Every play blackjack where you are required to put an extra dollar in on every hand, and which you lose automatically unless you have a blackjack? Now that is more like trading
Nah . . . how about you get to see the dealer's up card before you make a bet? Or you place a bet, take a card, and if you don't like your hand you can take back your bet and maybe get a little extra for it. Now that's more like trading.
This was on PrimeTime Live last week. --- 9/15/2003 MIT Students Break the Bank in Las Vegas http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/US/MITgamblers030915.html Through the years, a group of math students at the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology has focused their considerable brain power on a very extracurricular activity: gambling â specifically blackjack. The students realized that blackjack was the only beatable game in casino gambling â and beat it they did. By the 1990s, the team â whose membership rotated over the years â was making regular trips to Las Vegas and winning big. "They took over $400,000 in one weekend out of the casinos in Las Vegas," says Gordon Adams, a casino security investigator. The team used a method known as card-counting, which helps players predict when the cards being dealt will be favorable to them. By knowing which cards have been spent and which ones remain in the shoe, savvy players can keep a running "count" which works as a rough predictor of how many high cards are left. High cards work to a player's benefit because they boost the odds that they will beat the dealer. The MIT players were not the first to count cards. But they used their math expertise â and advanced computer models â to hone their skills to a devastatingly effective science. They wrote computer programs to devise the best strategy for specific situations, then updated their data with real-life experience. "After a trip to Vegas, we would enter all the information about what happened into the computers," remembers Semyon Dukach, a student who was a member of the team in the early 1990s. .... .... When they hit a casino, they would first deploy a counter to sit in on a table and track the cards. When the counter calculated that the high cards were coming up, he or she would secretly signal the team's designated "big bettor" to the table, using code words to signal how "positive" the shoe was. The big bettor would then start wagering large amounts of money until the counter would signal that the shoe was no longer "hot." .... .... [click link to read more ] http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/US/MITgamblers030915.html
I don't know the details of those rules, but let me tell you this: When I started playing blackjack, I was living in Austria. All casinos there have rather unfavorable blackjack rules, use 6 decks and shuffle continuously. My only edge back then was that you would get ATS 300 worth of chips when you entered the casino and paid them ATS 260. The chips were exchanged for real money immediately after wagering them, whether you won, lost, or tied. Anyway, years later, I found out that even a 6 deck game with continuous shuffle and not the most favorable set of rules regarding splits and doubling down CAN indeed be beaten. In order to play as many games per hour as possible, cards are always dealt while the machine is still shuffling, in other words, while almost all the cards from the previous round are still "removed" from the deck. In addition, you must sit on the last chair, that way you have up to 6 players being dealt cards before you. Finally, you must modify your strategy according to the card count. In other words, while it is sufficient in traditional blackjack to simply play at certain times and sit out the other rounds, here you must also make all your hit/stand/split/double decisions dependent on the count. I never seriously considered going for the <0.3% advantage my new strategy would give me in Austrian casinos, but it might be worth a try, since I don't think they watch for card counters at all. Their philosophy is, They have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for rather puny looking card shuffling machines, therefore counting cards profitably is now impossible. I say, It's time for a wake up call! Who is with me?
That's why traders are crazy... Minority means psychologically insane... abnormal... he he he... I'm a crazy, insane, abnormal... and a trader...
I had traded in the same room with 3 members of MIT's blackjack team earlier this year, and all of them are universal in saying that trading stocks is a lot easier and less stressful than playing blackjack. They had collectively made more money trading stocks. The one major trait I had noticed about these guys? They are very risk averse. They never, ever let a small loss turn into a disaster.
They don't have to hide their intent from a pit boss looking for card counters in the market, and they never get escorted to the door, except for that margin call they don't want to meet.
That was actually a pretty good article, really. I'm surprised everyone has so far ignored the maint point: it's the fluctuations that beat you. Just look at all the "can I make X $ per day?" threads and the boastful "I'm making X $ per day" replies they draw. People have this idea that they're going to come into the market and take away a certain amount of money over a certain period of time. If they do happen to realize such consistency in gains over any time period, say a few weeks or months, their little hearts flutter and their brains dutifully extrapolate such results over much longer time frames. Then, when disaster finally does strike -- as it almost certainly will -- and the system/methodology all of a sudden begins losing money with the kind of consistency it was previously making it, the trader becomes distraught. His entire wolrd goes into tailspin. What of the untold riches he had but days ago been dreaming about? The yacht, the house in the Hamptons, the dinners at the Club? That fat 100% gain is now a 40% and shrinking fast. Is the whole Dream about to unravel? What to do? Trade bigger, trade smaller, change the System, abandon the System, quit trading, ask Don Bright? D) Okay, so this doesn't automatically imply failure, but are you mentally prepared -- fully prepared -- to handle such an invent in your stride without losing your marbles?
Nice post. You clearly point out and reinforce the important facet pointed out by others: no approach is complete without a provision for dealing with all kinds of potential losses. Thoughout ET we all see the various kinds of losses people tolerate in their approaches. It is too bad that "edges" are what people focus upon mostly. The loss equivalent of an edge is what is actually required by all traders. The loss "edge preventer" is OT here I know and moderators are deleting OT stuff Iam finding. If a person is designing a treading system, it is imperitive to start at the end of the trade and work forward to the entry. Again thank you for a great post.