I can't believe I'm replying to this thread - it's stupid beyond belief. Anyway I'll make a quick point here: You could flip a coin 100 times and each time land on heads. Your expectation is still 50% in the long run.
Whats even more hilarious was that World Blackjack Tour they used to broadcast a while back. Watching a bunch of retired guys mangle the basic strategy. Boring as can be. Pay $1. Get 92 cents back. Whoopie. No wonder table games are dying. Blackjack used to have potential. But the casinos wanted a sure thing. So they screwed blackjack up. No wonder why casinos are tearing out tables putting in poker as fast as they can. The people on the patience thread should watch TV blackjack. That'll learn em patience.
Exactly. It's the same reasoning people go through when they buy more than one lottery ticket, thinking that buying more will give them a better chance at winning. It doesn't, the chances are still 15 mil to one( or whatever ) for each ticket, just like it's always 50% for each coin flip. Winning several blackjack hands in a row is pure luck, but most people give it all right back to the casino because they don't know when to quit. Oftentimes people will lose big because they don't know how to win small. I'm betting that this "free" account Skalpz has is heavily favored for the player to win, in the hope that he would then drop some real money from his CC and play with that. In other words, they might be "baiting" him. Don-
Reluctantly, I will admit to having played blackjack professionally in my youth. This means that I played tens of thousands of hands against real dealers in real casinos using real money. Unlike the stock market, blackjack is a completely closed system, which has a very large number of, but not infinite, possible outcomes (about 4.1 billion, if memory serves). The mathematics of blackjack are extremely well understood and there have been a number of very good books written describing various systems which have been both empirically, as well as mathematically proven to provide an overall edge over the house of between .5% and 1.5%. In order to beat the house, you must play like a machine. You cannot make mistakes and there is no "trading" involved. You simply keep track of the number of tens/aces vs. the number of non tens/aces and the more tens/aces that are in the deck as compared to the number that would ordinarily be present in a standard deck, increases your edge against the house, and visa versa. When the count is "high", you bet more, when it is "low" you bet less. Over time, as long as you don't make many mistakes in counting, you will win -- the outcome is completely predicable in advance and it is inevitable. The difficulty is that casino security will watch you play, and if you are winning, by placing higher and lower bets depending upon deck composition, you will be annoyed, harassed and eventually barred from playing. Years ago, it was relatively easy to get a reasonable game. Today, it is possible, however, much more difficult. The casinos have dumbed down most customers and made the rules much less favorable. In the few places where the odds are still favorable, the casino watches for counters very carefully, making counting for any serious money even more difficult. What you have described above re your winnings is, quite frankly, is impossible in real play. No one can win the amount of money that you are describing, unless they have unlimited capital and the house permits them to vary their bets at absurdly high ratios, which the house won't do, because the house enjoys winning much more than it does losing. The only things in my opinion that are similar between trading and blackjack are: 1. money management 2. very large standard deviation and variance from expected value (i.e., mean average return), and 3. the house wants you to lose There is no way to intimidate the house in blackjack, and no way to influence the cards by playing style. All of the working systems are based on absolutely mechanical play depending upon the cards in view and the composition of the deck, at any given instant. For every circumstance in blackjack, there is but one correct play, depending upon the count. This is not the same as trading, although it may seem like it. In summary, if you think that you can somehow "trade" with the house in blackjack and win, you will get slaughtered. And, if you doubt this theory, then I will be happy to bet you $100,000.00 that I can methodically play system blackjack against you, under controlled conditions, starting with the same bankroll, and at the end of 100,000 hands, I will have more money than you will. Of course, playing 100,000 live hands of blackjack will require about 1,200 hours under the best conditions, so we're looking at pretty much full time work for the next six months, unless you want to resort to a simulator, which would produce a final tally in about 30 seconds. Anyway, don't be a sucker. If anyone could do what you are asserting, all of the casinos would be bankrupt.
Buying multiple lottery tickets does infact increase your chances of winning (as long as they have different numbers on them). The thing is though, the odds of winning are SO SHIT that you're better off just putting your weekly lottery money in a cash account earning 5 or so percent a year. Even better put it in a fund or some stocks. I always lecture relatives when they enter lotteries.