If you play 99% of the hands correctly in 10-7 DB your total expected return is much greater than 99.1%. It is highly unlikely that your mistakes have an average cost of five credits. Many 10-7 DB plays are very close (Second best play within $0.02 for the $1 player.) so if you play 99% of the hands correct you probably are playing between 100.16% and 100.17% expected return. (perfect is 100.1725%)
From:
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----- Original Message -----
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 12/25/2007 7:53:40 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Re: math question
11a. math question
Date: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:08 am ((PST))Merry Christmas All,
If I am playing FP DDB (100.1% ) and playing perfectly, I can expect a .1%
positive return over the long long term, right? If say I am playing at 99%
accuracy, is that 1% subtracted from the 100.1% in terms of expected long long
term returns thereby giving me an expected return of 99.1%. I don't even know
if that question makes sense. It does in my head but I don't know if I asked it
correctly. I really like the feature on Bob Dance's software that tells me my
accuracy but I'll be darned if I have been able to score perfect 100% play over
1000+ hands. Thanks.
As you seem to recognize, the question is not easy to answer. If you're making an error every 100 hands, the effect of that on your return will depend on WHAT the error is -- if it's choosing a hand with a 1.003 EV instead of the one with the 1.004 EV, that's one thing; if it's choosing a hand with a 1.003 EV instead of the one with the 2.5 EV, that's another (no particular hands in mind when I say this, but just a general point).
So not considering a penalty card correctly may not be too serious. Forgetting to hold quads before you hit "draw" is probably pretty expensive, even if you only do it half the time that you get dealt a quad, and even if that's the only mistake you make, causing your error rate to be far less than 1%.
To be more serious, the mistakes I CATCH myself making that I worry about are when I'm tired and either miss a pair and hold the two high cards instead, or miss a second pair -- when I make a mistake like that, it's time to quit and get some rest!!!
Before I continue to make EXPENSIVE mistakes like that more than once per hundred hands -- and of course, we are only talking about the mistakes we CATCH ourselves making - while computer practice can tell you how perfectly you play ON THE COMPUTER, only someone watching every hand and knowing every correct play can tell you how many mistakes you make in the casino setting in "real life", which I believe has more opportunities for mistakes than practice environments.
I DO believe that lots of practice improves your ability to perform perfectly -- if the practice is perfect (the old saying is NOT "practice makes perfect", but "perfect practice makes perfect"). I also believe that mistakes that you make systematically (you make them every time you are faced with a given decision) take a LOT of correct plays before you beat them out of your head -- it's a lot of work to un-learn a bad play you once thought was right, to the point where the correct play becomes the "automatic" one.
Fortunately for me, I NEVER played either VP or blackjack by "instinct", but instead book-learned and practiced correct basic strategy for each before ever playing "for real" - so that I don't have many wrong plays to un-learn, only close decisions to learn to refine to be better, eg, penalty cards in VP, and changing from basic strategy based on the count in blackjack.
--BG
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