Newsletter Signup
Stay informed with the
NEW Casino City Times newsletter! Recent Articles
Best of Alan Krigman
|
Gaming Guru
Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? Should a Blackjack Player?6 November 2002
Certain of these considerations follow purely from emotion. One person may regard a game without a pack of participants as too stressful or intimidating. A second may find other patrons overly annoying. Alternately, some folks believe they do better with two spots than one or three, or vice-versa. Similarly, different individuals may be sure that switching numbers of spots helps synchronize hands with the clumping of high and low cards after the previous shoe, or offers a means of exerting control over the game, or is merely a sign of frustration and despair. Math and logic alone can't settle these issues. If you're uneasy with neophytes who hit 15s into dealer sixes, amen; no statistics will convince you these bezonians don't spoil your chances. And, although it's true that casino shuffles don't totally randomize the cards, there's no proof the effect can be exploited or that it's even been adequately simulated in computer analyses. Others at a table do have a quantifiable impact on anticipated session performance, however. The aggregate of active hands influences rounds dealt per unit time; this, in turn, determines how many of your bets are decided, and therefore your gross wager, during a session of any particular duration. The number of spots you personally play affects your session characteristics the same way. But it has a further consequence. The swings your bankroll undergoes on a round-by-round basis decrease as you split a given total wager among more spots. To picture this intuitively, make believe you bet a total of $20. On one spot, you'll usually go up or down by $20 per round - with sporadic pushes and occasional greater wins or losses. With $10 on each of two spots, you'll get more pushes, intermittent $10 wins or losses, and the odd instance of a $20 or greater change. The accompanying table helps put monetary values on this state of affairs. Data entries show the bankroll range over which you have a 50-50 chance of fluctuating during an hour-long session, per dollar total wagered, betting on one to three hands with from zero to three added spots taken by fellow players.
Here's how to interpret the table. If you're playing heads-up on one spot, you have a 50-50 chance of being between $12.10 down and $10.00 up during an hour of action per dollar you bet. With $10 at risk, rounding off, that would be from $120 behind to $100 in front. Two spots at $5 each, heads-up, would give you a typical range of minus $82 to plus $68 for the hour. One spot at $10, with additional players at three other positions, would yield a normal range of $74 in the hole to $65 ahead.
Superstition's seeds are sown, Recent Articles
Best of Alan Krigman
Alan Krigman |
Alan Krigman |