The whole attack on me by former member Moses and current sockpuppet member UCFX stems from the discussion involving the 29k losing week that I had last September or October.
I want to say this about Moses. I have known for quite a while that he could not be the professional blackjack player that he claimed. Not playing a small rotation, home base of Reno and the limits they will allow, especially to a regular or frequent player. I just never felt the need to call him out as his claim wasn't really hurting anyone. Until he started attacking me, with his complete lack of understanding about blackjack variance. THAT is the point that his attacks about my variance became misleading to other players and I have a problem with that same as I did with T3 misleading other players with phony math on Norm's Site and Singer misleading video poker players with alternative or phony math on this site.
The math is the math. There is no grey area or alternative math. Impossible mathematical claims should be called out....PERIOD. 18 y.o's in row. Earning a million dollars over 10 years playing -EV video poker, using progressions and stop limits. T3's ridiculously mathematical impossible blackjack claims and now Moses misleading and false statements about variance, designed only to discredit me.
So let's talk about blackjack variance. Every blackjack player and team using the method of card counting experiences variance, sometime pretty extreme. The larger the spread a player/team uses the larger the variance and actually the better conditions, especially penetration, the larger the variance. That last statement may seem odd but it is very true. Deeper penetration will result in a higher win rate (higher EV rate) but at the expense of higher variance.
Let's look at some of the better known teams and some of their variance issues. One of the MIT teams suffered $200,000 losses before they turned it around and won over half a million. One of the other pretty well known teams (I think the church team) was at one time 60 grand in the hole, before variation turned in their favor and the caught up to EV (expectation) and make 6 figures and broke the bank. Both Tommy Hyland and one of his players who used to participate on various forums used to talk about their extreme variance on losing 10's, even 100k before things turn. THAT IS JUST THE WAY THE GAME OF BLACKJACK WORKS. A big spread equals large (short-term) variance. Eventually as you play enough rounds and get through the short term, the math will take over and results will come in line with expectation, but in the short term variance is a bitch. This is EXACTLY why blackjack card counting requires a significant bankroll of 100's of times your largest or max bet. Not your unit bet, your MAX bet!
And this variance isn't anything that is guessed at. There is a mathematical formula, having to do with your average bet and square root of number of hands played. This formula will result in a number known as standard deviation. Results for any number of rounds played should be within 1 standard deviation 67% of the time, within 2 standard deviations 95% of the time and within 3 standard deviations 99. something percent of the time.
So I want to go back to my week last fall where I lost 29k, that one of the ex-members here, a ploppie, who has no clue, began attacking me about and Moses, who appears also to have no clue of this math or discussion despite his claims of professional blackjack play, jumped on and continued.
Ok so back to my results for my worst week ever in 750 week (15 years). Using my average bet of about $200 and 2000 rounds played for the week (I average 80-100 thousand rounds a year, I get 1 standard deviation of $10,285. That means my results should be within (1 standard deviation) $10,285 of expectation 67% of the time for that amount of play. My results should be within (2 standard deviations) $20,570 of expectation 95% of the time for that amount of play. And within (3 standard deviations) or within $30,855 of expectation over 99% of the time for that amount of play.
So again, my results: My expectation was roughly $2000 and my results were -$29,000. That is almost exactly 3 standard deviations below expectation, which should occur less than 1% of the time. This is the second time I have been 3 standard deviations below expectation in 750 weeks, which is less than the 1% expectation for this occurrence.
In other words, my results while disappointing (obviously) were not that unusual for my level of play. A player playing my limits is going to have a week like that 1% of the time or so. THAT is the road to reaching expectation and maximum profits.
So I don't know what Moses big thing with this result was about, other than clearly showing he has little or no understanding about variance as it relates to professional blackjack play.
You people that seem to dislike me based on all sorts of things...that is fine. But the math is the math. Let's not pervert the math, because there is no such thing as alternative math.
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