Baccarat The BIG Question

If I said I had never gotten entertainment out of how stupid people can be, I'd be lying. I can, however, say with confidence that the differential number of times I was amused vs. the number of times I felt guilty for being amused is a very low margin.

 

No, I'm afraid to say I have not. I've experienced almost the opposite. Months that were so tedious I was shocked at how much I'd made when I did my monthly accounting--what? this was a good month? Who knew??? (NOT ME)...

There would be huge Jackpots I didn't even remember hitting, because I was so tired when I got them I didn't remember.

Winning brought me no pleasure and losing caused me no stress.

The only thing I ever really liked was the thrill of figuring out things no one else ever had.

Finding a play was the greatest joy.

Playing it, not so much

 

I experienced reverse gambler junkie's high, otherwise known as burnout. Five years ago I found a play that was so certain of a win ($65 an hour) it was everything I could do to get myself to go and play it. I could have played 12 hours a day. I was lucky to get in 2.

In my defense I was having a lot of pain and health issues. But honestly, I don't think that was my only reason for getting so little hours in on a sure thing. It was just TOO SURE. It was boring.

 

Are you saying you can't fix stupid?

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...but if you teach a man to fish, he'll have a far more plausible cover story the next time he cheats on his wife

 

Possibly doing medical tourism this next weekend. If you don't hear back from me assume the worst.

 

I totally understand because that's the way I am. Actually beating the game is more important to me than winning at the game. It reminds me of the antique business in that the thrill is finding the item and buying it and there's no thrill at all in selling it and making money. The selling part is like an afterthought. And it's that way with roulette for me. The thrill is figuring out a new strategy and playing it and winning is like an afterthought. It's one of the reasons I only try and win one unit, the whole process bores the crap out of me, I'm not a gambler. Greed is not my primary motivation it's not any part of my motivation. Gamblers do not understand this and will never understand because they think everybody is like them. Their attitude is more more more and more is never enough. This is why it devours them, and spits them out. This is why their first question is always, why aren't you rich. And my answer is why is that your priority. If that's the reason you're in this you're screwed.

 

I know exactly what you're talking about. The thrill is in finding out how to win, not in the actual winning itself. Anybody can do that, anybody you show a winning system to can win with it. Big deal. I have to use the antique business again as an example. One time I found a box of about a dozen telegraph keys. I knew nothing about them so I researched them and found that one of them was pretty old. It turns out it was from the Civil War and when I put it on eBay it sold for $5,600. That was fine, but the thrill was in finding it and identifying it. I could have given it to any Joe schmuck and he would have got $5,600 for it too, big deal. It's the same thing with roulette, that's why I never quit looking for new ways to play because that's where all the enjoyment is.

 

The only time I really killed myself to gamble more and make extra money was when my daughter was on her way. I wanted to be a good provider. When the team depended on me I rose to the occasion. When it was only me, I always took long (hopefully permanent) vacations and had to be dragged back screaming to the industry when someone needed me.

I am no longer needed by anyone...

 

This paradigm has not served me well, though I certainly share it with you. I've always enjoyed the learning and not the doing.

My old joke is: :"I majored in theoretical physics, I just can't prove it!"

 

His comments were directed at me I believe and he summed up one of my greatest problems very well. I like to fix things. I do not like to use them.

I was a computer service technician for seven years before I got my own computer and got on the internet.

Five years in, I had a customer that wanted help with their social media. I asked, "What's that?."

I spent three days hooking up a giant TV I'd won at the Hard-Rock with Bang & Olufsen surround sound towers and tested it. In 3 years I never turned on the TV. It was a hoot setting it up though. Then I moved and put it all in storage, where it remains to this day. I hope to have fun setting it up and never watching it again some day.

You may not get what Spike is saying, but I do...ALL TOO WELL.

 

In an attempt to get back on OP topic: When ya'll come up with a strategy do you incorporate your results on whether or not it generates wins as the final arbiter--or do you incorporate additional metrics?

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It is almost alien for me to include results in my assessments of a strategy. In progressive VP we essentially ignored our results. All strategy generation was done in advance of play and precluded how it worked out completely in the evaluation of whether or not what we had done was a good idea in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, every now and then I'd go over records and muse over the fact that a play I'd calculated to be worth X had actually generated X, or X-1, or X+1 in profits. I chalked this up to fluctuation and random chance, which in all likelihood was all it was.

