$2 FullPay dueces downtown

[AxelWolf]

They aren't going to want to have their real name listed in any HoF, as that would be the end of their careers.

For the most part this would be true, unless you plan on taking your career in a diffrent direction.

This begs the question, why did you ever conciser writing a book?

[kewlJ]

This begs the question, why did you ever conciser writing a book?

Well, I wasn't going to use MY name....I was going to use yours.

[Midwest Player]

KJ, why don't you start a blackjack forum of your own. I think it would be successful. It would give Norm some competition. Kind of like LVBear who runs blackjackinfo, but he still manages to play blackjack.

[kewlJ]

KJ, why don't you start a blackjack forum of your own. I think it would be successful. It would give Norm some competition. Kind of like LVBear who runs blackjackinfo, but he still manages to play blackjack.

I have no interest in starting or running a forum. Especially now. In the past couple years it seems like there are a zillion trolls throughout the blackjack AP forum community. It may be a smaller number than it appears, using many handles, but there is definitely a group, who's only interest is to be disruptive. It seems like it is a fulltime job to stay on top of that.

Secondly, I don't think you can run a forum anonymously. Norm, Shackleford, Ken Smith at the original BJinfo, Don Schlesinger with his forum, all used there real name. Stanford Wong used a pen name or whatever you want to call it, but everyone knew who he was. LVBear uses his real name for his official duties at BJ21 and BJinfo. I am a fulltime professional player already fighting an uphill battle to protect my name and longevity.

And one other thing about all these people, big names in the blackjack community: I don't know that any of them were ever fulltime players or AP's. I think Don may have stated that he was for a while, but it couldn't have been that long with all the other things he has done and been mega successful at (more successful than blackjack). I am not sure what Shackleford considers himself at this point. But I am a fulltime player, Midwest. And between playing, scouting, networking, detailed records, I put in fulltime hours. After years of really grinding and puting in many hours, I have managed to get my career down to where I put in slightly less time and actually have some free time but I am not looking for a second fulltime (or even part-time) job or career that is going to pay next to nothing, with major headaches.

[jbjb]

Enough hijacking. Back to deuces...

[AxelWolf]

This begs the question, why did you ever conciser writing a book?

Well, I wasn't going to use MY name....I was going to use yours.

I'm sure one could use a pen name in order to accept the Hall of Fame award. Or they could just simply change their name, shouldn't blackjack players Be doing that once in a while anyways? I basically don't see any difference between that and writing a book.
Machine players could change their names, however, there certainly would be some confusion when you hit a taxable if you had to use your social. I'm sure if you wanted to you could use a tax ID number along with their changed name and they would be all right.

[mickeycrimm]

Dancer wrote an article about the deuce play at DG:

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0PD...YnWxMe1z0x3pg-

[Rob.Singer]

Decent write-up but a few queries. I thought those were two 5-plays and not 10-plays? Also, we don't know the casino's results and probably never will unless some journalist gets a factual look. Chances are they lost because so many good players were there. But if he's referring to Wynn when they put in $1 FPDW, they did not lose although they won very little. I'm sure the player base wasn't the best also.

[MaxPen]

Decent write-up but a few queries. I thought those were two 5-plays and not 10-plays? Also, we don't know the casino's results and probably never will unless some journalist gets a factual look. Chances are they lost because so many good players were there. But if he's referring to Wynn when they put in $1 FPDW, they did not lose although they won very little. I'm sure the player base wasn't the best also.

It was 2 5 plays that were being played. There was 2 multi line games in front of those that had 10 play games. None of the 10 play was FPDW as far as I know. I think 10/6 DDB was available on the 10 play machines.

[kewlJ]

So, I found Mr. Dancer's article of interest, particularly some of the numbers. Since I have all but given up my VP play and what I used to do was pretty elementary, I have a few questions for those with more expertise in this field. Is 1000 HPH really standard? seems like a lot. ESPECIALLY hour after hour.

So Dancers number using this 1000 hph results in expectation of $76/hr. Again, I am questioning this 1000 hph, and also wondering about the error rate with such play, especially for hours on end. For the sake of appeasing me, lets go with 80% of that. That comes down to $60/hr. And that is divided between team player and team management. I am not going to ask how that works. But certainly each side is getting a percentage of that expectation. That is not a lot of money.

I mean you would have thought the way this play was the talk of the town a week or so ago, this was a play with hourly expectation in the $100's range.

I mean what I do with card counting works out to an hourly in that same neighborhood. I spend roughly 30 hours a week chasing expectation of about $1600 a week. Doing the math, that comes out to 53ish dollars (in expectation) an hour. So same ballpark, although I am not splitting that with anyone. So I am not poo-pooing that amount of expectation, again, it is just from all the hype I was expecting more.

Am I missing something?

[MaxPen]

So, I found Mr. Dancer's article of interest, particularly some of the numbers. Since I have all but given up my VP play and what I used to do was pretty elementary, I have a few questions for those with more expertise in this field. Is 1000 HPH really standard? seems like a lot. ESPECIALLY hour after hour.

So Dancers number using this 1000 hph results in expectation of $76/hr. Again, I am questioning this 1000 hph, and also wondering about the error rate with such play, especially for hours on end. For the sake of appeasing me, lets go with 80% of that. That comes down to $60/hr. And that is divided between team player and team management. I am not going to ask how that works. But certainly each side is getting a percentage of that expectation. That is not a lot of money.

I mean you would have thought the way this play was the talk of the town a week or so ago, this was a play with hourly expectation in the $100's range.

