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SteveRusso  
#1 Posted : Monday, September 17, 2012 7:45:46 AM(UTC)
SteveRusso

Joined: 5/18/2010(UTC)
Posts: 49


This is an unusual post for me. As many of you know, I am the manager of Gambling Grumbles. The roots of this post can be traced to a complaint sent in to Gambling Grumbles about Win Palace by John K of New Jersey. For all of that, this is not an official Gambling Grumbles report. I do not believe that John has a valid dispute with Win Palace and there is nothing which Gambling Grumbles could have asked the casino to do, but I do believe that it raises an issue about which I have no proof except for the evidence of my own eyes, based on over 15 years of experience playing blackjack both on line and in land casinos.

John complained that when he played at Win Palace, "I was dumbstruck by the frequency with which the dealer would grab victory out of the jaws of defeats -- repeatedly pulling out 20s and 21s, often with me showing 15 or 16 against the dealer's 9 or 10 upcard. As the pattern set in, I became fascinated and looked more closely at the card combinations. I found something interesting: Quite frequently, it made no difference what choice I made -- to stand or to hit -- because in either case the cards came out such that the dealer would end up a winner. Now THAT was truly disturbing, and leads me to believe that something is amiss. I'm not talking about a few hands here or there... it was an ongoing pattern, and felt neither enjoyable nor fair".

To start with, even if John had been cheated, Win Palace would not be at fault. No casino which uses software from any of the major suppliers (as Win Palace does) can set the odds or impact whether a player will win or lose. It is completely out of the casino's hands -- it is the software provider which sets the odds on its random number generator (RNG), which, in turn, determines if you will win or lose a hand.

That said, I do not believe that the RNGs (at any of the software providers) randomly chooses the next card to be dealt. I believe that at the beginning of each hand the RNG decides if you will win or lose. It does not do so intelligently (which would be cheating). It does not say that smaller bets have a better chance of winning than larger ones. It also does not set unfair odds. In both on line and land casinos the dealer will win more hands than he loses. It is my experience that I will win the same percentage of hands on line as I will in a land casino.

Yet, I agree with John that on line casinos "grab victory out of the jaws of defeat" much more often than land casinos.

If I have a pair of kings, and the dealer is showing a 6, I feel very comfortable in a land casino. On line, the dealer is much more apt to have a hidden 5 and then pull a 10 and beat me with his 21. The same is true if I am holding on a 17 -- although the dealer will probably not get a 21, he will get an 18 or 19.

I want to make clear that I have been told by several casino managers who I trust that this is not the case. They insisted that the RNG does not determine who will win/lose at the beginning of the hand, but simply chooses each card at random. I don't doubt for a minute that they believed this to be the case, but I do think that they were wrong.

Why, if you are going to win the same percentage of hands on line as you would in a land casino, does it matter if the RNG decides the result of a hand in advance or if it simply chooses a car at random?

The answer is a bit complicated. In a land casino, the player can make intelligent decisions which will help determine if he is going to win the next hand. He can, for example, have a soft 18, see the dealer's 6, and decide to take a hit. On the face of it, this seems foolish. However, it is actually the wise move -- if the dealer does not bust, the player's soft 18 will probably lose the hand. He is better off trying to improve it by taking another card. Even if he fails to do so, and winds up with a 15 or 16, he can stand and hope that the dealer's 6 will lead him to bust (as generally it will).

However, if it is predetermined that the player will lose that particular hand, the dealer's 6 tells him nothing more than if the dealer were showing a 10.

This means that the dealer will have longer winning streaks (often provided by "miraculous" draws of the kind that John complained about and which I, personally, have seen all too often on line) way out of proportion to what I have witnessed in land casinos.

Still, remember what I said about an on line casino winning the same percentage of hands as a land casino would. How, if it is going to have longer winning streaks, is this possible? The only way is if it also has longer losing streaks. That would equal out the percentage of wins/losses.

For years, without any proof except my own observations, I have relied on this when playing blackjack. I even believe that it has turned the odds to my benefit. I use the same betting strategy on line than I do in land casinos, but I have better results because the casino will have longer losing streaks.

I start with a minimal bet (usually $5) and increase my bet by that same amount each time that I win -- figuring that I am betting on a winning streak (for me, not the casino). As soon as I lose a hand, I go back to the $5 bet and keep it there until I win.

Let's look at what happens if I lose 10 hands in a row, and then win 6 hands -- even without splits or doubling down -- and lose on the 7th hand.

Note that out of a total of 17 hands, I will have won only 6.

On the 10 hands that I lose in a row, I will have lost $50 ($5 per hand).

On the 6 that I win: I will win $105 ($5+$10+$15+20+25+$30). I will then lose the 7th hand ($35) for a total profit of $70 (including the first $50 lost).

In short, although I have lost the overwhelming number of hands that I play, I came out ahead. I do this both in Vegas and on line, and it works in both places, but because both the winning and losing streaks on line (in my experience) are longer than in Vegas it works even better on line.

The largest single bet I have ever won was $70, playing with a base bet of $5, meaning that I won 14 straight hands (which I have never had happen in a land casino).

In that one instance, I won $525 before losing my $75 bet, for a net gain of $450. I would have to lose 90 straight bets at $5 each before giving back that $450.

Again, I have to emphasize that I have never been told this by anyone from one of the software companies, and the casino managers I have discussed it with have denied to me that the RNGs work in this way, but my experience over the past 15 years has shown it to be true.

I would be interested in hearing the experiences of others who play blackjack both on line and in land casinos and see if they have observed the same things that I have.


Graeme  
#2 Posted : Friday, September 21, 2012 12:26:35 PM(UTC)
Guest

Joined: 4/30/2010(UTC)
Posts: 294
Steve, that sounds interesting. Your observations could well be correct but for your theory to have a practical value your following conclusion has to apply:

Quote:
This means that the dealer will have longer winning streaks (often provided by "miraculous" draws of the kind that John complained about and which I, personally, have seen all too often on line) way out of proportion to what I have witnessed in land casinos.


I can't understand the connection between your observations and the above assertion.
SteveRusso  
#3 Posted : Friday, September 21, 2012 12:58:49 PM(UTC)
SteveRusso

Joined: 5/18/2010(UTC)
Posts: 49
The knowledge that a certain combination (eg: the dealer's 6 showing against my 11) means that I will most likely win the hand, I am most likely going to double down. Should it turn out that the outcome of the hand was pre-determined on a win/loss basis, without regard to what the dealer initially shows and what I have, it would mean that I would lose my doubled-down (or split) hands more frequently than I would in a land casino.

This, in turn, would make the casino's winning streaks longer than in a land casino.

As the casino's percentage of winning hands is the same on line as it is in a land casino longer winning streaks for the casino will also result in longer losing streaks for it (and, hence, longer winning streaks for the players).
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