Poker and Investing

Blackjack is the one game where the punter can get an edge over the house through a careful use of strategy and techniques such as card counting.
Casinos aren't in the business of losing money.

No game they offer is a 50-50 bet like Newbieatlife would have it. Anyone who thinks this is heading for some pain.

Of course casinos tend to frown on this, and tend to eject punters who win too much. :D
I went to Vegas when I was living in L.A with a small group of blokes I know who were on a bit of a blokes' holiday. They came through L.A on their way to Vegas, so I hooked up with them for a weekend away.

I don't gamble, so my involvement in the gambling while we were there was purely spectating and offering encouragement and drinks.

Three of the boys were playing Blackjack, and betting in $25 buys on cards :eek:. They started to do reasonably well, and soon one of them was betting in $50, then $100 cards. (It's easy to lose track of the dollars when all you are looking at is a plastic disc in front of you).

The mood was good,the boys were winning, the croupier was friendly...

All of a sudden, the croupier was changed out and in her place came an older, business-like and decidedly frosty lady. The mood changed almost immediately; the body language was different, and then another gambler joined the table as well. The new gambler was rather inept; losing hands to silly bets (buying on 18 etc). I am 99% sure the new gambler and the croupier change was a planned move.

Withing 5 mins the boys had lost everything they had won.

Coincidence?

Not on your life.
 
The new gambler would be a cooler employed by the casino to combat group tactics and card counting. They specifically start doing things like you said, hitting on 18, doubling up on paird kings and stuff like that specifically to make it more difficult for the group to work together.

Less bad press for the casino this way since they lessen the likelihood of having to throw out people for "winning too much".
 
Don't they use auto shufflers these days?

I subscribed to Snyders "BlackJack Forum" publication from the states when I was about 16 years old, before internet time, and it was mentioned then.
Was supposed to be the demise of professional players.

Auto shufflers would eliminate the necessary deck penetration required to make card counting effective, and also greatly reduce shuffling downtime, leading to more action for the casino.

Are they using continual auto shufflers these days?
 
I am ranked in the top 1% of players at pokerstars and am up a significant amount of money from a $500 deposit. Some players are extremely consistent. Johnny Chan at the world championship of Poker came 1st, 1st and 2nd in 3 consecutive years. Joseph Cheong has come in the top 120 each of the past 3 years in fields of 6,000+. Phil Hellmuth has won 12 tournaments at the World Series of Poker and had several 2nd and 3rd places.

The statistical odds against these results being purely random, compared with the average player are astounding. Poker is definitely a game of skill, with some randomness. Longterm at the professional level, I would say it is in the range of 80-90% skill, 10-20% luck.

To me a much clearer way to view the impact of randomness ahead of skill, is in large corporates and who happens to end up as CEO. It is far less based on the skill of the person and more a series of ongoing luck, that puts that person in the right place at the right time, to get the next promotion. An equally skilled but unlucky person, who happens to get made redundant at the wrong time, happened to be in charge of the wrong portfolio at the wrong time, or had a ***** of a boss that they just didn't get on with, doesn't get the same breaks and stays several levels below the person that happens to make it to the top.

Large organisations are so political, that a change at the top normally means changes at the levels below, regardless of ability, to bring in people that they know they trust, rather than the person who was closely allied with the person they just took over the job from.
 
Speaking of looking for patterns, here's one from a forum member at aussiestockforums

"The Black Swan" of 2008

Or "Duck"...!



blackswanbat.PNG

A great chart! I had a good chuckle and that certainly beats my analysis of Japanese candle sticks.:)
 
To me - the similarities are a lot clearer when considering shorter term investing and poker, as opposed to a buy and hold strategy.

LT Buy and Hold is a lot more forgiving to short term mistakes than other forms of investing like trading, - but with that the potential for "BIG" wins is diminished.
 
Last time and the only time I played at the Casino 4 yrs ago, placed a $5 bet on a quadrant of numbers in roulette, my intention was to show to my gf how to play and was telling her that you can never win, but ended up wining $80 for just that one bet, we took the money and left Casino and never gone back since, because we believe this is the beginning of loosing if we continue :)
 
i've forever maintained that if people put as much time into investing strategies as they do poker strategies, then they'd be better off for it.

i'm not too bad at poker, i seem to win most of the time, even when playing at burswood.

apparently i dont have a tell - i have a bucket load of fake tells though, i'm forever twitching, coughing, touching my face etc.
 
i've forever maintained that if people put as much time into investing strategies as they do poker strategies, then they'd be better off for it.

i'm not too bad at poker, i seem to win most of the time, even when playing at burswood.

apparently i dont have a tell - i have a bucket load of fake tells though, i'm forever twitching, coughing, touching my face etc.

It's only a gambling problem if you're losing ;)

images
 
i've forever maintained that if people put as much time into investing strategies as they do poker strategies, then they'd be better off for it.

i'm not too bad at poker, i seem to win most of the time, even when playing at burswood.

apparently i dont have a tell - i have a bucket load of fake tells though, i'm forever twitching, coughing, touching my face etc.

lol someone has seen casino royle too many times. at the donkaments or $2 NL tables no one plays the man, they all play their cards, and usually shove all in UG with K-9 because it has a sweet name like mad dog or something.
 
