Quit While You're Ahead... Revisited

[jbjb]

I wonder if the "math guys" will bother to keep track of their play during their next ten or twenty casino visits to see if they were ahead at some point? Of course we all have to be patient for the reports as we all don't go to casinos every day.

With that said, I would be very surprised if our "advantage players" here tell us they weren't ahead 100% of the time. After all, they are always playing with an advantage, aren't they?

It's going to depend on what game you're playing and how you're playing it. Consider a blackjack card counter to a blackjack hole carder. The counter will have much higher variance, therefore a lesser winning percentage.

As to your second paragraph. You're not understanding what "playing with and advantage" means. It does not mean you'll win more hands than you'll lose. It means that the payoffs exceed the risk involved. If on a fair 50/50 coin flip, you bet $1 and only lose the $1 when wrong but win $1.01 when right, that's paying with an advantage even though you'll only win half of your bets. Another example is a flush draw where it pays 6 credits (Ala 9/6 JoB, DDB etc.). I'd take that hand every time even if high pairs are losers as the payoff exceeds the risk. In this case, I'm still losing the majority of hands but the few winners more than make up for the losers. Does this help?

[slingshot]

Look again. #16 is about holding 222 and dropping the kicker. #15 is about holding AAA and dropping the kicker.

However, in conventional strategy you always hold the kicker in Triple Double Bonus.

My bad. When I went to your site, it sent me to 15, which IS the A's and my reference.

[RS__]

wait....Rob does a special play on 5% of his holds? That's 1/20 hands. Are you really making a special play 1/20 hands, Rob?

[Rob.Singer]

[QUOTE=JustaDiamind;32926]I think what everyone is missing is this.. Robs 'special' plays are nothing more then a Hail Mary hoping to dig him out of a hole his 'system' dug him into.. he was so far down even quad queens wouldn't have dug him out for that 'session'.. so this ONE time he got lucky and got the royal.. how often does that happen ??

breaking up trip queens with three to the royal is another special play when he was really showing a deep, deep loss at the $25/coin level.

Completely untrue....and an excellent example of others attempting to criticize or otherwise wrongly explain a facet of my strategy that they do not fully understand. Hail Mary's are understood to be a high-risk/last-ditch effort used to turn a near-sure loser into a surprise winner. The special plays I developed are used on the very first hand of the session or on any future hands of the session, and are used if I'm even, behind, or ahead less than my pre-determined win goal.

Those 3 Q's I tossed were because hitting four Q's on $25 BP would not have allowed me to profit enough in order to reach the most important of mini-win goals in my strategy: winning enough to be able to recoup all $25 BP losses plus all losses at the $10 level so that I can go back to restart at a lower denomination $10 BP. This was a very unusual play that gets used only late in the 100 BP credits, and is not used in any of the advanced games regardless of how many credits I'm into it for. Reason: minimum $6250 is too high a win compared to the value of the Royal.

[Rob.Singer]

wait....Rob does a special play on 5% of his holds? That's 1/20 hands. Are you really making a special play 1/20 hands, Rob?

Yes, on average I believe. There are many other less significant special plays that are not in the videos.

Alan, holding that kicker (optimal play) on the low quads in TDBP was because the special play of NOT holding the kicker would not have allowed me to attain a win goal, while the optimal play would have. Had hitting quad 3's by drawing two cards meant reaching a win goal, I would always do that of course. But in this case the optimal play, while more difficult to hit but paid out far more credits also, was the only choice. To use jbjb's wording, the payoff exceeded the risk.

See, we're all AP's.

[Alan Mendelson]

Quad queens at $25 Bonus Poker pays $3125. Rob you wrote $6250.

[arcimede$]

If Alan was right he would win every time he went to a casino. This has been mentioned before but Alan ignored what it tells us.

All you need to do is cash out every time you are ahead. Then, insert another bill and once again play until you get ahead. Keep doing it until you are ready to go home. Since Alan believes a person gets ahead every time they play then this should be a no brainer. You can't lose.

Too bad it's a lie and Alan is spewing silly nonsense.

[Rob.Singer]

"What it proves is that proper money management can make you a winner."

At negative EV games, this is just wrong. Blatantly wrong. Utterly wrong. Obviously wrong. Sports is a -110 problem; your losing wagers pay a 10% penalty. What Alan is saying is that proper money management can overcome this. Proper money management, however byzantine, elaborate, "strong," cannot overcome this. In video poker, the house edge is 1% or thereabouts for most games. Money management, similarly, cannot overcome this.

