someone has a gambling problem

[pzhon]

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However, they made loads more from "intelligent" players who mistaken believed they were playing with a nice edge and were in fact only breaking even, winning slightly or losing slightly, all the while way overbetting their bankroll, in short working with a very high risk of ruin... the casinos make a fortune from them.

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This is nonsense.

You can't make money on average by having a large bankroll and playing a 0 EV or -EV game. If someone overbets his bankroll against you, you don't win on average.

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Blackjack, when you count cards, is a +EV game.

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From the casino's perspective, dealing blackjack to card counters is -EV, even if the advantage players are overbetting their bankrolls. Many will go bankrupt. However, despite many assertions to the contrary, this doesn't mean casinos expect to make a fortune from them. The few who win will more than balance the many who lose.

Similarly, many people focus on the session risk of ruin when clearing a casino bonus. They say the casinos hope you get bored and start making large bets. This is wrong. The casino doesn't gain from this increase in your risk of ruin. In fact, your EV increases, and the EV of the casino decreases, as you pay less house advantage on average when you risk busting out early.

[pzhon]

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However, they made loads more from "intelligent" players who... were in fact only breaking even, winning slightly or losing slightly, all the while way overbetting their bankroll, in short working with a very high risk of ruin... the casinos make a fortune from them.

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You can't make money on average by having a large bankroll and playing a 0 EV or -EV game.

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Where did I say that you could?

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You suggested that the casinos made a fortune because the blackjack players overbet their bankrolls. You don't make a fortune because your opponents overbet their bankrolls. You win on average by making +EV wagers. If your opponent has the advantage, but a small bankroll, you don't win on average.

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A simple corrolary is in no limit hold 'em going all in with AQo v A9o... you are a statistical favorite but have exposed yourself to a very high risk of ruin (i.e., getting knocked out of the tournament) because by going all in versus a bigger stack, you have overbet your bankroll.

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Many bad tournament players think you can't afford to get all-in with AQ versus A9. Good tournament players recognize that it is a great opportunity, and would call all-in instantly. Saying that this is overbetting your bankroll is wrong by a lot, and means you either don't understand tournament play, or you don't understand what a bankroll means.

sounds like you wanna help him....so why dont you ...if he tells you to piss off you tryed right. and youl sleep better at night. there are plenty of reponsible players out there who know when to say when...step up coach. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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You suggested that the casinos made a fortune because the blackjack players overbet their bankrolls. You don't make a fortune because your opponents overbet their bankrolls. You win on average by making +EV wagers. If your opponent has the advantage, but a small bankroll, you don't win on average.

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I think you completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make. In computing a risk of ruin percentage, one of the factors is the estimated edge that the player has or thinks he has.

For example, in the hypothetical blackjack situation, let's say the player with a given bankroll, assumes he is playing at a 1% advantage to the house and therefore adjusts his betting so as to assume a 10% ruin probability.

If it turns out that the player has a substantially smaller advantage, then things are quite a bit different. Let's say the player actually only has a 0.25% advantage instead of the 1% advantage that he thinks. Then instead of a ruin probability of 10%, it will likely be a lot higher, perhaps 30-40% for the same betting constraints.

In other words, the player may still have a net positive expectation against the house in the long run. But in a bad negative statistical fluctuation such as -2SD, which will happen 5 out of every 100 such cases, things a quite a bit different.

If and when this happens the player is at very high risk to get busted out, even though he may have a net advantage over the long run. It is these kinds of situations that I suggested casinos have made tons of money on over the years. I will guarantee you that this is indeed fact.

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Many bad tournament players think you can't afford to get all-in with AQ versus A9. Good tournament players recognize that it is a great opportunity, and would call all-in instantly. Saying that this is overbetting your bankroll is wrong by a lot, and means you either don't understand tournament play, or you don't understand what a bankroll means.

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Again you completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make, and possibly you don't clearly understand the difference between ruin probabiilty and single instance advantage.

In a no limit tournament, yes, if I knew it in advance I would absolutely like to get head up with AQo v A9o. Absolutely, every day of the week.

However, in the context of ruin probability, when a player goes all in, they are overbetting their bankroll. But that is the nature of the beast in no limit, and does not imply that doing so is necessarily a bad thing.

If a player goes all in with a 7:3 edge, which is roughly the case with AQo v A9o, then the AQo is not assured to win every time and most assuredly will not. It will lose 30 out of every 100 times on average.

But with random fluctuation, it is entirely likely that the player could lose 10 or 15 or 20 times in a row in this situation. Of course, it could also win 30 or 40 times in a row as well.

