciting Atmosphere
The casinos engineer the environment in a casino to make it easy for a player to feel good about his losses. In this exciting, no holds barred, every thing is fast-and-fun casino atmosphere it’s easy for a player to bet more, to spend more, and to lose more.
It seems like the cards are stacked pretty much in the casino’s favor when you play blackjack. However, the fact is that you have control over your destiny for the most part, and not the casino.
Minimize the Casino’s Edge
You control how much or how little the casino’s edge is against you by your playing and betting skill level. Just by learning the basic playing strategy, which is a set of rules that tell you when to hit, stand, double down, pair split or surrender, you can reduce the casino’s edge to less than 1%. If you are selective and only play blackjack games with the best rules, you can cut the casino’s edge to a half a percent of less. Moreover, if you learn to increase your bets only when there is an excess of high value cards vs. low value cards in the remaining unplayed cards (i.e. learn a simple card counting technique like Speed Count), you can actually swing the edge in your favor.
Your Emotions
You control your emotions in the casino. Don’t let the exciting atmosphere lull you into playing above your means. Go easy on the ‘free drinks’ and learn to accept your losses. Even the best blackjack players in the world can’t win every session. Just stay focused on staying in control, and avoid the casino temptations that can quickly separate you from your money.
Credit
You control how much credit you want the casino to give you. If you can’t handle the credit, don’t get it. Don’t bet more than you can afford just to get a comp (believe it or not, many players have lost bundles playing longer and at higher betting levels just for the sake of a free meal). Play with money you can afford to lose should the worse happen and if you can’t afford to bet big, don’t! By all means, ask for your fair share of comps based on the betting level you feel comfortable with, but please don’t play longer, or bet higher, just to get one.
Gambler’s Ruin
You control the odds of losing your bankroll (Gambler’s Ruin) by how much you bet in relation to your playing bankroll and your playing skill level. When a player overbets in relation to his bankroll, he is doomed to lose. Card counters, for example, take great pains not to overbet because even though they have the edge, they know that they could go days, weeks, and even months losing more money than they win at the blackjack tables. Never overbet and you’ll be in control of “Gambler’s Ruin.”
When you think about it, blackjack players have a lot of control over their destiny. More so then most other casino games because we get to make playing and betting decisions that directly affect the outcome. Players who discipline themselves to play in blackjack games with the more favorable rules using the basic playing strategy and a simple counting system will win a lot more money in their lifetime then the player who opts to play blackjack in “any old casino” using a seat-of-the-pants playing and betting strategy. Like I said, you can either play “in control” or let the casino control you. The choice is yours. And I trust you will make the right choice.
Betting style:
(martingale)
...
In addition...I would play 'never bust' - always force the dealer to make a hand AND beat mine.
...
First, what are the odds of losing 9 straight hands where you never bust.
The odds of winning with the 'never bust' strategy are approximately equal to the odds of being dealt either a 19-21 or 2-11 and upgrading to 19-21, plus the odds of dealer busting. You will win approximately 40% of hands and lose about 50%. Pushes not counting, you will lose about 55% of hands and win 45%.
The odds of losing 9 hands in a row are 0.55^9=1/217. The probability of a 9-hand losing streak can then be found as 1-(1-1/217)^(N-8)...
edit: Nevermind the formula. I've been told this calculation for the risk of a losing streak is oversimplified, and seems to double-count longer streaks. An accurate calculator can be found here: http://www.pulcinientertainment.com/info/Streak-Calculator-enter.html
The correct probabilities are 10.6% in 60 hands, 21% in 120, 39% in 240, 65% in 500 and 88% in 1,000 hands.
---
However, this should be put into context for comparing with other betting patterns. Here is a post I recently wrote elsewhere about martingale, I'll repost it here, tweaked a bit for context.
---
While most betting systems are mathematically neutral, martingale stands out as being mathematically damaging to the player in all long-term performance metrics, such as risk of ruin, SCORE, time to double the bankroll, and, critically, chance to double the bankroll.
