Sonny said:Maybe he tried using his progression system and went broke.
-Sonny-
shadow_priest_x said:Oh, come now Sonny. . . Walter's made a ton of money playing Blackjack. I have no reason to doubt that he is very much ahead overall.
stainless steel rat said:Not by playing a progression he hasn't. If he made any money using a progression, it was by selling it to other suckers, not by using it himself... P.T. Barnum had it right...
It just doesn't work, period.
Ray said:Walter will tell you right up-front that his progression will not give you a mathematical edge. Also, I seem to recall that he can count cards. I think he said, at times, he counts along with his progression.
The fickle finger of fate, commonly called luck, "SEEMS" to work for some people. No I ain't one of those lucky folks. Remember, if it can happen, it will happen.
Edit: All progressions are the same and any logical mind does not need a sim to prove that, but abnormalities occur from time to time and we may not have the smarts to explain them.
shadow_priest_x said:Ray, I think you're very close to the point I'm trying to make. Walter never once claims in his book that he believes his progression will achieve a mathematical edge. But I also believe that he's telling the truth when he says that a) he plays his system himself, b) he's been playing for many years, and c) he keeps detailed records. And considering these facts, I can only assume that all in all HE has come out a ahead. Will the next guy or the next guy or the next guy have the same results? Who knows? He can only speak for himself.
What bothers me is when people say that he cannot POSSIBLY have won more money than he's lost and they say it with all the assuredness of a suicide bomber proclaiming he's on the way to see Allah.
I would say that Walter's system may not be able to give you an edge . . . but maybe for some people, even after years of play, they don't need one to walk away a winner.
Imagine that.
Sonny said:
Really? How do you know its not true? Have you analyzed his system? Have you reviewed the math involved? Have you seen the simulation results? It seems like youre the one who is making statements that you dont know to be true. Ive done all of those things and Ive seen firsthand that his system does not give the player an advantage. Ive seen definitive proof that his system is not a winning system. Im sorry if that fact annoys you but it is the truth. If you had done the research like the rest of us you would know that.
Before you respond, Google the words Walter Thomason Scams and see what the first enrty is:
http://www.blackjack-scams.com/html/prog__systems.html
Read the whole page, especially the part about One Billion Hands and Empirical Evidence. It will answer a lot of your questions.
-Sonny-
stainless steel rat said:Someone wins a lottery every now and then. Are _you_ going to spend all your money buying lottery tickets just because _someone_ lucked out???
shadow_priest_x said:Well definitely not all my money. . .
I have been known to throw a few dollars down from time to time though, "just in case." And if you want to say, "If a progression player is ahead after 20 years then HE'S SO LUCKY!" I will be much more able to emotionally to accept that than hearing someone say, "It can't possibly be!"
Imagine how much of a character attack that is, for one. Especially toward someone you don't even know and also when you are admittedly unacquainted with all the facts.
Second, it's just closed minded. I mean hell, if someone tells me they were abducted by aliens I will always assume they're either lying or delusional, but I'll also always have to admit that maybe I'm wrong.
stainless steel rat said:The more you play, the more likely it is you are going to lose everything. You would do better to go up to the table and bet your entire bankroll on one hand. There you have a nearly 50-50 chance of winning, while if you bet less and play 1,000 hands, you have a very poor chance of winning. And if you play 100,000 hands, forgetaboutit...
RJT said:While i agree with most of your points on this subject SSR, i can't agree with the above. Putting all your bankroll down on 1 50/50 bet has massive variance. While i agree that your chances of coming out ahead might be improved, the in between results of coming out partially behind are totally wiped out. Many times it is a good idea to lose a little EV to decrease variance.