The claim that it can is just completely wrong.

I'm no fan of the Wizard's forum, or people waxing eloquent about having massive edges against the house, or obsessions with hole card peeking, or people who ignore the gritty realities of playing in real casinos, but I have to say something when folks say they can circumvent probability. No, you can't circumvent probability. Games of opinion (horse racing, sports) are separate issues. But video poker is not.

Red, we've gone thru this before. No one has ever claimed that there's a way to have a theoretical advantage over -EV vp games. And that's exactly why what the game's EV is BEFORE playing it is irrelevant. But because I've developed a, in general terms, non-mathematical method to win consistently & overall playing these games, the only thing that's being overcome is consistent & overall losing. Where I'm from, building historical statistics from playing real machines in casinos and then extrapolating expectation going forward from that, is far more meaningful than sitting at home pretending theory will turn into reality.

[Rob.Singer]

Quad queens at $25 Bonus Poker pays $3125. Rob you wrote $6250.

No Alan. I referred to $6250 in the "advanced games" which in my strategy means the games I play 300 credits on, such as DDBP, TDBP, TBP+, SDBP, etc. I only play 100 credits on BP.

[Rob.Singer]

If Alan was right he would win every time he went to a casino. This has been mentioned before but Alan ignored what it tells us.

All you need to do is cash out every time you are ahead. Then, insert another bill and once again play until you get ahead. Keep doing it until you are ready to go home. Since Alan believes a person gets ahead every time they play then this should be a no brainer. You can't lose.

Too bad it's a lie and Alan is spewing silly nonsense.

That's dumb. No one said they'd win every time. For someone who claims to have a math background then wouldn't you expect specific parameters to bound such a task? What's the loss limit? How many denominations will be used? Is there any minimum win goal or is it quit as soon as he gets ahead? And no one tells people they're lying without trials of their own rendering empirical evidence.

You need a woman's touch to calm you down with this stuff.

[Alan Mendelson]

If Alan was right he would win every time he went to a casino. This has been mentioned before but Alan ignored what it tells us.

All you need to do is cash out every time you are ahead. Then, insert another bill and once again play until you get ahead. Keep doing it until you are ready to go home. Since Alan believes a person gets ahead every time they play then this should be a no brainer. You can't lose.

Too bad it's a lie and Alan is spewing silly nonsense.

This time you got it wrong. I said I've been ahead in 90-95% of my sessions. And my downfall was not leaving when ahead. And yes, sometimes I have to put in $1800 before hitting quad aces for $2000.

[redietz]

Rob, all I'm asking Alan to do is realize that the whole win goal/stop loss spiel, if applicable to video poker, should be applicable to every type of gambling. Clearly it cannot and does not enable people involved with other forms of gambling to win. Therefore, if you claim that your video poker strategy is a winning one, the key must lie in the special plays or some unique aspects of video poker that differentiate it from other forms of gambling.

I think it's reasonable to ask Alan, who champions this win goal/stop loss stuff, what it is that makes video poker unique and different from all other forms of gambling. Or does he really believe that win goals and stop losses, if applied to other forms of gambling, also enable one to win at negative games other than vp? If he does not believe that, why doesn't he believe that? What presumably makes video poker different?

These are clear, simple, and straightforward questions.

[Alan Mendelson]

In any game with many hands play it is possible to have many sessions where you are ahead. I have been ahead many times in video poker, craps and even cash games in poker.

One exception is tournament poker. There have been many tournaments where I was never ahead.

Why is tournament poker different? Because you have a limited amount of chips.

In other games you can buy in again to give yourself another chance to win.

[RS__]

All you need to do is cash out every time you are ahead. Then, insert another bill and once again play until you get ahead.

But then, wouldn't that be....*GASP*.....the same thing as just playing straight on through? Just play and play and play and....of course you'll end up winning! Surely Alan, a math and statistics expert, knows you will!


Rob, over your "10+ years of consistent winning", how many sessions did you play? How many losers did you have, and how much did you lose on those sessions? What was the average win and what was the win goal?

An example response might be:

100 sessions
4 losing sessions: -$950 each
96 winning sessions. Win goal of $50. Average win is $85.

[Alan Mendelson]

Here's the problem with all of the guys who think about EV and returns. This is not about EV and return. This is about money management.