Englishman Derren Brown formulated a guaranteed racing system that could also apply to poker... google 'the system'.

Probability has it that someone comes out a winner time and time again - albeit very rarely.

It's better buying a lotto ticket than wasting all that time playing poker, unless of course poker is your idea of fun.
 
It's better buying a lotto ticket than wasting all that time playing poker, unless of course poker is your idea of fun.
Sorry but if you are implying the odds of winning money from lotto are better than poker you have it backwards.

Poker is definitely a game of skill that involves an element of luck. As such if you learn, practice, gain experience and improve you will be much more likely to win money playing poker than playing lotto.
 
I know where you're coming from. I think similar can be said for other forms of gambling too like racing, regardless of whether you're playing against the house or not.

Skill helps, but it is still a game of chance and unless you find yourself playing with a bunch of doofers you will have running streaks of winning and losing - sometimes long streaks of winning, and sometimes losing.

What I was trying to say though is at the end of the day there will only be a very small % of players that hit the big time, just like there is with lotto, racing, etc.

Invest large amounts in lotto and you probably have a reasonable chance of striking it big (I know 2 like this, but being gamblers they had nothing and little to show for not long after).

Btw, I've known more than a couple of people who have won lotto, and even I who has probably only ever outlayed about $300 on it in my lifetime have won 5 numbers and a supp.

'The system' in other words is that there is no system, just probability (chance).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22892961
 
Last edited:
Gambling Addiction, is like many things in life, is your mindset. The half full, half empty mentality.

I have read studies find: that gambling appeals to lowest earners, depressed, sad and angry persons as they believe they will never do better, never get ahead for one reason or another and the only hope is to get lucky.

So they justify it in reverse logic on it is only $2 down and I could win $100,000, and ignore or cannot comprehend the odds are against them and that this is actually a bad return.

Where positive person with hope see each small increment as step towards financial security and will put the $2 in the bank each week to get $100 and then interest and then so and so on. They see gambling as giving away money.

Strangely the same reverse logic applies to high rise housing.

Poor alienated households hate high rise units as being towers of isolation and fear showing them a ugly world and often suicide. Where wealthy person see high rise towers as offering security, privacy and views of the world they enjoy. Thats why high rise social housing fails yet high rise apartments for wealthy are desired.

All in your mindset.

On gambling my only experience is a Aunt i never knew who won heaps in Lotto. They travelled, did the home up and over capitalised, lorded over others and wasted the lot. She is now divorced and living in flat behind a daughter house and never stopping reminding the family who she gave them money and they owe here.

I dont know the exact amount but I understand it was substantial and if she had only invested half in say 2 or 3 houses she would own and now be a very wealthy person.

Peter
 
I know where you're coming from. I think similar can be said for other forms of gambling too like racing, regardless of whether you're playing against the house or not.

Skill helps, but it is still a game of chance and unless you find yourself playing with a bunch of doofers you will have running streaks of winning and losing - sometimes long streaks of winning, and sometimes losing.

What I was trying to say though is at the end of the day there will only be a very small % of players that hit the big time, just like there is with lotto, racing, etc.

Invest large amounts in lotto and you probably have a reasonable chance of striking it big (I know 2 like this, but being gamblers they had nothing and little to show for not long after).

Btw, I've known more than a couple of people who have won lotto, and even I who has probably only ever outlayed about $300 on it in my lifetime have won 5 numbers and a supp.

'The system' in other words is that there is no system, just probability (chance).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22892961
I guess what I'm saying is that with lotto there is only chance, no skill.

Poker is the opposite. There is a large degree of skill and very little chance. At least if you take a long term view, any one hand is going to entail a lot of luck of course.

Also, there will only be a small percentage of players in any field that hit the big time. That doesn't mean it is all chance in everything. If you invest the time and, in these days of online poker, a very small amount of money, you can get good enough at poker to earn a very decent living if that is what you want to do. It will take time and effort to get good but doesn't anything take time and effort? There will be losing streaks of course but learning bankroll management is all part of the skill set a successful poker player needs.

ETA: And a 60 hand sample experiment is laughable! You need a bare minimum of 10k hands to even begin to draw some valid conclusions regarding the tendencies and skill level of players.
 
On gambling my only experience is a Aunt i never knew who won heaps in Lotto. They travelled, did the home up and over capitalised, lorded over others and wasted the lot. She is now divorced and living in flat behind a daughter house and never stopping reminding the family who she gave them money and they owe here.

I dont know the exact amount but I understand it was substantial and if she had only invested half in say 2 or 3 houses she would own and now be a very wealthy person.

Peter
I remember reading a story once that showed a huge proportion of people who win over $1mil in lotto are actually in a worse financial position within 3 years than they were before winning. If memory serves it was well over half the winners.
 
Back
Top