RJT.
stainless steel rat said:
1. You mentioned hand-dealt vs PRNG-generated rounds. You are aware that there are _many_ good tests to verify that a PRNG is producing representative numbers? For example, there is the classic poker test. It is not hard to compute the odds of drawing a royal flush, for example, or a pair of aces, or three 6's. The poker test deals cards as produced by the PRNG, and then the resulting poker hands are evaluated. If the odds of drawing 4 aces is 1/52*1/51*1/50*1/49, which turns into 1/6,497,400. Suppose you deal 100 billion hands. You should have received roughly 15,000 royal flushes. Standard deviation can be computed to determine if your 14,297 royal flushes were within 1SD or not. If you repeat that for each possible hand, and you don't find anything odd (say 4 aces dealt 100X as frequently as expected, or something equally suspicious) then your PRNG passed the poker test. And that shows that at least for poker, and the PRNG in question, the cards dealt match what we would expect in a hand-dealt game. There are dozens of other tests used to make sure that the cards produced by the PRNG are both random, and properly distributed. And the PRNG used by Norm is a good one that has been tested by many different people.
stainless steel rat said:
3. On selling a system. If you sell someone a car that you know has an automatic transmission that is about to fail, because a dealer service center told you that, is it honest to tell the buyer about all the virtues of that car, but not about the impending $2,500 repair bill? Or selling a house without revealing that it sits on a sinkhole prone area where large holes have been opening up all year? Selling a system that leads the casual reader to believe it will win money in the casino is the same thing. Caveat Emptor? Certainly comes into play. But the "sin of omission" is just as bad as outright lying about something "Oh, that slightly hard 2-3 shift is normal, I just had the tranny re-built and it is just like new..."
stainless steel rat said:
Progressions do one thing, they lose money at a faster rate than if you flat-bet the table minimum because they increase your average bet.
stainless steel rat said:
There will _always_ be exceptions. You might have read about someone winning over $7,000,000 at blackjack in Vegas either this past year or in '06. He was not a counter. He didn't even play correct BS.
QFIT said:When Walter's book came out; he claimed in scores of posts that quit points worked and his strategy gave you an edge over the house. He claimed to have proved this with both hand and computer simulations. Many people told him his sims were bogus and the system failed. He claimed that they were all wrong and people using his system would win. After a couple of years he started to tone down his claims and then faded away. Who knows how many people are fooled by such.
shadow_priest_x said:I at least know that in his book he never actually says that his system will give you an edge, nor does he say that you will win more than you would counting. His main thrust is actually to say that he thinks you'll win more than you would flat betting.
I wonder what's up with the sims he used? I remember reading that he had problems finding any existing software that he could use to test his progression and he had to go to a programmer to have something custom made. He included some results in the book, but not a million hands, just another sampling of 100 shoes like he had hand dealt.
Faded away? Hmm. . . I'm sure he's out there somewhere. I think the last I read he said that Blackjack was starting to get a bit dull after all these years and he was getting more into poker these days. I think I ran across that on a post of his in the archives here from '05.
stainless steel rat said:You are aware that there are _many_ good tests to verify that a PRNG is producing representative numbers? For example, there is the classic poker test.
shadow_priest_x said:Well I do know that a number of tests have been run but I admit I've never run across the poker test. That's pretty interesting and certainly sounds logical. On the same note, let me point out that I don't necessarily NOT believe that a million simulated hands are not indicative of real-world results . . . I just think that there always will be, and should be, at least some element of doubt until it's proven by actually hand dealing at least 100,000 or so hands.
That's actually been a bit of a hobby of mine but after several months I only have been able to record about 8500 hands so far. I need a team!
Well I think there's a difference between someone who blatantly lies and someone who speaks from their own experience. I think a guy like Walter probably is just speaking from his own experience. And if in fact Walter has been able to personally win money and supplement his income playing his progression then is there really something wrong with relaying that information to others?
Let me give you another example. . .