When you play a large number of hands or make a large number of bets in certain games you have a chance to set aside the bigger wins. In games such as video poker and even slots and even craps with the Firebet and the small, tall, all bet there are a few payoffs that can offset lots of losses.

If you can remember to bank the wins and limit the losses you can possibly come out ahead even at a -EV game.

It is not guaranteed. You can have bad luck and never get a royal flush and never hit a Firebet.

The problem with blackjack is that the biggest payoff is 3/2. In video poker it's 800/1. In craps it's 1000/1.

In video poker there are also 400/1 and 200/1 pays that if you bank can offset and beat the casino's grind.

It's making that effort to quit with it and adding up those wins that makes quitting when ahead possible.

Now what about starting a new session -- isn't that just a continuation of the previous session? Yes. Of course it is. And again it's money management. More winners will come but at the same time you have to be careful to limit your losses.

If you have a +EV game to play you don't need this money management. But I haven't got a +EV game to play so I need something else. And that something else is the management of holding onto wins and limiting losses.

One day I might find a game that drops money into my lap with each play but until I do this is the best chance I've got.

[RS__]

[q=Alan]More winners will come but at the same time you have to be careful to limit your losses. [/q]

Ultimately this translates to: "Quit when you're ahead, limit your losses when you're losing. By quitting earlier [than usual], you will lose less."

As you said (I agree), starting a new session is absolutely the continuation of a previous session. [I'm sure Rob disagrees!] The fact of the matter is, if "quitting when ahead and limiting losses when losing" actually worked, then you'd be able to sit down and play for hours, not worrying about the wins or losses, when to "quit" because you're ahead or behind, because a new session is just the continuation of a previous session. As I'm sure we all know and agree -- that is not a winning system.

If you want to quit when ahead or to limit your losses [short term], so you feel better about yourself in locking up a temporarily win, or only giving up X amount in a temporary loss, then go ahead. But don't make the mistake in thinking it's a winning system, as it's surely just a "lose less" system: When you win, you don't want to give it back and lose...when you're losing, you don't want to lose more.

[Alan Mendelson]

It's not a winning "system" and I wouldn't call it a winning system. It's more of a common sense way to play.

Common sense tells you that big winners don't come along all the time and the longer you play the more likely you will lose at a negative expectation game. So take your big winners and leave. This is what craps players do all the time -- they color up and leave the table after a long, hot roll.

You can do the same at video poker too, but most players don't. They keep playing.

Sure, there will be losing sessions too. And if there is a "trick" the trick is to set a limit on how much you are willing to lose. If you can limit your losses, then when the big wins do come you have a chance at having a net gain.

No one is guaranteeing anything except this: if you continue to play after a big win you might hit another winner OR you might lose what you just won. Which is why I took the next step (which Rob doesn't agree with) and I utilize a rising stop-loss so that I lock up some of my big win and then have more play ahead of me. Rob, on the other hand, bolts out of the casino.

I won't say Rob is wrong by bolting, but I came to the casino to play and I will use a portion of that big win to keep playing.

The "system" I have a real problem with are those who say they will play each day to earn a particular number of tier points or credits, or those who say they will each day for a certain period of time. That to me is ridiculous.

Rather than criticize the concept of leaving with profits, why aren't the math guys criticizing those who play for "points" or who play for "time"? And I know why -- it's the math guys who play for points and who play for time.

[redietz]

I don't play for points. I don't play for time. So that would be a flaw in your previous post, Alan.

If win goals and stop losses will help you on negative EV games by limiting your play, then they are useful tools. If you as play as much with them, then they will not help you.

Here's the frightening aspect to consider. If win goals and stop losses make your casino visits more enjoyable, and you are playing negative EV games, then you are likely to visit casinos more often because it is enjoyable. Long term, then, win goals and stop losses provide (1) you with more "enjoyment" and (2) casinos with more profit. So in this sense they can be a tool of the casino.

Psychological well-being and "having fun," the goals of the recreational player, are not separate from the goals of the casino, which is taking more money from the recreational player.

Again, I recommend the book, Addiction By Design.

[Alan Mendelson]

redietz you are missing the point. you can walk out of the casino with some of their money... if you allow yourself. You left that out of your assessment of visiting casinos more often and enjoying yourself.

[jbjb]

All any of these goals, win or loss, do is shorten the exposure your money has to the casino.