Originally Posted by
RS__
I ain’t reading all this shit. Idk if y’all are even on this topic anymore, but I’ll give a (hopefully) quick answer that’s easy to understand and no weird formulas so you can see how it works....if anyone’s actually interested (I doubt coach is, he usually just looks for a “gotcha!” moment and hopes 2 APs disagree on something or don’t explain themselves well). Without further ado...
Let’s say the game is a 50/50 coin flip. You bet $100 and either win $102 or lose $100. The advantage is 1% and the EV per play is $1.
If after 100 flips there have been 60 losers and 40 winners, the player would be down $1,920. (Btw a 60-40 outcome after 100 flips is fairly unlikely.) The player has made $100 in EV at this point. His actual win/loss % is 1,920/10,000 = -19.2%.
The next 100 flips, you would expect 50 winners and 50 losers, for another $100 in EV. At this point, your expectation would be -1820/20,000 = -9.1%.
Another 100 flips and you’d expect another $100 in EV to put him at -1720, for an actual win/loss percentage of -1,720/30,000 = -5.73%.
As you can see, his % win/loss is getting closer and closer to his EV %. The EV in terms of $$$, going forward, is constant ($1/round).
After another 9,700 games, he’d expect to make $9700 on those games, leaving him at +7980. That’d be $1M in action. 7980/1,000,000 = +0.798%.
After 90,000 more games, he’d expect to be up $97,980, for a total of $10M in action. 97,980/10,000,000 = 0.9798%.
The more you play, the %’s should get closer and closer. The dollar amount, from an expectation point of view, won’t change. You’ll still be down $2,020 in $$$ terms in EV.
You’re never due to win nor due to lose. Slight caveat is if a change in the game is made (EG: blackjack, cards get removed). If you’re playing something like FPDW, even if you hit 3 royals your first session, your future EV going forward is still going to be 0.76% of your FUTURE action; whatever you won or lost earlier today, yesterday, or last year — has no bearing on your future EV (in terms of $$$, NOT %).
There are obviously different ways to look at it, but IMO the healthiest way to look at it is to see it as a success if you generated EV and didn’t make mistakes and view it as a failure or bad if you made mistakes or gave up EV.
Here’s an example, kinda. I was on a play a while back where we had done a few million coin in at this casino (over a period of time) and getting cash back / freeplay. One day I hit dealt four deuces for $2.5k. It bumped up our actual return on the coin in from something like 99.1% to 99.25%. At that point you realize, the day-to-day small wins and losses don’t really have an impact on a play, if you put in enough time on the game. And eventually those royals or big dealt hands....or those “terrible” losses, hardly even put a dent in the overall return.