Working in the casino business and playing VP for as long as I have, I have
no doubt I have forgotten more than you will ever know.
I dealt blackjack in Vegas for a year around 1990. I'd also play blackjack
myself. I knew basic strategy & card counting pretty well.
Sometimes when I was playing, I'd make a mathematically correct decision, & the
dealer would tell me I was making a mistake. Sometimes I'd just ignore it, but
if I was feeling chatty, I'd thank the dealer & tell him he was wrong. (Since I
played low limits, I didn't have to disguise my skill.) And sometimes the
dealer would get angry, & respond with some line about how he'd been dealing
this game for over 10 years, so I ought to realize that he must know what he's
talking about.
I think the confusion arises from the fact that in so many things in life, we
*do* automatically pick up the correct strategy from experience. If you act
towards people in a certain way, & people always respond poorly, you'll very
naturally, automatically learn to try a different style of action. If you eat
something & feel miserable, you'll learn -- without any sophisticated analysis -
- to not eat it the next time.
People assume that everything in life is like that: as you gain more & more
experience, you'll move closer & closer to the correct understanding. But in
the case of blackjack, it won't necessarily happen. Have one person play
blackjack for 50 years without ever reading anything about correct play. Have
another person study computer-analysed blackjack strategy for two days. The
second person will be a better player.
Likewise with video poker. It's counter-intuitive, considering how life often
works in other situations, but the correct mathematical analysis of VP will
bring a level of understanding that 100 years of experience would never bring.
Stuart (RandomStu)
sresnick2@attbi.com
http://home.attbi.com/~sresnick2/mypage.htm
ยทยทยท
From: "Bob Craig" <vp_expert@hotmail.com>