Baccarat Win little, lose big?

An average man, gambles with only 23 USD, wins 23 thousand and then loses it all eventually. I guess most people here have heard of or even experienced some similar stories.

What exactly is the cause behind the phenomenon?

It is probability.

In this forum, so many people are seeking a practical betting strategy. However, every strategy has a losing probability which will lead you to a big loss. For example, if your strategy has a probability of 10% to lose, you practice it 9 days and keep winning, and then the strategy may fail on the tenth day that you will suddenly lose your capital and the winning in the previous 9 days.

The above story will give people the impression that we are easy to win with a small capital but not a big one. However, that is just the accompanying appearance. The real essence behind it is the probability of the strategy.

 

Your question is a little hard to understand. I will try to answer it.

I think you are asking why people put back the money they have won.

There isn't one answer to that question. People gamble for different reasons.

It is possible to state the mechanism by which they put it back, they continue playing a game where the house has the edge after a win, because they are trying to win more. The house's edge is almost imperceptible to the human mind.

Imagine I offer you a bet on the flip of a fair coin. You bet 1.02$ and win $1 if it comes up heads, getting back $2.02. If it comes up tails I keep your $1.02. If we flipped the coin 100 times and it came up heads 60 times and tails 40 times you'd have the following result:

40 x -$1.02 = $40.80
60 x +$1.00 = $60.00
Sum: = +$19.20

You would have WON $19.20...this time. The house's edge is actually the .80c difference between $19.20 and $20 which is what you should have gotten on an even bet--but it's almost invisible in the face of a small number of wagers.

Now let's say you play again and the coin flips exactly 50/50

50 x -$1.02 = -$51.00
50 x +$1.00 = +$50.00
Sum: = -$1.00

The coin came up exactly as expected this time and you only gave back $1 of your $19.20 win. You're still ahead $18.20! Yay!

But what's really happening is each and every time you engage in this bet for 100 flips you're losing .80c to the house's edge. It is however so slow and confused by occasional wins that it's imperceptible to the player. When you win you win slightly less. When you lose, you lose slightly more. It's awfully slight, but all journey's begin with a single step.

The real danger and the thing that makes almost all people gamble is that there is a tendency to remember wins and forget loses. People can be losing overall and still feel like they're winning because their brains are lying to them.

You asked why people give back big wins. In the book "The Gambler" by Dostoevsky, what starts him down the dark path is betting on a roulette wheel as a joke on his way out of a casino after having had dinner, and hitting his number on the first try.

Now understand that for every 38 people that decide to try roulette for the first time, one will win on their very first spin of the wheel. Of course 37 people won't. They may be the lucky ones...

I HOPE THIS ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION...

 

They also do not understand variance, what they call luck. Like the story I told you of me winning $2,500 on a slot machine having almost never played slots and taking the $2,500 putting it in my pocket and never playing again. I understood variance from years of watching my wife play and I knew enough to quit when I was ahead. People think variance, luck, comes in batches. It does not, better to think of it as lightning striking. So because they think it comes in batches, after a big win they will keep betting not understanding what just happened. And you cannot explain it to them so don't even try. Never try and wise up a chump you're just wasting your time. The best baccarat players I know that are betting big on a streak, once the streak is over, they leave. They understand variance.

 

Just surf the up and down waves. If you don't know what they are then wave goodbye to your money.

 

When cats go for the " Recovery " that is the death sentence for any bankroll.

 

Oh yes I know this. That's why when you told the story I complimented you on your control and rationality. It is uncommon.

 

I have always wondered about this dynamic and how people in other branches of gambling make the decision to play or not to play. In my branch of Pro Gambling I was essentially immune to the phenomenon. As a Progressive Player I played when a progressive crossed a certain line and was sufficiently in my favor. I left if the progressive hit or my shift ended and I handed off to a partner. I may have gambled professionally almost every day for a decade and not once ever had to make a personal decision related to staying or leaving a casino. It just wasn't up to me. We used to call it being at the mercy of the meters. Progressive up = PLAY Progressive down = DON'T PLAY

Wins or losses did not effect or even influence the decision.

Perhaps you could explain how you make the decision to leave or stay in the absence of such clear data points as a Dollar Poker which resets to $4,000 being over $20,000?

I remember being at the Palace Station and getting asked by a citizen, "how do you know when to leave?" I didn't really know how to answer then, and may still not twenty years later.

