The Recreational Forum Needs To be Split into Two Parts

The lighter side... playing for entertainment, less concerned about "the math."
New2vp
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Re: The Recreational Forum Needs To be Split into Two Parts

Post by New2vp »

Conspicuously stated but not convincingly nor consistently. Maybe he has an issue with adverbs that start with "con." However, as to verbs, he is conning no one, but perhaps himself.

FloridaPhil
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Post by FloridaPhil »

All I can say is what Bob Dancer told me in his email over ten years ago. "Call us in ten years and tell us how you are doing."

New2vp
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Post by New2vp »

FloridaPhil wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:37 am
All I can say is what Bob Dancer told me in his email over ten years ago. "Call us in ten years and tell us how you are doing."
Oh, how nice would it be if it were true that this is all you could say? Even so, we would need to be braced for seeing it 1,000 times. Congratulations on once again beating the odds. Bob may have thought that with the views that you espoused, it was unlikely for you to do the things necessary to survive a decade.

tech58
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Post by tech58 »

This thread is a quick read,only 15 posts.
It started off with a well written description of a well known problem.

Anyone care to point out where it went off the rails?

IMHO it is not long after the initial post. In fact reeeel close to it. ......

"And the band played on"

New2vp
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Post by New2vp »

OTABILL wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:08 pm
More importantly regarding the forum, I feel like a heretic. I have brought up the way I view VP and have been lambasted. I twice mentioned following reading John Scarne’s advice to look at a visit to the casino as I described above. I felt kinship with those burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition. The irony was the attacks against my use of Scarne were spurious and had nothing to do with the simple advice I was following. Rather they cited his qualifications regarding Blackjack and as a gambling expert. ... A different perspective is not tolerated by the VP-correct, mathematician forum police.
Bill, sorry your topic seems to have been taken over by another Phil-filled free-for-all. I did not remember your previous references, nor do I recall ever before reading of Scarne's views, works or lives. So, I looked these up to see what you were alluding to. Thanks for the reference.

Feeling like you had "kinship with those burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition" might seem to be a bit dramatic or at least an overstatement.

I've included a couple of those statements here which clearly disagreed that Scarne was a great source of sage advice, but I might have missed some of the critiques that were particularly harsher eliciting those negative feelings that you cited.
BobDancer wrote:
Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:50 pm
John Scarne certainly wrote a book that sold well. Good for him! But he had a lot of misstatements in it, including the silly you just cited --- for not the first time.
billryan wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:04 am
Scarne has long since been exposed as a fraud. He literally just made stuff up. Once computer simulations became common, many of his plays were shown to be way off. He advocates sticking on all 16s vs 10s. It's a very common hand and playing it his way will cost serious money. He actually accused Ed Thorpe of wearing xray glasses and insisted card counting doesn't work.
He was a charlatan, a self promoter who wrote books littered with horrible advice which is also forty years out of date. It's a fun read, especially if one understands math and how he misapplied it.
So that you didn't once again feel that your reference to Scarne was being universally slighted, I wanted to make sure to thank you for bringing him to the attention of the few that read these posts. It is certainly difficult for the advice from long ago not to have been improved upon with all the changes in technology, but each generation builds upon the knowledge developed by earlier generations.

Of course, I haven't read any of Scarne's actual works yet, but it seems that what you are saying here is that gambling within limits is fun, maybe more fun without using any math at all, and once in a while you can even leave after consuming gambling with more cash than you started with. I'm guessing there might be more to it than that ... or he wouldn't have written 7 books (at least that is what I saw). I certainly agree that many like to gamble with no particular knowledge or interest in math. Casinos would certainly be emptier (or non-existent) if all the gamblers were required to have scored in the 99th percentile on the math section of the SAT.

I just didn't want your contribution in starting this thread to be overshadowed or your message to be stepped all over by what has transpired in the short time since you started it.

OTABILL
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Post by OTABILL »

New2vp wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:58 am
OTABILL wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:08 pm
More importantly regarding the forum, I feel like a heretic. I have brought up the way I view VP and have been lambasted. I twice mentioned following reading John Scarne’s advice to look at a visit to the casino as I described above. I felt kinship with those burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition. The irony was the attacks against my use of Scarne were spurious and had nothing to do with the simple advice I was following. Rather they cited his qualifications regarding Blackjack and as a gambling expert. ... A different perspective is not tolerated by the VP-correct, mathematician forum police.
Bill, sorry your topic seems to have been taken over by another Phil-filled free-for-all. I did not remember your previous references, nor do I recall ever before reading of Scarne's views, works or lives. So, I looked these up to see what you were alluding to. Thanks for the reference.

Feeling like you had "kinship with those burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition" might seem to be a bit dramatic or at least an overstatement.

I've included a couple of those statements here which clearly disagreed that Scarne was a great source of sage advice, but I might have missed some of the critiques that were particularly harsher eliciting those negative feelings that you cited.
BobDancer wrote:
Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:50 pm
John Scarne certainly wrote a book that sold well. Good for him! But he had a lot of misstatements in it, including the silly you just cited --- for not the first time.
billryan wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:04 am
Scarne has long since been exposed as a fraud. He literally just made stuff up. Once computer simulations became common, many of his plays were shown to be way off. He advocates sticking on all 16s vs 10s. It's a very common hand and playing it his way will cost serious money. He actually accused Ed Thorpe of wearing xray glasses and insisted card counting doesn't work.
He was a charlatan, a self promoter who wrote books littered with horrible advice which is also forty years out of date. It's a fun read, especially if one understands math and how he misapplied it.
So that you didn't once again feel that your reference to Scarne was being universally slighted, I wanted to make sure to thank you for bringing him to the attention of the few that read these posts. It is certainly difficult for the advice from long ago not to have been improved upon with all the changes in technology, but each generation builds upon the knowledge developed by earlier generations.

