Not much you can do about severe drawdowns, except try very hard to make sure they don't happen in the first place. I don't so much aim to win as to not lose. The trouble is, if you lose 50% of your bank you then have to effectively make 100% just to get even again.

I guess I'm not a "real" gambler because I play online, partly because I live out in the sticks but mostly because I use software to help me track and look for opportunities, and I find it much easier to regain my composure at home rather than in a B & M casino; I've nothing but admiration for you guys who do it. Too much hard work for me (Slacker by name, slacker by nature).

Never really thought of the casino as a battleground, although sometimes a session does turn out that way. I do start with an expectation that I'm going to win, but try not to have any expectations as to how the cards/spins are going fall, if that's not a contradiction. Of course I have tough sessions, like anyone else, and it's kind of satisfying when I come through, even if it's a break-even result.

@ RW,

Do you ever think that maybe you're putting yourself under too much stress in attempting to make 100% of your buy-in per session? it's inevitable that there will be emotional roller coasters with such an ambitious target. I aim for between 5-10% and try to keep the sessions short, not because I think there's any validity to "hit & run", but simply because I don't enjoy protracted sessions.

Turner, are you a Scot, by any chance? I've added a few names:


The average Englishman, in the home he calls his castle, slips into his national costume, a shabby raincoat [made from polyester, invented by Englishman John Rex Whinfield], patented by chemist Charles Macintosh from Glasgow, Scotland. En route to his office he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John Macadam of Ayr, Scotland [and invented by Englishman E.Purnell Hooley].

He drives an English car fitted with tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn, Scotland, [and fitted with an internal combustion engine, invented by Englishman Samuel Brown] arrives at the station and boards a train, the forerunner of which was a steam engine, invented by James Watt of Greenock, Scotland [FIRST invented by Richard Trevithick, Englishman]. He then pours himself a cup of coffee from a thermos flask, the latter invented by Dewar, a Scotsman from Kincardine-on-Forth.

At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by James Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland [postage stamps invented by Rowland Hill, Englishman].

During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland [which depends on electrical principles discovered by Michael Faraday, Englishman].

At home in the evening his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, blacksmith of Dumfries, Scotland [modern safety bicycle invented by John Kemp Starley & John Albone, both English]

He watches the news on his television, an invention of John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland [ditto Faraday], and hears an item about the U.S. Navy, founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.

He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation he picks up the Bible only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot, King James VI, who authorised its translation.

Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots [and nowhere can a Scotsman turn to escape the ingenuity of the English]

He could take to drink, but the Scots make the best in the world.

He could take a rifle and end it all but the breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick of Pitfours, Scotland.

If he escapes death, he might then find himself on an operating table injected with penicillin, which was discovered by Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland, and given an anaesthetic, which was discovered by Sir James Young Simpson of Bathgate, Scotland [General anaesthetic Pioneered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow].

Out of the anaesthetic, he would find no comfort in learning he was as safe as the Bank of England [or the Bank of Scotland, founded by John Holland, Englishman!] founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland

Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of guid Scottish blood which would entitle him to ask "Wha's Like Us".
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I'm guessing there will be a few unhappy Scots around today. When it came to the crunch, I guess they thought it would be safer to stick with the status quo.

By the way, here's a bit of trivia: Charles Wheatstone, electrical engineer and inventor of the Wheatstone bridge, also invented the Concertina.

Quote from: Rolex-Watch on September 19, 2014, 12:16:09 PM
You really do need to fix up this board in respect when you type the cursor freezes, skips letters, locks up

Agreed. It's very annoying, and should take priority.

Scotland's residents are voting today on whether to stay in the UK or become independent (polling stations close at 10 pm).

So far, it seems as though the NO's have it. The odds at Betfair certainly indicate it:

[attachimg=1]

Quote from: Drazen on September 05, 2014, 05:23:54 PM
You were wrong when you said that series vs singles don't have same correlation like R vs B.

Forgive me, but I don't think I actually said that. And Bayes is right, for the record.

Quotethe only forum I know he was active on, closed...

Yes, shame about that. Hopefully one day Steph will reopen it. It had the makings of a very good forum.

Drazen,

I wish I knew what I was wrong about. What exactly are you saying here? that waiting for a rare event is superior to betting the opposite of the last X spins?

We are fortunate that, unlike some forums which discuss politics or religion, in this subject we don't have to rely on good arguments; we can do empirical testing, too. 

Quoterespected roulette boards members like Ego, Bayes, Alberto Jonas, and myself studied this for a countless hours too...

Ah yes, Bayes. I have a lot of respect for the man.

QuoteThere is no "uniform" distribution in this game. This game is all about statistics so only binomial distribution exists in this case.

I beg to differ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_distribution_%28discrete%29

Nice work, LF. 

My play is based around similar ideas - divide and conquer. 

I think you have all the elements in place here for a winner!

Hi Drazen,

I think there's some misunderstanding here.

QuoteHaving 30 R-s in a row and betting the opposite of the last 30 EC outcomes can't be the same thing

It is if you're looking at the sequence, not in terms of the no. of B versus the no. of R, but as a sequence of R/B in a specific order. You can't compare apples with oranges, which is what you're trying to do, I think. And the law of series is irrelevant here because we're talking about sequences of the same length.

This is the point I was trying to make in another post. Sequences of the same length have the same chance of occurring in one respect, but not in another.

RRRRRRRRRR has the same chance of hitting as RBRBRBRBRB when viewed as an ordered sequence, but the latter does not have a z-score of 3.0, because the z-score refers to the number of B vs R. We're talking about two different distributions here, the binomial and the uniform.