[pzhon]

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In other words, the player may still have a net positive expectation against the house in the long run. But in a bad negative statistical fluctuation such as -2SD, which will happen 5 out of every 100 such cases, things a quite a bit different.

If and when this happens the player is at very high risk to get busted out, even though he may have a net advantage over the long run. It is these kinds of situations that I suggested casinos have made tons of money on over the years. I will guarantee you that this is indeed fact.

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I was worried that I was putting words in your mouth, and that you meant it was those who had not overcome the house advantage who lost "fortunes" to the casino. I'm glad that you clarified that you indeed mean the casinos made fortuned from those who had an advantage.

You are dead wrong, despite your "guarantee." I'm telling you this as a professional mathematician.

If 1 million people line up to bet their whole bankrolls against you as a 51-49 favorite, and they will bet it all 10 times if they can, you will bust almost all (99.88%) of them. You will still lose money on average, because the few winners will overbalance the losers.

You can't add up negative numbers to make a positive number. You can't turn -EV bets (against +EV but underbankrolled gamblers) into a +EV situation.

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In a no limit tournament, yes, if I knew it in advance I would absolutely like to get head up with AQo v A9o. Absolutely, every day of the week.

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Good. Don't call it overbetting your bankroll. In a tournament, calling puts your survival on the line, but so does folding. One risk is just easier for bad players to ignore.

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You are dead wrong, despite your "guarantee." I'm telling you this as a professional mathematician.

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No, not really. I can remember specific stories from some of Ken Uston's old books on blackjack. Now with him and his teams, we are talking about some of the top blackjack players of all time. Uston talks about some times where he and his teams played some of the juiciest games they ever saw for weeks and months on end, and in some cases came out net losers and even busted their bank on occasion. However, in his cases, they had another bank to fall back on.

However, for the individual player who is risking it all on a single bank, then chances of success when overbetting the bankroll are severely reduced, evenn if the player has a net advantage over the house.

We're not talking about single or even multiple instances of probability. We're talking about what is possible with random statistical fluctuation. Ever heard of a common ploy to prevent ever getting completely busted out due to fluctuation, called the Kelly criterion or Kelly method? Assuming one could handle the decreased hourly rate in a negative swing, then the theory is actually remarkably solid.

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You can't add up negative numbers to make a positive number. You can't turn -EV bets (against +EV but underbankrolled gamblers) into a +EV situation.

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I never said you could, over the long run. However, in the short run, almost anything is possible. It is very easy to envision a scenario where a terrible gambler with a huge bank gets up against a good gambler on a short stack and busts him out. Heck, I see it every day in the online games.

Obviously, in the long run, a player with a -EV is going to lose and a player with +EV is going to win. But in the short run, with random fluctuation, it is very easy for the -EV player to be ahead and the +EV player to be behind, even after many hundreds of hours of play.

Have you ever seen or personally experienced a -2SD swing? I can tell you from personal experience that I have. Many years ago, I played in one of the best double deck games I'd ever seen, liberal rules and dealt down to 7 or 8 cards. If you think I'm kidding, ask any old Vegas pro how good the double deck games at the Maxim used to be. This was a game so good that even a rank amateur card counter could have had an edge. Yet after a lengthy period of solid attack on this game, I was on the wrong side of 2SD swing. It was absolutely brutal, so bad that you almost wonder what the heck just happened. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

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In a no limit tournament, yes, if I knew it in advance I would absolutely like to get head up with AQo v A9o. Absolutely, every day of the week.

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Good. Don't call it overbetting your bankroll.

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Why not? That is what it is. You are placing your bankroll at immediate risk of ruin by placing such a large bet. This is not to say that placing our stack at risk is a bad thing. You are hoping to double up, or perhaps take down a pot without another card being shown. Very often the risk is worth the reward.

Maybe this is hard to picture if you have something like t1000 and your opponent has something like t1500.

But if you had t1000 and your opponent had t1,000,000, then it wouldn't be so unlike going up against a casino, where you are either going to double your 1K or get busted trying. The larger stack is more able to withstand a negative swing than the smaller stack.

IMHO, this is an incredibly important concept, especially in no limit hold 'em.

(Of course one has to consider the converse, which is by never going all in, it may be difficult to increase your stack size enough to prevent getting eventually blinded out. But that is another story altogether.)

(As an aside note, do you have a copy of Richard Epstein's work of art, "The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic?" I think you would really like it.)

[Masquerade]

Compulsive gamblers subconsciously want to lose all their money so you're doing them a favour by taking it. And if you don't someone else will.

[KenProspero]

You raise a moral problem that isn't limited to this situation.

At any poker table, there are people who can afford to lose and those who can't afford it.

