BetJam blackjack - don't do it

JBC77 · 06-21-07, 05:11 PM

Good lord.

BigBollocks · 06-21-07, 05:13 PM

Abacus I remember you posting about losing 21 hands in a row last week. This story is perhaps even more painful due to the odds of it being random at this point being virtually nil, as well as obvious potential self-control issues. I'd love to see Ganchrow run the numbers on the odds of losing 21 out of 21 hands, and then the very next session losing 16 out of 17 hands. I don't know if it'll do any good in attempting to get money back, but it'd be extremely interesting to know the exact math involved. Cheers....

jjgold · 06-21-07, 05:17 PM

don't play any online casinos

all rigged

capitalist pig · 06-21-07, 05:58 PM

1st thing I did at Betjam, when I opened an account was to have my account locked out of the casino. I would recomend doing this at any site used. Its to tempting if your bored to go and play at the casino. I too learned this the hard way at cris a couple years ago.

Having said that Betjam is still the best as far as payouts go. Put in a request at 8am today and was at the atm at 9am getting my $.

I really suck at baseball picks, so I pulled 75% out till football rolls around. No point watching it dwindle away during the next couple of months. Left enough to make some plays throughout the summer, but not enough to take any losses.

later

Ganchrow · 06-21-07, 08:53 PM

Originally posted by abacus30

I play a little bit of blackjack to get some more money and this is what happened. Don't tell them you're going to make a big withdrawal and then play in the casino. 16 out of 17 hands in a row were losers. Same thing happened a week before (lost over 20 hands in a row) after I made a withdrawal (won on sports betting). Here's my history and there's no way somebody loses this many hands in a row, two times in a row. Gotta be statistically impossible.
-snip-

First off, does this represent your entire play history during that session, or did you only start recording once you began losing? Have any hands at all been left out?

Assuming that this does indeed represent your entire hand history with Bet Jam, and not some selected subset, then based upon what I believe Bet Jam's rules to be (6 Decks, S17, DOA, 2S, NDAS, LS), you've made a few mistakes in your play.

The ones I've noticed are:
17:47:45 Player Hand 17 9♣ 7♣ A♠ Hit, Stand
Dealer Hand 21 5♦ J♠ 6♣ Hit, Stand
100.00 -100.00
Should Surrender -0.035391842 EV

17:47:25 Player Hand 18 9♠ 9♦ Stand
Dealer Hand 20 T♠ 6♠ 4♣ Hit, Stand
100.00 -100.00
Should Split -0.182934129 EV

17:47:01 Player Hand 18 9♣ 6♥ 3♣ Hit, Stand
Dealer Hand 20 J♥ Q♦ Stand
100.00 -100.00
Should Surrender -0.005344738 EV

17:44:30 Player Hand 13 A♦ 3♠ 9♣ Hit, Stand
Dealer Hand 21 A♥ 5♦ 5♠ Hit, Stand
25.00 -25.00
Should Double -0.022702279 EV

17:44:14 Player Hand 19 3♥ 9♠ 4♣ 3♥ Hit, Hit, Stand
Dealer Hand 20 Q♥ T♣ Stand
25.00 -25.00
Hit Stand
Should Stand on 394 vs. T -0.001846313 EV

for a total of 0.242874563 units lost from basic strategy exceptions (although I may have missed a few others).

You played 16 hands, losing 14 units. Your expectation playing 16 hands perfectly under these rules would be a loss of 16×-0.5062% units = -8.010% units. Subtracting out the loss from basic strategy exceptions yields an explained loss of 32.39% units and an unexplained loss of 14 - 32.92% = 13.67 units.

Given a standard deviation per hand of 113.40%, the expected standard deviation over 16 hands would be 16<sup>½</sup> × 113.40% = 453.6%, meaning that this represents a -3.014 standard deviation event.

Given Student's t-distribution with 16 degrees of freedom, this implies a likelihood of about 0.412%, meaning it should happen on average about 1 time every 243 16 game sequences.

Not a likely occurrence, but certainly not unlikely enough, especially when looked at in isolation, to cause me to suspect foul play.

michael777 · 06-21-07, 09:35 PM

very,very crooked

20Four7 · 06-21-07, 09:48 PM

All the casinos are rigged and all the poker sites are rigged. Break out the tinfoil hats and let's lie in the sun.

If you play enough you'll see

A) Extremely good runs of cards on the customers part
B) Extremely good runs of cards on the dealers part
C) both of the above where one seems to squeak out against the other
D) extremely bad runs of cards.

I watched a dealer hit 21 7 out of 10 hands at a live BJ table. If it happened on line everyone would yell rigged. I"ve watched dice be so cold the frost was piling up on the table and dice so hot that every number but 7 was rolled for 45 minutes. If your going to gamble take the good with the bad.

spliff · 06-21-07, 09:57 PM

just best to stay away all together, unless you have some cash burning a hole

LargeMouthBass · 06-21-07, 10:00 PM

All online Blackjacks are rigged... Do you ever see them shuffle? The shoot's never ending.

DarthV · 06-21-07, 10:02 PM

Originally posted by jjgold

don't play any online casinos

all rigged

Surely not Bodog?

isetcap · 06-22-07, 11:03 AM

There are several small mistakes in your play, and one crucial one. If you continue to play that way then you can continue to expect long streaks of losses. I don't really see any value in posting such typical occurences, because anybody who plays poorly can easily produce a streak of 20 consecutive losses.

Your play is the exact reason why online casinos DO NOT need to cheat. Even if you play perfectly, the house has an inherent advantage, but each error you make only increases the likelihood that you will lose even more.

Assuming the exact same cards came out in the exact same order as you have presented them, your results (with correct mathematical strategy) would be:

9.0 units won
8.5 units lost

After 10 hands you would have been up 5.5 units.

Would you have posted that to the forum? I hope not.
Would there still be a group of idiots claiming online casinos are fixed? Without a doubt.