The point I was trying to make was that betting the opposite of the last X spins does not give you easy access to a "rare" event, because you have not predetermined that event - the table has chosen it for you. And, strictly speaking, it doesn't matter either way; if you wait for a predetermined event to show up you don't actually have any better chance that the sequence will not repeat than if you were betting the opposite of the last.

The problem with this approach is that you come up against the ever-receding horizon of probability. For example, suppose I reason like this: if there were 30 reds in a row, I might justifiably think that it would worth betting on black for the next X spins, due to regression to the mean. But since I don't want to hang around for years waiting for 30 reds in a row, and I know that any bet selection is as good as any other, in terms of the distribution of wins and losses, then would it not be reasonable to just look at the last 30 outcomes and bet the opposite?

After all, if my bet selection was the opposite of what the last 30 happened to be, and I was just betting this sequence over and over, then the last 30 outcomes would represent a loss of 30 bets in a row. Wow! that means I'm bound to get a lot of winners (due to regression to the mean) if I bet the opposite, and no waiting required!

Unfortunately, this doesn't work, because probability really has no limits if you look at it in this way. So why hasn't anyone ever seen 50 or 100 reds in a row? Because although it's not impossible, it would require one particular predetermined sequence (50 reds in a row) to occur out of the 2⁵⁰ = 11259 x 10¹⁵ possible permutations of 50 outcomes, and that's really really big number.

The basic idea (and this is something a lot of people have trouble grasping) is that something predetermined is less likely to occur than something which isn't. An example of this is the "law of the third", which most roulette enthusiasts know about. It says that in 37 spins, approximately 12-13 numbers won't show up. But think about this, what's the record "sleep" for a standard dozen on the layout? it's around 35 spins! that means  it's a routine occurrence for at least 12 numbers not to show up in 37 spins! The difference is, you don't know in advance what those numbers will be, but again, there are an awful lot of ways of picking 12-13 numbers out of 37, so although it's extremely unlikely that a particular set of 12 numbers (in this case, a standard dozen) will sleep that long, it's almost guaranteed that some set of 12 numbers will.

So viewed in this light, betting the opposite of the last 30 R/B doesn't seem like such a great idea after all. And anyway, why stop at the last 30? why not pick the last 100 to bet against? hopefully you can see the error more clearly now...

Hi Leapyfrog,

This is an interesting topic and one which gets to the heart of what probability means. The idea that probability is a relative frequency is only one interpretation; others are more useful, depending on your needs.

You might be interested to read these two Wikipedia articles:

Frequentist Probability
Bayesian Probability

Regarding the binomial distribution and others, samples don't need to be very large in order for them to reasonably approximate the "long term" convergence value, but the smaller the probability, the bigger sample you'll need.

Quote from: Albalaha on September 04, 2014, 06:55:37 AM
The gambler's fallacy arises from the mistaken belief that mean reversion happens much quicker than would be predicted from the law of large numbers.

Absolutely. People expect that the characteristics of a short sample of outcomes will match those of a larger sample, but it's not the case. The gambler's fallacy is a very very stubborn cognitive bias, one which I'm sure the casinos are grateful for.

I don't see how calling something the "x-factor" contributes anything, you might just as well call it foobar or mugglewump, or luck. Unless, as greenguy says, it's for self-glorifying purposes. i.e., there's no point in learning, doing research, applying self-discipline etc, because if you don't have the x-factor, then you're wasting your time. Not a very positive message is it? Then again, I don't suppose she wanted to give much away in a newspaper article.

If knowing when to stop is the x-factor and you have this knowledge then presumably it's because you've done the research which has given you that information.

Hi gr8player,

Actually, the more I think about this, the less I believe that "the grail is the player".

QuoteKnowing when to back off (read: "no-bet") and knowing when to press forward; knowing when to exit a shoe and/or session; knowing how to accept a win (any win) or even pare a loss....these are things that only the correct mind-set, the correct mentality, the correct approach, combined with all of the very necessary patience and discipline....therein, my friends, deep within ourselves....lies your very own "grail".

But knowing when to back off etc, is surely to follow a system, is it not? Discipline, in this context, is just the capacity to follow the rules, which implies that there are some rules which result in a positive expectation in the first place. Algorithmic trading doesn't require any human input; the trades are  executed entirely by computer, using strategies such as trend-following and mean reversion.

Take what you consider to be a "bad" system; the very recognition that there are good and bad systems suggests that the system itself must play some part in success or otherwise, at least. Would you be able to play a "bad" system in such a way that it nevertheless returned a profit? If the answer is yes, then the reason must be because you've changed the system: you're no longer playing the system as it was meant to be played. Just following the system mechanically and perfectly - as a computer would do - does not require any personal attributes that a computer doesn't have. In fact, a computer is far better at this kind of "mindless" execution. It doesn't get mad or go "on tilt", or get tired and make mistakes. It just does exactly what it's programmed to do, nothing more and nothing less.

If you don't know what decision to make in any given circumstance, then the computer won't either.

The opposite of a static system - adjusting bet selections and stake depending on current criteria - is not incompatible with a mechanical approach. Indeed, a computer is capable of far more complex processing of information than any person.

Historically, there is a tremendous amount of emphasis put on the exercise of discipline and other human characteristics for attaining success in any speculative endeavor, but it seems to me that these qualities are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the modern world, and in any case, there never was much logical force behind it.

I think she's trying to say that the Grail is the player. i.e., it's the personal attributes of the individual which bring success, not any system which they use. Only partly true, in my opinion.