Unlike stock market or sports gambling where betselection/pick is much more important than anything else, a casino game is far more balanced. It has a fixed house edge, fix payouts and fix probability.
        Everybody knows of the house edge that lies in a calculation done to favor the casino with offering a lesser payout than the odds. This is done to ensure losses in the long run on certain premises. If I play simple coin flipping with a friend of mine with a condition to pay him a profit of 0.95 for a bet of 1.00 and to take his 1.00 when he loses, given enough trials he will lose. If I do this to 100s of my friends I will have to go rich gradually, even if a few friends somehow manage to get a net win from me. Say they win and lose equal number of times, I will be winning 0.025 for every 1 unit bet placed, averagely. Hence, if a player has 100 units with him, he should lose it all by 4000th bet. It is also known as Average Daily Theoretical loss, also known as ADT, theoretical loss, or "theo" for short. The theoretical loss is the amount of money a player is expected to lose based on the long run statistical advantage the casino has on the particular game being played.
               Now my question.
              Have you ever seen someone playing with 100 chips and taking 4000 bets to lose that all? Usually people do not play flat or even if they do, they run out at losing a considerable sum in bad streak or winning a considerable sum in good streak. An average player plays not more than 100 trials in a real casino, in any given day and concludes his wins/losses of the day. This is about clever players. Rookies come, buy and lose  all before leaving for home. If they buy 100 units, do they take 4000 bets to lose that? Never.
         They plan a game for short run, either use multiple bets together(like side bets in baccarat or inside bets on roulette) to lose faster in a little bad streak and in avenging those losses lose the rest even faster, or they use silly progressions to win back faster and ultimately lose all.

More later............

Resuming my post:
                People lose principally due to ignorance of following things:
             1. Casino has virtually unlimited chips and time to counter a player
           
             2. Casino has that theoretical edge

             3. All progressions that seem to help players are rather killing them faster

              4. Randomness i.e. uncertainty could bring unbeatable variance, momentarily enough to kill any money management.

           Now, how a player can have edge over casinos:
             

             1. Awareness instead of ignorance of all these

             2. Control over emotions as to when to bet, when not and how much to bet. When to call off.

             3. Trying to swim against the current could kill even the best swimmers. When variance is at its peak, you either need to
              mellow your attack instead of accelerating that or wait for tide to go.

             4. One must know that 90% of the wins are likely in 1.5x of break even spread i.e. within first three bets of an EC. Hence
              pushing ahead too much is a foolish approach.

            5. All old school progressions seem to be made to help casinos than players. They either go too high in bets (marty, labby, fibo
            etc) or are not meant to win in adverse cases with even infinite chips (e.g. oscar's grind or opposite). Positive progressions are
            even more foolish as they expect successive wins or clumping wins to win a profit. Not realistic and all proven failures in
            simulations. So, unless sure of having a bulletproof MM, opt flat betting and survive for 4,000 bets with 100 chips. Enjoy comps.
             Have fun in casinos at least harm possible.

            6. Lack of simulation skills: It is the biggest killer. Most of the system/strategy maker or follower fail to understand that their
                way is set to lose only. They are either ignorant or they self hypnotise themselves that they can win with a proven failure idea
            too as they had some success with it. You can have success with a ten step marty for a few thousands bets too but ultimately, it
            will be fatal. Improve this area and you can have some hope.

           7. Do not expect to earn from a clever trigger or betselection alone in casino games. There is none, practically. Play a static bet
             or switch that for any reason, will not help you. Waiting for any any trigger will only waste your time and will offer same set of
             volatility still as playing all over.

More later...............

1. True, but ask casinos whether they really like to face virtually "infinite" bets coming from Bezos or Gates. Thus the main factor working for casinos is setting maximum betting limits.

2. See above

3. Absolutely true

4. Pure randomness is unpredictable yesterday, now and tomorrow and for the sake of our argument hence unbeatable. Whoever states otherwise deserves to be awarded the Nobel prize or a Fields medal.

-o-o-o-



1. Ignorance about how things generally should work or actually do work is of paramount importance to get an edge, imo

2. This statement could be true whether we have valuable reasons to think that pure randomness isn't going to act along this particular section of playing (and betting)

3. Define a "variance's peak"

4. Generally true

5. Absolutely correct

6. True at the utmost degree

7. I know what you do mean, but I fear most readers just see a contradiction in terms of what you already have sayed above.

as. 

Quote from: AsymBacGuy on May 17, 2020, 09:10:54 PM
1. True, but ask casinos whether they really like to face virtually "infinite" bets coming from Bezos or Gates. Thus the main factor working for casinos is setting maximum betting limits.

2. See above

3. Absolutely true

4. Pure randomness is unpredictable yesterday, now and tomorrow and for the sake of our argument hence unbeatable. Whoever states otherwise deserves to be awarded the Nobel prize or a Fields medal.

-o-o-o-



1. Ignorance about how things generally should work or actually do work is of paramount importance to get an edge, imo

2. This statement could be true whether we have valuable reasons to think that pure randomness isn't going to act along this particular section of playing (and betting)

3. Define a "variance's peak"

4. Generally true

5. Absolutely correct

6. True at the utmost degree

7. I know what you do mean, but I fear most readers just see a contradiction in terms of what you already have sayed above.

as.