Another book I'm a fan of is The Most Powerful Blackjack Manual by Jay Moore. He has a system that has progressive elments but it's not a straight progression. The details aren't really important here but this is:
He never once says "This will give you a mathematical edge" (and he was previously employed as a math teacher). He says, "This has worked for me over the years." Furthermore, he has the recorded results of his real-world play for one year. He played 2 times a week, about 5 hours per session, for a total of about 25,000 hands. His hands-won/hands-lost rate are right in there around what you would statistically expect (about 44%/48%) and yet he claims, in the end, after a year of play, to have won an average of 2.5 units per hour.
I've exhanged several e-mails with the guy and I have no reason to assume he's lying (and isn't a man innocent until proven guilty?). He just says, "These are my results and here's how I did it." And I really don't see a problem with that.
I will also say this: I have only compared the results of his betting method against the results of flat betting for 25 out of the 125 shoes that I have hand-dealt, but out of the four "players" (I deal to 4 spots for realism and comparison purposes) whose results I've thus far processed, EACH ONE is farther ahead using Jay's concepts than flat betting, ranging from about $25 ahead to over $400. (Using a $10 base bet.)
I'm not saying that PROVES anything and I understand that that's a tiny sampling but it's still interesting.
Well what about ol' Oscar? Supposedly he never had a single losing session and even Julian Braun and his cohort, after reviewing the system and the man's records, agreed that he could very well be telling the truth. Did he have an edge? An advantage? No. But he played intelligently and was able to come out a winner.
And yes, Oscar's Grind can lose a lot of money but I would not at all be surprised at a recreational gambler who plays a few times a month (or even every week) who says that he uses the system and is ahead overall.
First off, how do you know he didn't play proper BS? Second, well . . . that's what dreams are made of. I didn't hear about it but that's pretty cool.
Sonny said:You forgot my favorite one - the Infinite Monkey test! :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests
-Sonny-
stainless steel rat said:That is even more dangerous as a way to think. Do you really believe that a few thousand hands, shuffled and dealt by hand, are absolutely random?
stainless steel rat said:
Again, there are "lies" and there are "lies". Claiming a progression with a stop-loss point gives you an advantage is certainly false. Whether it rises to the point of an outright lie, or it is just a result of very poor testing methodology is certainly open for debate.
stainless steel rat said:
I can't respond, other than to say it really stretches the imagination to reach his conclusion and take it seriously. Interesting that we now have _two_ authors, hawking progressions, and both claim "this has won for me over the long-term..." And of course those are not the only two. I can remember my first trip back in the late 70's where there were more gambling "systems" than Carter had little pills...
stainless steel rat said:
That scares me... Everybody is _ahead_ just playing normal hands? Talk about an event out in the N-sigma range (where N is large)....
stainless steel rat said:
Yes, but there is a fallacy involved. For every one that plays Oscar's (or any other progression system) and comes out ahead, there are N that play it and come out behind. If you get N people to flipping coins, you'd expect one of them to get way more heads than tails to start with...
shadow_priest_x said:However, on the much-heralded test on the Blackjack Scams page you'll notice that there are results for Flat Betting, Flat Betting w/ Quit Points, Progression Betting and . . . oh, wait, sorry . . . Progression Betting with Quit Points isn't even there!
shadow_priest_x said:Speaking of lies, deceit and poor methodology. . . If you actually read Walter's book then his own tests showed that his progression lost money without quit points but won money with them. However, on the much-heralded test on the Blackjack Scams page you'll notice that there are results for Flat Betting, Flat Betting w/ Quit Points, Progression Betting and . . . oh, wait, sorry . . . Progression Betting with Quit Points isn't even there!
RJT said:I'm only dipping in and out of this thread and half reading these posts - progression systems of any form are just boring - but do you understand just how many different progression systems are in use today? hundreds would be a very low estimate. To disprove every one of these would be a massively time consuming and unproductive effort.
Mathematically there is no reason why a stop limit would change a losing system into a winning one. No system that is not supported by maths has ever actually beaten a gambling game in the long run.