I mean what I do with card counting works out to an hourly in that same neighborhood. I spend roughly 30 hours a week chasing expectation of about $1600 a week. Doing the math, that comes out to 53ish dollars (in expectation) an hour. So same ballpark, although I am not splitting that with anyone. So I am not poo-pooing that amount of expectation, again, it is just from all the hype I was expecting more.

Am I missing something?

1000 hph is very common and easy to maintain with a great level of accuracy for a regular player. 800 hph is a very leisurely pace. The math is accurate for the value of the play. That is why Piggy Banker was getting laughed at for his 100's per hour minimum claims. It is not that great. That is why many machine AP's didn't play it. One thing about a play like that compared to Blackjack is you get to n0 much quicker time wise. As far as plays available to VP progressive chasers and pro VP players it was a highly desirable play.

[kewlJ]

Thanks for the quick reply MaxPen.

[mickeycrimm]

Playing one hand every 3 seconds is easy to do and that equates to 1200 HPH. So 1000 HPH is not so hard. I don't even use the top speeds to do it. If the game has 4 speeds I'm usually using 2nd highest. But if you play 6 hours a day how many bathroom breaks do you need? Can you stay off your phone? Can you keep from jaw jacking with the players around you? Even tho I play at 1000 HPH I never get out 6000 hands in a six hour session. Maybe 4500.

[kewlJ]

Playing one hand every 3 seconds is easy to do and that equates to 1200 HPH. So 1000 HPH is not so hard. I don't even use the top speeds to do it. If the game has 4 speeds I'm usually using 2nd highest. But if you play 6 hours a day how many bathroom breaks do you need? Can you stay off your phone? Can you keep from jaw jacking with the players around you? Even tho I play at 1000 HPH I never get out 6000 hands in a six hour session. Maybe 4500.

Thank you mickeycrimm. This is exactly what I was getting at.

[MaxPen]

When I play it is mostly 10 play. I can easily get 4000 dealt hands 40k total hands in a 4 hour period. I can be done in 3 1/2 hours if the machine has a turbo speed. I do not consider myself fast by any means. When I play, I don't jawjack, go to the restroom, and hardly ever order anything to drink.
If I was to play something like the DTG it would only be in 6 hour sessions max.

[RS__]

1k HPH isn’t hard, at least if you regularly play VP. Idk what speed the machines were set to, though. Tough to quantify errors, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem. If you’re fast enough to do 1k HPH then you probably know the strategy pretty good.

The play is pretty good or at least “good enough” since it doesn’t really take any effort, scouting, anything like that. As long as you know the strategy, you just sit and play. You don’t have to travel nor do you have to return several times to pick up freeplay. I don’t know who all was there playing, but I imagine many were the slot-vulturing types who are walking the strip or downtown day in and day out, really hustling to find their plays.


As far as teams and stuff go, I don’t have a whole bunch of experience with all that stuff but it seems like fewer teams are doing the “management, players, scouts, employees, etc.” type thing and it’s more or less “everyone has equal action”. Someone might partner up with another AP (or a few) for a few hours of play and at the end they divvy up the money accordingly.

[mickeycrimm]

Dancer has written about machines getting 24/7 action and players agreeing on timesharing them. Like 3 players will agree to take eight hour shifts per day but they're not really splitting the money. Each player is on his own with that.

[smurgerburger]

Playing one hand every 3 seconds is easy to do and that equates to 1200 HPH. So 1000 HPH is not so hard. I don't even use the top speeds to do it. If the game has 4 speeds I'm usually using 2nd highest. But if you play 6 hours a day how many bathroom breaks do you need? Can you stay off your phone? Can you keep from jaw jacking with the players around you? Even tho I play at 1000 HPH I never get out 6000 hands in a six hour session. Maybe 4500.

Why don't you play at top speed?

[mickeycrimm]

Playing one hand every 3 seconds is easy to do and that equates to 1200 HPH. So 1000 HPH is not so hard. I don't even use the top speeds to do it. If the game has 4 speeds I'm usually using 2nd highest. But if you play 6 hours a day how many bathroom breaks do you need? Can you stay off your phone? Can you keep from jaw jacking with the players around you? Even tho I play at 1000 HPH I never get out 6000 hands in a six hour session. Maybe 4500.

Why don't you play at top speed?

I make mistakes when I try to play to fast.

[Rob.Singer]

Speed at a VP machine can help or hurt you, depending on how long you stay on without taking adequate breaks in order to get another fresh start. People like to think that accuracy doesn't take a hit after the first hour, but it does. Just how significant it is will always be argued about.

I've always wondered about the speed aspect of playing +EV vp. So when the Reserve opened in the late '90's and had lots of positive games along with turbo speed settings, I asked a local friend to monitor me as I played "fast" on one of the speedy machines at the Monkey Bar (which is still there under a different name but still has the monkeys etched under the bar).

I wanted to do a two hour test. She (an AP on a vp team at the time) logged any hold mistakes I made. After the 1st hour I made 11 hold errors. No telling if she made any mistakes either way or not, but she did identify that one of my "errors" resulted in a FH, for whatever that's worth. As for me, I was mentally exhausted after the first hour and decided not to go on. I booked 1400 hph, which seems slow compared to the very dubious reports of people supposedly doing 2000-3000 hph.

If you're comfortable playing at an 800 or 1000 clip, then there's nothing wrong with going with that. I'm not playing for income any more and I certainly wasn't looking for speed from '04 - '09, so I'm comfortable with 500 hph. Everyone has a point at which accuracy is overtaken by speed. And time always takes over both.