I would answer comments in the red.
Pure randomness is unpredictable but only in a short span. Degree of certainty increases with number of trials. We need to have an approach that inculcates two things to cater horrible variance:
1. Mini Stop losses(MSLs): For example I have a strict MSL qualification for my use: Five more losses than wins in any stretch that is not letting me have a net win. I temporarily give up on this and play ahead afresh. This safeguards me from losing huge ever in one stretch.
2. Absolute stop losses which are 3 to 5 counts of unrecovered MSLs piling up. At an absolute stop loss point, I take losses and there will be no efforts to get that back by doing anything. I will elaborate these in details later.

Variance Peak: Any variance in negative that makes it too bad to be recovered without unusual clumping wins. Say playing an EC bet we get LLLLLLLLLLLLW, it will be fallacious to expect WWWWWWWWWW. IF we keep accelerating our bets blindly in too bad time, it will turn a variation of poor martingale only. I did explain that in an EC bet we can expect a W, 90% of times within first three bets so pushing higher bets thereafter is of no use.

Betselection static or dynamic: I never contradicted in this. I always said that your betselection is only proportional to the probability it carries. None is better or worse. Many clever players here claimed (I was also among them a few years back) that playing upon a trigger or pausing at a situation will help or switching bets will nullify the variance but it will only help one type of case. Do not forget that opposite is equally likely too.

Thanks for your response.

Pure randomness is unpredictable but only in a short span. Degree of certainty increases with number of trials.

Absolutely true, yet I prefer the "probability of success" term instead of the "degree of certainty" term. It's the same concept, of course.

1. It's ok. Yet we could add to our actual finding some randomness issues as I'm strongly convinced that unrandomness could prevail in short terms.

2. Ok, I'll wait your future posts on that. Anyway you made a good point.

Variance peak: you have considered only negative variance. I happened to see certain very bad baccarat shuffles where sky was the limit. Again, those shoes were not randomly shuffled.
I mean that the degree of certainty you have spoken about could be delayed for reasons not belonging to normal variance applied to a random proposition.

Bet selection: I think that utilizing a strict mechanical betting placement adapted to the actual conditions could help us to detect whether we're playing a perfect random game or a somewhat biased game.
Of course if you are able to overcome any situation taking for grant the results' randomness so the better. :-)

as. 

          The core secret of winning a random game (specially with house edge) is ability to stand firm in the worst storm of variance. If you are not capable of that you are destined to lose sooner or later. The degree of negative variance(at times positive variance too) is always uncertain. We can not estimate it perfectly. Therefore, a methodology that can auto adjust itself to the worst, the best and anything in between alike could break the ice and make a winner.
               I can withstand the worst with grace and that way I find myself having an edge over the house. I firmly believe that any player who is not ignorant of the basics and knows the art of handling randomness(variance in particular and randomness in general)and controlling his emotions(greed and anger) could have the Players' Edge.

I completely agree on that.

as. 

Hi Albalaha, is the sentence (in red) a key consideration when you design the MM? Are there any tips/hints to leverage on this when we design MM? Thank you for your guidance.

Quote from: Albalaha on May 17, 2020, 05:26:00 PM
Resuming my post:
                People lose principally due to ignorance of following things:
             1. Casino has virtually unlimited chips and time to counter a player
           
             2. Casino has that theoretical edge

             3. All progressions that seem to help players are rather killing them faster

              4. Randomness i.e. uncertainty could bring unbeatable variance, momentarily enough to kill any money management.

           Now, how a player can have edge over casinos:
             

             1. Awareness instead of ignorance of all these

             2. Control over emotions as to when to bet, when not and how much to bet. When to call off.

             3. Trying to swim against the current could kill even the best swimmers. When variance is at its peak, you either need to
              mellow your attack instead of accelerating that or wait for tide to go.

             4. One must know that 90% of the wins are likely in 1.5x of break even spread i.e. within first three bets of an EC. Hence
              pushing ahead too much is a foolish approach.

            5. All old school progressions seem to be made to help casinos than players. They either go too high in bets (marty, labby, fibo
            etc) or are not meant to win in adverse cases with even infinite chips (e.g. oscar's grind or opposite). Positive progressions are
            even more foolish as they expect successive wins or clumping wins to win a profit. Not realistic and all proven failures in
            simulations. So, unless sure of having a bulletproof MM, opt flat betting and survive for 4,000 bets with 100 chips. Enjoy comps.
             Have fun in casinos at least harm possible.

            6. Lack of simulation skills: It is the biggest killer. Most of the system/strategy maker or follower fail to understand that their
                way is set to lose only. They are either ignorant or they self hypnotise themselves that they can win with a proven failure idea
            too as they had some success with it. You can have success with a ten step marty for a few thousands bets too but ultimately, it
            will be fatal. Improve this area and you can have some hope.

           7. Do not expect to earn from a clever trigger or betselection alone in casino games. There is none, practically. Play a static bet
             or switch that for any reason, will not help you. Waiting for any any trigger will only waste your time and will offer same set of
             volatility still as playing all over.

More later...............

Quote from: sean on May 27, 2020, 08:15:32 AM
Hi Albalaha, is the sentence (in red) a key consideration when you design the MM? Are there any tips/hints to leverage on this when we design MM? Thank you for your guidance.

Yes. Absolutely. We need to focus most on that span only where we are destined to win 90% of the times, for sure. We can opt to pause over that, that is what most people opt or may bet flat 1 unit, if pausing is not feasible. I prefer later. Mind it, this rule will cause occasional losses too but help in the long run. Mini stop losses (I have elaborated in details ) and absolute stop loss help us handle extreme as well. I have left enough hints to help anybody make his own personal grail. I still believe there could be some better ideas but none will share them.