And this is the same argument that every progression player comes out with on message boards - look at licentia over at BJInfo - always claiming that nobody has given her system a fair test and that anyone who has tested it and proved that it doesn't work is either lying or done it wrong.
Look at the wizard Mike, who has finally got so bored of testing all these different systems in an effort to prove to people once and for all that progression systems don't work that he won't test them anymore.
I'd use a simple analogy here - People said my car wouldn't run on water rather than petrol - and they were right - but i've got this peach flavored water that i'm sure will work and i will keep insisting to others that it does work. The burden's on them to prove that it doesn't work rather than on me to prove that it does before i make the statement.
RJT.
QFIT said:Please be more careful before you accuse people of "lies, deceit and poor methodology." The Progression column is WITH quit points. It clearly states that Player 3 stops after four consecutive losses as per Walter's book. Quit points make no difference using basic strategy. Walter is wrong and kept pushing this nonsense after many people explained his mistakes.
Ray said:Shadow_priest_x(with all due respect)...There is little doubt that some blackjack players are life-time winners in spite of the house advantage. Based on the large number of players and limited playing time this is a real possibility. However, the numbers on the negative side limit the likelyhood of such wide-spread anomalies. But a reason to believe goes a long way in convincing a large segment of the population and that is the bait that attracts the fish.
In short, a progression is a program with meaningless steps and application that attemps to time and capture the unknown future. Sometimes it does(good luck), other times it don't(bad luck). The math: Good luck - bad luck= 0 What remains is the HA.
shadow_priest_x said:
But Leon's system would be BLASTED if he came onto a board like this out of the blue and tried to push it. Consider some of it's elements:
Increase your Bet After a Loss
Decrease Your Bet After a Win or Push
Increase Your Bet After Any Non-Ace Pair Split
Etc.
On the surface it looks like straight-up voodoo but if you sim it it WILL come out ahead.
shadow_priest_x said:Well I admit that I only half-way perused Licentia's posts so I could be way off here but I don't rememeber it really being a straight progression. I thought it was more a series of actions that should be taken when certain events take place, i.e. the dealer gets a blackjack so do THIS . . . or something of the sort.
I don't know. I think that sometimes a system can work for a person that may never work for others, but this gets into some crazy talk about things like the scientific oberserver effect and things of the such, none of which could ever be subjected to a sim.
QFIT said:Not Voodoo at all - but it should be blasted. This is an extremely weak counting system based on the fact that losing hands use more low cards on average.
RJT said:Unfortunately the system didn't give any information about what was coming, so she could have used anything - a woman with a chest size bigger than a B sitting at the table, 2 6's getting dealt in a row, a waitress of an ethnic minority walking past - to justify raising her bet, it wouldn't make any difference. It was still just another progression system. We don't have to test every possible combination of progression system to know that they don't work.
If you want to believe in that system that works for just one person, that's fine. But you have to accept the very real chance and by far the most likely outcome that you are not going to be one of the 'one' people. By that i mean that possibly there are statistical annomalies posing as gamblers out there who have won and continue to win using a progression systems, but it is just dumb luck, nothing more. These people are so rare that they are not worth considering and your chances of becoming one of those annomalies are equally unworthy of consideration. You are looking at worse than lottery odds (just a guess) that you are going to be one of these people even if you jump from progression system to progression system for the rest of your life.
RJT.
shadow_priest_x said:I understand that it's really not particularly effective in regard to actually making money, but it's definitely interesting from an academic standpoint. One thing I have to disagree with you about though is that you refer to it as a COUNTING system and it's not. Counting is a specific act that involves assigning values to cards and then keeping track of what cards have been dealt by tracking the sum of the values.
So okay, say it works for the same reason that counting works, but don't call it counting.
rogue1 said:I do NOT beleive he is any kind of scam artist. In the past I always found him to be helpful and most willing to answer questions and help new players in any way he could. In short Walter is a nice guy and just because his method of playing blackjack is not the same as some others it doesn't make him a scam artist.
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