For instance, the risk of ruin in typical blackjack with a 64-bet bankroll is 10% in 1,000 hands, 1.8% in 500 hands, or 0.01% in 200 hands. A 6-step martingaler will run out of his 64 bets the first 6-loss streak he gets. The probability of a 6-loss streak in fair coin flip is 1/64 (or 1/45 in blackjack), and a streak can begin on any hand.
So, it will take only 50 fair coin flips or 36 hands of blackjack to provide a 50% risk of ruin with 6-step martingale. A 10% risk of ruin is reached in a mere 10 hands. A 1.8% chance will be exceeded in just 6 hands, since your first 6-hand sequence entails a 2.2% risk of ruin. That is for a bankroll that will last flat-bettors through thousands of hands.
All this while, martingale limits the winnings to a single unit at a time, slowing down the winnings. Even under ideal conditions, perfect 1-0-1 (just what martingale is designed for), a 6-step martingaler needs 128 bets to double his bankroll, a 86% risk or ruin in coin flip or 94% in blackjack.
So while per-bet house edge is unchanged, with a martingale the chance to double a 64-bet bankroll is a mere 14% in fair coin flip, as opposed to 50% for a flat-bettor. This is a mathematical disadvantage, voluntarily creating house edge even in a game that doesn't have any. All martingale provides in the long run is just massively increased risk of ruin, without a corresponding increase in gain.
---
Or keep schtum.
Your ire can be reserved for the point when the poster has revealed themselves to be willfilly ignorant/selling snake oil/unable to follow a logical train of thought.
Both questions could have been answered with some math, and it might just have been that the math would have been enough to convince the OP why it's a bad idea (TM).
As with all forum, what's old too one person is brand new to another, and repeated questions and themes will always appear. Or the forum disappears up its own backside into a insular community of anti-social jackarsery.
Well, you did offer some pretty ridiculous advice--'wait until the table gets hot.' Anyone offering such advice might very well have to be reminded that there is no such thing as a 'hot table', in the meaning of 'the players have recently won, so the players are more likely to win in the immediate future.'
Yeah - I didn't say 'wait until the table gets hot' or anything of the sort. I said that I've never seen a person make 12 passes in a row. I also said that while it is possible, in my 40 plus years of playing craps I've never seen it. Of course the dice don't remember but craps is a very simple, binary game. It is biased to the dark side. Even the house edge shows that. (And although people scoff at small biases I do not. Small errors accumulate into large errors, small advantages accumulate into large advantages. And even if that advantage is on the losing side I will lose less if I play the don't. That is just a cold, hard mathematical fact).
I also said that I have never seen more than 8 field numbers rolled in a row and while I am certain that it has happened I am also certain that it doesn't happen very often. I am also certain that for every set containing 8 field numbers rolled in a row there has been at least one set of 7.n non-field numbers rolled in a row (there being fewer non-field numbers than field numbers). I am also certain that craps is a closed system and that it contains a small number of events and that it regresses to the mean a lot more often than many people credit it with doing. So if you are going to quote me try actually reading what I say and quoting me accurately. I think I have had the EV Knighthood up to my ass and beyond and I should be doing better things with my life. So if you will pardon me I will leave you now - for good.
Both questions could have been answered with some math, and it might just have been that the math would have been enough to convince the OP why it's a bad idea (TM).
But why should anyone bother to do the math? It's like resorting to a detailed explication of physics and chemistry to show someone why their scheme to turn cotton balls into plutonium won't work.
It's a far better service to simply say to such a person, 'It won't work.' If you explain the math, and by some miracle that person understands that math and agrees with the conclusion, they'll just go back to their basement and cook up some different system in the forlorn hope that the math will validate that new one.
I think the odds of the math convincing the OP that Martingales don't work were about 40,000,000 to one. I respect the various quixotic tries to do so, though.
OK, I'll answer your question strictly in terms of math.
The odds of winning with the 'never bust' strategy are approximately equal to the odds of being dealt either a 19-21 or 2-11 and upgrading to 19-21, plus the odds of dealer busting. You will win approximately 40% of hands and lose about 50%. Pushes not counting, you will lose about 55% of hands and win 45%.
