Flute Player

Income disparity is very real for most people. Once in awhile, somebody gets lucky and comes into more money than they ever dreamed. In an instant, their circumstances changed. No longer were they consumed with paying bills or other mundane chores. Now they had money. They could to do the things they always wanted to do, but never did, simply because they now had money. That’s reality. If you have the means, then you can do.

Chess is a game of skill. It’s logical. That’s why no human can beat the computer anymore. The computer always knows the best move. Playing people is different, sometimes they make mistakes. Make the wrong move, you could be toast.

There she was.
I don’t know where they met, or how.
There she stood.
On stage, for all to see.
Showing off like the greedy songbird she was.

— Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham, Amadeus)

Yesterday I saw a baccarat shoe go 14 in a row alternating Banker and Player with no ties. Yet again a “real world” example of what can happen with cards vs computer modeling.

Thumb drives must be formatted MS-DOS (FAT), or you can’t copy to them from a Chromebook. If they’re formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled), you’ll get “insufficient permissions” notices.

Nick Wells (Robert De Niro, The Score): If you want me to do this, you gotta pay me what’s right. It’s gotta be that way.

Max (Marlon Brando): I always pay you what’s right.

Nick: You always think you do. I always know what you pay me. It’s not always right.

Disappointed, but not surprised. Such is the nature of business.

Baccarat is a game of chance. Nobody knows what the cards coming out of a shoe are, not even the casino. Since the next hand is always an unknown, the best the gambler can hope for is using either Avant Dernier or Last Bet as their betting strategy if they’re going to try and win more bets than losses. Any other approach is disconnected from the shoe.

I’ve been wondering about some kind of Avant Dernier / Last Bet hybrid system for Baccarat. Since both systems have specific weaknesses (Avant Dernier loses on doubles, Last Bet loses on jumps), perhaps what’s needed to get more wins than losses (that’s the best one can hope for folks — you’re never, EVER going to win every bet!) is a hybrid of the two? A ‘two-speed’ system if you will, with a loss of two bets in a row triggering the shifts. Since both Avant Dernier and Last Bet follow the shoe, neither ever bet the opposite (for example, betting Player after Banker – it’s always Banker Banker). This runs contrary to gut instincts, which in a 50/50 game, knows it’s just a matter of time before the hands jump. To play either system, you have to be content to lose the jumps and hope that you’ll wind up with more wins than losses by the time you leave the table.

In baccarat there are two primary bets, Banker and Player. The variation that I see most is EZ Baccarat which has side bets called Dragon (pays 40:1) and Panda (pays 25:1). The question is, which is the better primary bet?

Conventional wisdom says to always bet Banker because statistically Banker enjoys a slight edge over Player (roughly 1%, or 1 hand out of 100). In EZ Baccarat this edge is offset when a Dragon occurs and the Banker bet pushes. There is no push on Panda.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of shoes go Player as the dominant hand and I’ve lost against them by betting Banker at the wrong time. I’ve also been burned by Dragons.

Four years ago, my pet bet was when the board showed two Bankers, I’d bet Player. I don’t recall how I came up with this choice except perhaps by observing the horizontal DNA string of the hands going BBP at times. Perhaps I also felt that in a 50/50 game, if I let two Bankers go by, then the likelihood of a Player was somehow better (regardless of the math…). Overall, I did well with this bet. Perhaps it’s time to revisit it?

BBP runs contrary to Avant Dernier and Last Bet, neither of which produce the BBP pattern as an outcome. So it’s going against the grain, both as a bet choice and also socially against the hopes of the other gamblers wanting Banker streaks. Nonetheless, if the overall strategy is to bet as few hands as possible to reach your target goal, then BBP is as viable a choice as cherry picking the Banker bets out of Avant Dernier and without the risk of pushing on the Dragon hands.

So the question is, when is the best time to do BBP? I suspect it’s after seeing BBB several times. In an eight-deck shoe, BBB and BBP appear on average eight times each. BBP is easier to count on the board, whereas BBB is disguised in a Banker run because it overlaps. For example, BBBB actually contains two BBB patterns, BBBBB contains three and so on:
BBB=1
BBBB=2
BBBBB=3
BBBBBB=4
BBBBBBB=5
BBBBBBBB=6
BBBBBBBBB=7

In other words, if we’ve already seen an above average amount of BBB, then statistically it’s more likely that we’ll see BBP next.