 

For myself I quit after I'm ahead by one unit. I have a monetary goal, it's usually small enough online that I just bet that amount till I win it which is often after the first bet.

 

So what's yer stops loss to go with that brisk one units stops win, hey hey?

 

I don't have a stop loss, don't need one. I only bet when it's playing my game so I usually win on the 1st bet and if I don't I break even on the second back and win on the 3rd bet. Once in a great while it takes longer than that but not usually. If it's playing my game, and that's the only time I play, there are plenty of options to bet on. Flat bet only.

 

I must say while I understand what you said, this is a very alien concept to me. As we discussed in the other thread I always allowed math to make my decisions. If I found a positive game I played as much as possible taking only fatigue and health concerns into consideration. Obviously, there was no negative game rule, as we didn't play those.

We never had stop loss, or monetary goals. The only goal was get out as many hands as possible when we had the edge.

The most recent thing I played before the Pandemic was a bar promo + drawing + 8x points + Bingo Card ($200 each time you got one of every 4K) + Progressive on 9/6 JoB. Oh and the RF started at $1,250. All things considered it came to about a 4% edge. I simply got up and put in as many hours a day (about eight) as possible until I got tired, then rinse and repeat the next day.

Several times I hit Royals early in my shift and simply powered on to make my eight hours. Several times the machines were cold and I lost money (that day). Again, I just ignored it and played my eight hours.

My best month was about +$8,500 and my worst month was about +4,000. That's including expenses and losses.

Stopping play because you won a certain amount is just not something I have ever done.

 

Having reached the win goal keep on playing until the first loss . Get up and dont look back .

 

Great advice, I also find it interesting to have a second bank for leverage, and this second you can expose yourself a little more.

 

That’s how I do it. I don’t try to adhere to a win goal.

 

That does not happen to me. When I play There is almost a 100% chance I'm going to make my goal so I make it ASAP and quit. The buffet analogy is a good one. When I go to a buffet I eat as much as I want, I don't eat as much as I can because I don't need to. When I leave the buffet I know when my next meal is coming. If I did not know there was almost a 100% chance of me winning my goal the next time I played roulette I would play and play and make as much as I can. Also when you're playing a machine you do not have the pit standing right in front of you watching what you're doing. Online you have a computer algorithm keeping track of you even if you're playing the live tables. Best to leave a small footprint as possible.

 

Suppose the first loss is the next bet after I made my goal. Now I'm back to zero and have to win one unit again. You have to take greed, which is right in the forefront of every gamblers brain, completely out of the equation. You have to run it like a business when you have the edge over the casino. If you do not you're screwed. If you ran a brick-and-mortar business with greed as your main goal instead of efficiency, you won't be in business very long.

 

That first loss after having reached the win goal is a calculated loss and not a surprise endinding to a winning session .

 

It's useful to read this kind of stuff, see it often enough and it might become ingrained.

A few years back I was massively in profit during a session, well over 200% of my buyin. Basically I had doubled my goal target, but hey, a good night is a good night, all I could think of is the juicy profit i had in front of me which I was gonna be adding to my balance sheet.

Anyway the invariable happened, I got smacked and I dropped, so now I'm about 140% up and I panicked, my game literally fell apart right there on the spot, started feeling shaky and sick to the stomach, I couldn't understand it, I was still ahead with a decent chunk of change, but desperate to get back to where I was.

Managed to calm myself down, was pissed I let it happen, I think I managed to win a few more bets. Then I said to myself, I'm gonna risk everything playing like this (I now became in a hurry, my patience was shot), so decided to leave, it was a lesson leaned, never to be repeated. I was up, I won, but it took off a lot of the gloss thinking about what could/should have been.

 

Junket King , Several years ago you casually mentioned Frank Barstow principle of diminishing probabilities

and I followed up on this .

I go for it right at the beginning with the higher bet .


Thanks .

 

But it's a useless waste of time, it's pointless. If you have a goal and you reached it why would you continue on. You don't do that with anything else in life. If your goal is to reach the supermarket in your car you don't keep going just because you can once you get there. When you're finished with your shift at work and that was your goal you don't stick around for an hour afterwards just because you can. If my goal is to get 8 hours sleep I don't stay in bed for 10 hours just because I can.

If I reach my goal betting why in God's name would I continue to bet. What does it prove, what's the point. Why even have a goal if you're not going to stand by it. What you say makes no sense Nathan. All it is is pure greed and greed has no place in professional gambling. It leads to the eventual downfall of every gambler. You know this.