Once, and only once, I double checked a calculation I'd made on a promo at the old Sahara hotel on a 2x Red Royal promo they had, and realized to my chagrin that I'd been playing for a whole month on a 1% edge, when I'd initially thought it was 2.5%. I stopped playing it, as this was during the time when 678 JKR was available, which was a 2.1% edge without a promo.

It's worth noting that I did EXTRA good at the Sahara and hit four red Royals and no black ones. I still walked away from the play, because the math didn't hold up.

My point is that my results played no part in this decision. None at all... Exactly like Spike and his story of a positive slot play, I could walk away from something I'd done really well playing because I knew it to be a bad idea. The possibility that luck and nothing else was responsible for my success loomed over all my decisions like a dark shadow cast by a Nazgul. To be honest I think I was more cautious of plays where I had run really well, as I was sensitive to the cognitive distortions and the bad decisions getting lucky could lead to. Four Royals in a day only made me wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.

I would like to know if results do play a part in your assessments of good or bad, and what other techniques (if any) you use to declare something worth doing or not.

 

I guess I should add to my previous post and say that my disdain for results had a lot to do with playing on someone else's essentially infinite bankroll. Not to mention that with 40-80 players on our team pounding out hands daily we hit expectations in weeks rather than years. A bad play was almost lost in the din as I couldn't even think about it long before the phone was ringing and one of my players was calling for a JP pickup and wage distribution for another play somewhere else. We often had 2-4 plays running simultaneously around town.

I would imagine it's quite normal for a single player using their own money to include whether or not they are winning as a metric for if they should be gambling. It's just not something I ever did...or needed to do.

 

This Thread is getting to be pretty tired.

 

Is somebody forcing you to read it? I only read about 10% of the threads in this place, practice some self-restraint. I'm enjoying this thread.

 

It does not appear as though anyone wishes to answer the question of whether or not they include their results in their assessments about the efficacy of their play. I can't say I'm surprised...poking the bear is not something I wish to do. I was just curious, and not knowing is irrelevant.

This thread has exceeded all my expectations and helped me to resolve some very sensitive and painful issues.

I say we call it a day!

After I've had a chance to practice I'll post some audio of me playing the violin my mother used to cheat me out of $3,500 to cover her baccarat losses.

It'll be two weeks or more before I can post that, depending on how my hernia surgery goes.

Here's a really bad recording, I did with almost no practice after I hadn't played in eight years:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/43wfeopgdcy3ykj/27 Final Close.mp3?dl=0

 

?!#!!? I'm glad I don't have Dropbox. I'm spared.

 

You don't have to have Dropbox to use Dropbox, when downloading something someone else is sharing. It's universal with no password required.

We will, however, add you to the conscientious objectors list.

If you don't want to hear me play violin, you might want to hear me make fun of myself:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/by580n9fjm1kdzy/23 Night Sounds.mp3?dl=0

Jon Linquist did the vocals, but I wrote all the dialogue.

 

Additionally, what are you spared from? I would have thought at this point you'd like another data-point on which to criticize me. Every garden needs its fertilizer to grow. I'm giving you some quality crap here.

 

[QUOTE="Frank Kneeland, post: 137121, member: 284"

Here's a really bad recording, I did with almost no practice after I hadn't played in eight years:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/43wfeopgdcy3ykj/27 Final Close.mp3?dl=0[/QUOTE]

Not bad considering you haven't played in a long time.

 

Not bad considering you haven't played in a long time.[/QUOTE]

It's a deceptively hard piece to play since it involves sliding double stops. As you know a violin has no frets. The second part of the piece incorporates playing chords in thirds on two or three strings and they slide up and down the finger pad. The reason it's so hard is due to the physics of shortening a string to create a higher tone. The higher up you are on the string the less distance between notes. Therefore, you can't simply hold your fingers rigid and slide. You have to slightly reduce the relative distance going up and increase the distance going down to hold the chord in tune. Honestly, it's much harder than the flashy stuff you hear or see most players doing.

To play that song well for the first time took me roughly three years of practicing it everyday.

It's a weird thing about violin, often the songs that sound hard are easy and the ones that sound easy are nigh impossible.

The piece I spent the MOST time practicing before I could play it on stage was the second movement of the Bach Unaccompanied Sonata #1 for Violin Second (Fuga) movement. It's the hardest thing I ever played.

4 min 30 sec in:

For some odd reason I could never get an accompanist to play it with me.

P.S. I always wanted to date an oboist for the double reed embouchure