Regression Avoids Depression Part 20

Part 20

Today we are going to dive into the whole how-much-money-do-I-REALLY-need-to-properly-exploit-my-edge question in extraordinary detail.

Having An Edge Does Not Guarantee a Profit

Even if you play with a substantial advantage over the casino, it does not guarantee that you will always emerge with a profit.

Edge is one thing, but the win-some, lose-some volatility on the bets that you make, is something completely different.

To my mind, volatility has to be chief amongst the considerations when a player is seeking to exploit his edge over the casino on any given bet.

 
Without a doubt, knowing what your “EV edge” (expected-value advantage) over the house is, is always important; but knowing how volatile that edge is, is something that also has to be considered.

For example, a 1% edge over your flat Passline wager is much less volatile than a 1% edge over the prop-bet 12-Midnight.  So even though your edge over both of those bets is the same; you’ll likely experience much wider volatility swings with one than the other. 

When the same value of wagers are made, the 12-Midnight bettor will require a much larger bankroll than the Passline-bettor does.  That is because the Prop-bettor with the same edge as the PL-only bettor, will endure much more bankroll volatility on his way to deriving the same overall 1% edge-derived-profit as the PL-bettor does.

Consider this…

• An advantage-player has to overcome a hefty house-edge of 13.89% on the 12-Midnight, but only has to surmount a miniscule 1.41% house edge on a flat Pass-line wager.
• The 12-Midnight has a less recurrent win-frequency(due to its lower appearance-rate), but a much higher 30:1 payout-to-bet ratio.
• The Passline enjoys a more recurrent win frequency (due to its higher win-rate), but a lower, even-money (1:1) payout-ratio.

As a result, a 1% player-edge (or any positive-expectation edge for that matter) on a particular bet cannot be viewed in isolation.  Rather, each wager has to be viewed in relation to the occurrence-rate (the expected frequency) of its appearance, as well as the payout-ratio (x:1) of what that particular bet pays when it does show up.

To get a handle on bet-volatility (and therefore the volatility you’ll experience over your entire gaming bankroll if you look at all of your wagers from this same perspective); you have to determine how frequently a given advantage-play bet will occur during an average hand.  That way, if we know how often it will usually show up, we start to get a handle on how volatile each of our positive-expectation bets will be; and therefore we get an excellent grasp of how large our bankroll draw-downs will likely be.

Ø      If we know that there will be naturally occurring gaps in between winning payouts, then we’ll be less likely to let that formerly annoying pause between paying-hits affect our shooting. 

Ø      If we understand how volatility works within the parameters of our current advantage-play dice-influencing skills; then there’s less of a chance, as Heavy would say, that “the crap between our ears” will conspire to diminish the effectiveness of our actual throws.

For example, in a random play, the Inside-bet accounts for 50% of all outcomes and provides an Inside-numbers-to-7 ratio of 3:1. In the hands of an SRR-7 shooter, Inside-numbers will generally account for about 51.19% of all outcomes. Now on the face of it, a slight increase of 1.19% in frequency-occurrence doesn’t seem like much; however, that’s not the whole picture because the now-reconfigured Inside-numbers-to-7’s ratio suddenly jumps to around 3.6:1, which is a 20% increase in the all-important hits-per-7-Out ratio. To my mind, that is where the “advantage” in advantage-play really comes from.

When the dice are in your hand, it’s obviously quite difficult to tell the difference between a random Inside-Number appearance-rate of 50% and an SRR-7 appearance-rate of 51.19%; but the difference is there nonetheless, and it

is in that difference where your D-I skills bear the most profitable fruit. 

If there’s a better reason to use roll-tracking software to track, analyze, and confirm your actual edge against each and every bet on the layout…I can’t think of one.

I’m not egotistical enough to think that I can intuitively tell the difference between a randomly-expected Inside-Number appearance-rate of 50% and a heavily advantaged rate of 51.19% without the aid of tracking software or at least some serious paper-and-pencil ciphering time…and that goes a long way to explaining why most dice-influencers miss out on the majority of the money-making opportunities that their current skills are offering.

Admittedly, most players prefer to use an in-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants kind of “intuitive betting” that in most cases is either one or two rolls too late, or is anticipatorily outsized (over-bet) for their current skills…which in either case, ends up bruising their ego and leaves them questioning whether or not they really have any exploitable D-I talent whatsoever…even though the easy-to-attain but mostly ignored profit-opportunities are right there in front of them.

Ø      Combining your better-than-random expected hit-rate with the return-on-investment offered by your positive EV-edge provides an easy and straight-forward way to measure: bet-volatility, and likely draw-down levels, and ultimately answers the how-much-bankroll-is-required-to-properly-finance-this-wager question.

The smart dice-influencer takes a long and honest look at his current talents to determine where his chief opportunities are and then puts a reasonable amount of his betting-weight on only his strongest, most-compelling wagers in order to derive a consistently extractable profit. 