Of course, I haven't read any of Scarne's actual works yet, but it seems that what you are saying here is that gambling within limits is fun, maybe more fun without using any math at all, and once in a while you can even leave after consuming gambling with more cash than you started with. I'm guessing there might be more to it than that ... or he wouldn't have written 7 books (at least that is what I saw). I certainly agree that many like to gamble with no particular knowledge or interest in math. Casinos would certainly be emptier (or non-existent) if all the gamblers were required to have scored in the 99th percentile on the math section of the SAT.

I just didn't want your contribution in starting this thread to be overshadowed or your message to be stepped all over by what has transpired in the short time since you started it.
New2VP, thanks for your on-topic comment. I'll hopefully be brief in responding. "Burning at the stake" was meant for emphasis, agree it was overkill. Scarne's "Complete Guide to Gambling" was an epic tome, published in 1961, that was over 700 pages. I was not referring to his gambling expertise or his explaining the rules of everything from craps to gin rummy, but obviously nothing on VP which wasn't in casinos until the 1970s. Rather I found one snippet, perhaps a paragraph, the essence of which was that anyone going to a casino for gambling should view it like going out for any other type of entertainment. Budget how much you intend to spend, nothing more, and enjoy the experience. He added that if you came home a winner, view it as an added bonus. I had borrowed the book from the library more than 50 years ago so forgive me if my choice of words is inaccurate. As a casual gambler/VP player I found his advice of looking at each trip to a casino logical given my perspective.

I am interested in the mathematical aspects of VP, albeit calculus was not one of my favorite classes. What I want is one forum devoted to the fun aspects, non-mathematical aspects of playing VP in a casino. That's all.

Webman
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Post by Webman »

OTABILL wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:07 pm
I am interested in the mathematical aspects of VP, albeit calculus was not one of my favorite classes. What I want is one forum devoted to the fun aspects, non-mathematical aspects of playing VP in a casino. That's all.
You are spot on, OTABILL. That is the exact purpose of this forum (and why more than one is unnecessary).

If people would just stop bringing up "experts," long term play, etc and focus on experiences playing recreationally, we wouldn't have all these non-stop spinoffs. Unfortunately, the person most responsible for that sees himself as a victim rather than realizing his own contribution to the problem.

I suppose it's on me to better enforce the "recreational" aspect of this particular subforum.

Sometimes conversations evolve and it can be hard to tell exactly where this line was crossed.

I apologize, and I'll try to do better.

New2vp
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Post by New2vp »

OTABILL wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:07 pm
I am interested in the mathematical aspects of VP, albeit calculus was not one of my favorite classes. What I want is one forum devoted to the fun aspects, non-mathematical aspects of playing VP in a casino. That's all.
Absolutely agree. The recreational forum was originally a great idea ... in concept. For example, it was getting to be old uninteresting "news" (without the recreational forum) when someone posted a jackpot picture only to have another poster point out that the game had a very low EV. Unfortunately, to this day the recreational forum is now and again misused (in my opinion ... by a very few ... or maybe one) as an attempt at being a safe haven from which to lob bombs at concepts suited to the strategy forum. "Bombs" that have been previously detonated and that have lost their explosive power, to carry a metaphor a little further. Of course, people are going to disagree. Maybe some think that the bomb throwing is entertaining. For some, it has outlived its amusement value.

There are people who enjoy both strategy and recreational aspects, so just because someone has previously posted and shown an ability to understand strategy, I wouldn't think that would disqualify them from being interested in recreational aspects. Or from wanting to share different opinions. Or from correcting obvious misstatements.

Nevertheless, I was hoping to bring this thread back to Scarne in case anyone had anything else positive to say about him. I don't know if I'll get around to buying a book myself, so if there is a Cliff notes version that anyone wants to care to offer, I would be interested in browsing.

EDIT: Sorry, I did not see Webman's post before submitting my response.
Last edited by New2vp on Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

FloridaPhil
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Post by FloridaPhil »

OTABILL wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:07 pm
What I want is one forum devoted to the fun aspects, non-mathematical aspects of playing VP in a casino. That's all.
I wish you luck. Unfortunately, that will never happen. The Recreational Forum was suppose to be that place. If you ever commit the unforgivable sin of contradicting the conclusions drawn by the video poker math establishment, you will be ostracized forever.

Math is a science. Science is not the problem. For centuries people thought bad blood was the cause of disease. They bled people or placed leaches on them as a cure. I am sure anyone who challenged that belief was declared a fraud.

What you are observing is randomness. It is entirely possible to do everything absolutely 100% perfect according to any strategy and lose on any given day. A hundred years from now, assuming video poker still exists, your results will still not be predetermined. You can win or lose now or then.

Many players have come on this forum and stated the new games are worse than the older games. That is not my belief. As long as the game itself is the same, how fast the chip works is immaterial. In a legal game of video poker anything can happen at any time. If you wish to question the method or frequency of legality testing, I will support you. No one tests the video poker games in Florida. Players must take the tribes word that they are fair. Another good reason to play small.

New2vp
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Post by New2vp »

FloridaPhil wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:32 pm
If you ever commit the unforgivable sin of contradicting the conclusions drawn by the video poker math establishment, you will be ostracized forever.
Whenever you show an acumen for CORRECTLY contradicting mathematical conclusions, I will be all ears. But you should probably not do that in the recreational forum.

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