Obviously I’m just kidding after seeing your critical comments at Amazon.

What the dealer shows has a great effect on his likely totals. How could he get blackjack if he shows a 5?

Realistically, it’s hard for most people to persevere in the face of losing for a year or so. If the game you play puts you at significant risk of that, it’s not so great. To avoid this, you can play a higher quality game, get teammates, play long hours, or any combination of these.

If you can find a tolerant casino that offers a good game, that’s great, but don’t rely on it lasting forever. In general you’ll spend about as much time moving from casino to casino, scouting for a good game that you can play, as you do playing. BJ Attack gives SCOREs for various games but does not take into account crowdedness, which is just as important as penetration!

If your expenses are half of your expectation (and you are betting kelly without table max constraints), you are playing at an effective kelly of 2. In other words, your net CE is zero. So you really need to keep expenses well below that. MIT’s rule of thumb was to keep expenses below 10% of CE. When you bet at higher levels, the casinos pay for many things, keeping your net expenses near zero. If you take advantage of their promotions you could even clear a profit.

When I said “equivalently, always bet at that level”, I meant to say that you always bet a fixed unit that initially started with a 5% RoR. Also, note that if your bankroll is too small, it’s not worthwhile to play. Table minimums will be too high, expenses too great, and your hourly CE below what you could earn in even a menial job.

Betting a constant unit such that you have a 5% RoR (over a year) means that the 1 in 20 event will likely happen within your playing career. Expenses and better playing conditions at higher minimum tables encourage players to bet a larger unit. Heat encourages them not to bet too much. So what happens is that many players choose to bet a fixed unit, don’t resize, and limit their playing bankrolls to what they perceive as “enough”. Some take it a bit further and spend anything above that bankroll. But if that’s all the capital you have, and you lose it, you’re out of the game. It’s important that you be able to replenish your bankroll during a downturn.

The MIT groups ran into table max problems. People had plenty of money to invest but we were unable to use it. So we capped the starting bankroll, and allocated investment.

Do I understand you correctly to say that a game with an N0 of 20,000 rounds (SCORE=50) is a poor game?

What do you consider to be an acceptable N0 for a lone BJ player?

Do you think expenses being 1/3 to 1/4 of expectation is reasonable or should they be an even smaller fraction? Ideally, I suppose we want expectation to be infinitely greater than expenses.

What I found particularly interesting is the last paragraph. If ROR is 5% and you constantly resize the unit to reflect 5% ROR, why would you be likely to tap out? The ROR with kelly betting is 0%.

I do appreciate your point regarding capping the BR. I think the moral is that every time a BR is doubled, then some % of the net income must be rolled over into next bank. If a counter has a 5% chance of doubling a bank and his goal is to double 5 banks, then his CROR (cumulative ROR) is 1 - (1-0.05)^5 ~ 23% assuming he does not roll over any money from one bank to the next.

When you were managing the MIT Team, once the target for a bank was reached how would you decide how much of that money would be rolled over into the next bank?

Suppose the size of the 2nd bank increased by 40%. By what % would you increase the unit size as compared to the first bank?

Thanks,
Rick