Though this common sense approach is not as impetuous or spontaneous as the seat-of-the-pants impulse betting preferred by most players; it sure produces a lot more profit.

When To Invest, and How Much To Invest

Looking at the number of decisions you are likely to produce on any given A-P bet before the 7-Out occurs, let’s you “invest” (wager) the correct proportionally-adjusted-for-volatility-and-risk amount of money on this particular advantage-play opportunity.

Investing the proper amount of adjusted-for-volatility money on each advantage-play opportunity helps you determine whether that wager will produce the profit (both R.O.I.-percentage and total dollars-won) that you want or need, and it will also show how much of a bankroll-swing you are likely to encounter along the way. That in turn let’s you make informed, honest, rational decisions about whether or not you are properly financed in order to avoid the risk of I-will-give-up-craps-if-I-lose-this-amount-of-money ruin.

When all of your A-P bets are measured in this fashion, you can then determine how much of a total gaming bankroll you’ll need in order to adequately fund the type and level of all the bets you are considering; so that’s what we are going to look at today.

As I explained in Part 19 of this series, the following chart shows what your edge-per-roll will likely be based upon regressing your large initial bet down to a smaller one at the optimal trigger-point during your point-cycle.

We can use these edge-per-roll figures to answer the whole how-much-money-do-I-REALLY-need-to-properly-exploit-my-edge question in extraordinary detail. 

Let’s take a look at the Inside-bet to see how much of a bankroll we should reasonably have in our total I-will-give-up-craps-if-I-lose-this-amount-of-money gaming bankroll for this particular wager.

Now on the face of it, a recommended total I-will-give-up-craps-if-I-lose-this-amount-of-money bankroll of at least $9000 for an SRR-7 shooter using a 2:1 Steepness ratio ($44 regressed to $22) seems rather excessive, but that is the amount we need to ensure that we’ll never reach that “I’m-giving-up-this-damn-game” point in our advantage-play efforts.

What’s even more illustrative about this chart is the fact that as your skill-level improves, you can afford to play with a much smaller bankroll for the exact same multi-number global wager.  For example, an SRR-8 shooter making that same 2:1 regression only needs a total bankroll of $3500, while the SRR-9 precision-shooter can have a dedicated total bankroll of only $2000 for this particular wager to attain the same profit objectives.

Take a look at how that holds true for the All-Across wager too…

The next thing that becomes patently clear when you review these charts, is that the more numbers you spread your wagers across and the more money you have on the table at any given time to cover these multi-number wagers; the more of a total bankroll you will need in order to safely stake-horse and properly finance these bets.

By now I’m sure a lot of you will be asking yourself, “Am I prepared to dedicate this much money to that particular bet?”

If the answer is “No”; then you should either reduce your current betting-level on these wagers…or select a betting-method that covers fewer wagers…or improve your shooting…or a combination of all of them.

Invest on Strength and Purge on Weakness

This is where we start to get into some situations that illuminate the whole idea of focusing your positive-expectation investments on the strongest wagers in your advantage-play arsenal while simultaneously avoiding or purging all the weaker or negative-edge bets from your wagering regimen.

Take a look at the following chart to see how much (well, actually, how little) of a total gambling budget is needed to properly and safely exploit a basic 6 and 8 Place-bet when you are using an Initial Regression style of betting. 

Since the 6 and 8 Place-bet is a fairly low-volatility wager to begin with, a dice-influencer doesn’t need as much money to take properly advantage of it.  That is because your bankroll will endure much less whipsaw back-and-forth win-some/lose-some volatility, and therefore you don’t need as big of a safety-net to comfortably take advantage of your positive-expectation skills.

The same bankroll-requirement characteristics that you have for the regressed Place-bet 6 & 8 holds true for the regressed-at-the-optimal-time Place-bet 5 & 9 too.

Take a look…

If You Don’t Know This By Now…

If it isn’t clear by now that you have to be sufficiently bankrolled in order to take proper advantage of your dice-influencing, then the lesson has not only been lost; but more importantly, there is very little chance that you’ll be able to turn your current dice-influencing skills into sustainable profit…not because you can’t, but simply because you choose not to.

 Coming Up

“Okay Mad Professor, so I’ve got a proper-sized  bankroll and I know which bets I have the biggest edge over, and I know when to regress them at the optimal trigger-point; now HOW MUCH MONEY can I expect to make on a per-hand, per-session, per-day, per-week, per-month and per-year basis?”

In Part 21 of this series, we are going to dive into the whole HOW-MUCH-money-can-I-expect-to-make-off-of-these-bets-and-HOW-LONG-before-I-double-my-bankroll question in extraordinary detail.  I hope you’ll join me for that.

Until then,

 Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.

Sincerely,

 The Mad Professor

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