The odds of losing 9 hands in a row are 0.55^9=1/217. The probability of a 9-hand losing streak is 21% in 60 hands, 40% in 120 hands, 54% in 180 hands, 65% in 240 hands, 90% in 500 hands, 99% in 1,000 hands. The formula is 1-(1-1/217)^(N-8), where N is the number of hands played.
---
However, this should be put into context for comparing with other betting patterns. Here is a post I recently wrote elsewhere about martingale, I'll repost it here, tweaked a bit for context.
---
While most betting systems are mathematically neutral, martingale stands out as being mathematically damaging to the player in all long-term performance metrics, such as risk of ruin, SCORE, time to double the bankroll, and, critically, chance to double the bankroll.
For instance, the risk of ruin in typical blackjack with a 64-bet bankroll is 10% in 1,000 hands, 1.8% in 500 hands, or 0.01% in 200 hands. A 6-step martingaler will run out of his 64 bets the first 6-loss streak he gets. The probability of a 6-loss streak in fair coin flip is 1/64 (or 1/45 in blackjack), and a streak can begin on any hand.
So, it will take only 50 fair coin flips or 36 hands of blackjack to provide a 50% risk of ruin with 6-step martingale. A 10% risk of ruin is reached in a mere 10 hands. A 1.8% chance will be exceeded in just 6 hands, since your first 6-hand sequence entails a 2.2% risk of ruin. That is for a bankroll that will last flat-bettors through thousands of hands.
All this while, martingale limits the winnings to a single unit at a time, slowing down the winnings. Even under ideal conditions, perfect 1-0-1 (just what martingale is designed for), a 6-step martingaler needs 128 bets to double his bankroll, a 86% risk or ruin in coin flip or 94% in blackjack.
So while per-bet house edge is unchanged, with a martingale the chance to double a 64-bet bankroll is a mere 14% in fair coin flip, as opposed to 50% for a flat-bettor. This is a mathematical disadvantage, voluntarily creating house edge even in a game that doesn't have any. All martingale provides in the long run is just massively increased risk of ruin, without a corresponding increase in gain.
---
Blackjack Risk Manager
nice postOf course - how ignorant of me to forget that single, most important aspect. Oh thank you wise one for setting me on the path to enlightenment.
What did I do?
But why should anyone bother to do the math?
It's a far better service to simply say to such a person, 'It won't work.' If you explain the math, and by some miracle that person understands that math and agrees with the conclusion, they'll just go back to their basement and cook up some different system in the forlorn hope that the math will validate that new one.
Risk Of Ruin Formula
I disagree with your comments for two reasons. I think that the reason this website exists is to educate and inform people. By just telling someone something won't work in answer to their question...
So what I can't get my mind around basically is...
First, what are the odds of losing 9 straight hands where you never bust.
Second, since extra profit will be made whenever I get a blackjack (and obviously, the farther into the sequence I am, the higher the profit), how significant is that to the overall final edge?
Any input would be greatly appreciated! I tested this method out on a free game online for around 3 hours (I know, small sample size for sure) and profited $435.
... you are in effect telling them that their question is not valid and is not worth answering. I assume that you have decided that the question is not worth answering mathematically mkl but please don't presume that others on this site feel the same way. I know you like to respond to every post on the site (or at least the overwhelming evidence points to that conclusion) but perhaps you might look at a post such as this one and simply decide not to post anything instead of jumping on it and insulting the poster.
Blackjack Risk Of Ruin Calculator
I know (as does anyone who has read your posts) that you don't believe any kind of Martingale system can possibly create an advantage for a player. I agree with you as do most here. If you feel you've explained this to death and have no inclination to take the time to explain it again, you could just ignore the question.Blackjack Risk Of Ruin
My second point is that having read your posts in the past it seems to me that you are not sufficiently capable of actually performing the math to answer many of these math oriented questions. It's not that you can't add and subtract and multiply and divide; I'm sure you can. It just seems that the breaking down of the questions to be able to create a workable formula is a bit over your head from time to time. Rather than leave the question for someone better suited to provide an answer, you prefer to give some half-hearted quasi-mathematical answer and then deride the person who has asked the question.
I'd say that's what's happened here.
To the OP (Bruski), I'm working on an answer.
Comments are closed.