I'm awed and appreciative for the 1- or 2-week's long discussion generated by
my original post seeking guidance for a SLOW transition from JoB to DB.
I'll try to re-focus the discussion:
"What 1 or 2 simple strategy variations of JoB can I work on that will
give me another .1% to .2% EV when I switch to 10/7? (JoB strategy w/o any
mods should give a 99.6-99.7 EV when switching machines)"
After we resolve this issue, my next seminal questions will be:
1. "How did trashing VP lead to 9/11?"
2. "What is Bush's role in Paytable degradation?"
Responses will be summarized and forwarded to the 9/11 Commission.
Rick
In a message dated 4/13/2004 9:31:20 AM Pacific Standard Time,
billvelek@alltel.net writes:
I'm going to condense the past conversation a bit as follows:
HP: Under a 10% ror ... <snip> ... that's not sufficient reduced risk
to bother.
SJ: How much reduced risk would make it worth the bother? ... <snip>
... If you don't have any criteria for how much ER you are willing to
give up in exchange for some a given reduction in risk, then it seems to
me that you don't really know if it would be worth the bother or not.
ME: Doesn't the answer fall within a gray area that is likely to vary
day by day, according to a person's whims?
SJ: If one goes by whims, then sure. If one goes by math, then the
decision might be quite consistent.
My current reply: Well, it seems to me that the weighing of the two
alternatives is a personal value-judgment that has no right or wrong
answer, and therefore probably doesn't have what anyone could say is a
'mathematically correct' answer, despite that the values that are being
considered are derived via math. I don't think the human brain
functions like that for most of us. If I showed you a gray panel that
was very close to midway between black and white, today you might say
that it is closest to white, but then think about it as you lay in bed
and the next morning decide that its actually closest to black. To me,
an initial decision upon a question such as the one at hand involving
Risk of Ruin, amidst the constantly changing status of bankroll, seems
even more likely to be subject to constant second guessing if it
happened to be a very close call to begin with. And that's what I think
we might be dealing with here. For instance, it is obviously a 'no
brainer' if your math reveals that your alternative strategy will cut my
risk in half in exchange for a reduction in ER on only .1% in a game
where I have a .5% edge; it is likewise a 'no brainer' if your figures
indicate that I'd need to surrender virtually my entire edge for a
modest 10% reduction in my risk. The problem, as I said, comes in where
the decision is perhaps a very difficult one, and is based on more than
just math. How does it involve more than math? Well, ruin can mean
something more to one person than another, especially if my ruin is the
complete loss of a session-stake that will be replenished with more
disposable income next week and I happen to be a local who can just
drive over to the casino, and your ruin might happen to mean much more.
It just seems to me that when you add to the equation other
considerations which are difficult or impossible to quantitate, then
you'll find people "going by whims" more often than "going by math" for
this sort of a decision. However, I'd like to ask you if you could
perhaps explain your earlier statement to Harry, which was:
"If you don't have any criteria for how much ER you are willing to give
up in exchange for some a given reduction in risk, then it seems to me
that you don't really know if it would be worth the bother or not."
Have you personally established such "criteria", are they mathematically
precise, and can you give us an example or two? And if you just mean
that you have decided that it is "worth the bother" whenever RoR= x at
the same time that sacrificed ER= y ... could you explain what value you
gave to "bother", or how your threshold was determined by anything other
than a non-mathematical and arbitrary choice on your part?
Bill Velek
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