There are students who are playing their tuition money, people on Social Security who will eat Cheerios the rest of the month when they lose, compulsive gamblers, a hundred and one stories.

Unfortunately, you either play to win against these people or you give up the game. It's a true moral dilemma but unavoidable.

The exception (for me, at least) -- if a close friend or family member had a gambling problem, I'd pull them aside and talk to them. If that didn't help, I'd refuse to play at the same table as them. Basically, I'll express my disapproval and won't help a friend in self-destructive behaviour.

Well, I think it's safe to assume that the OP's thread is officially hijacked. But in the interest of knowledge, let's take it a bit further.

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Blackjack, when you count cards, is a +EV game.

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There is no way that this statement is valid in broad blanket sense covering all the blackjack players who have or do count cards. If this were the case, casino blackjack would be nearly as dead as craps and most casinos would have been broke years ago.

Any simpleton can be taught to count down a deck or four. However it is another matter entirely to:
- keep an accurate count hand after hand, deck after deck, hour after hour; it only takes a small number of counting errors to completely nullify a small edge
- make accurate bets in accordance with the count hour after hour, it only takes one or two bad bets per hour to eliminate a small edge
- bet in accordance with your bankroll limit and ruin probability, whether you are in a huge positive swing, a huge negative swing, or somewhere in between
- do all these things in such a manner so as to not be detected and backed off by the house

These are a few of the many reasons why more players are failures at trying to make a profit counting cards at blackjack, versus the successes, and why casinos have made a fortune off wannabe card counters. Many have tried, few have succeeded. Why?

Here's a very simple blackjack quiz, with just a few questions, to separate the men from the boys, so to speak.

These are real sucker questions, so you should probably only respond if you are sure you have the right answser.

#1: You are playing an eight deck shoe with one deck cut off. You are counting cards with a simple +1/-1 system and adjusting bets according to the count. There is one deck to be dealt before the cut-card. Your count is astronomically high, let's say +40. Are you near to having the best possible edge over the house? Should you be betting as much as you can afford within your computed ruin probability?

#2: Is it better for the card counter when the count goes up or the count goes down?

[pzhon]

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You are dead wrong, despite your "guarantee." I'm telling you this as a professional mathematician.

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No, not really.

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Yes, really. You are dead wrong when you say the casinos make a fortune because they play people who are underbankrolled. The casinos can win because they get lucky, or the casinos can win because they have the advantage, but the casinos don't benefit from risk of ruin miscalculations.

If you don't accept me as an authoritative source and you can't follow the example I gave of the million gamblers, each with a 99.88% risk of ruin, would you like to make a wager about which of us Sklansky or Miller would say is right? I would.

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Ever heard of a common ploy to prevent ever getting completely busted out due to fluctuation, called the Kelly criterion or Kelly method?

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I have posted many expositions of the Kelly criterion and its recommendations and other bankroll management techniques. The search function finds 16 posts by me mentioning the Kelly criterion in the past 3 months, and there are many more in the archives. The Kelly criterion does not tell you that you benefit when your opponent is underbankrolled, so you are appealing to an authority that does not support you. Face it, you're just wrong.

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You can't add up negative numbers to make a positive number. You can't turn -EV bets (against +EV but underbankrolled gamblers) into a +EV situation.

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I never said you could, over the long run.

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You said the casinos made fortunes because advantage gamblers were underbankrolled. If someone tells you that you are going to make a fortune, do you think he is telling you that you have a +EV opportunity, or a -EV opportunity? It is hard to interpret what you said as other than that the casinos had a +EV situation that was made up of -EV gambles against card counters.

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Have you ever seen or personally experienced a -2SD swing?


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Of course, many times. I have also been ahead by more than 2 standard deviations many times. Neither makes me think you can combine -EV situations to create a +EV situation.

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In a no limit tournament, yes, if I knew it in advance I would absolutely like to get head up with AQo v A9o. Absolutely, every day of the week.

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Good. Don't call it overbetting your bankroll.

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Why not? That is what it is. You are placing your bankroll at immediate risk of ruin by placing such a large bet.

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Overbetting your bankroll is bad. Getting all-in with a dominating hand is almost never bad. Your stack is not your bankroll. You face a higher risk of losing your stack when you don't call. You should not prefer that only part of your stack was at risk, so you are not overbetting.

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The larger stack is more able to withstand a negative swing than the smaller stack.

IMHO, this is an incredibly important concept, especially in no limit hold 'em.

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This is just a common fallacy that many bad tournament players think is the key difference between tournament play and NL ring game play. As a successful MTT player and NL ring game player and as a mathematician, I'm telling you that idea is wrong.