Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Guess the casino, #645






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Answer: Monte Carlo

Posted by Rakewell at 12:03 PM

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2 comments:

Sebastian X said...

Dear Mr Grump,

You might consider this a nosey question, in which case disregard it, or have covered it before, in which case a link would suffice. What interests me is how you manage your cashflow. When you win money, how do you decide what you can spend, and what you should keep in the gambling-float to cover inevitable bad patches?

One of the reasons I ask is I had a go at gambling on the horses a while back, which was broadly successful in that it was slightly profitable. It involved a lot of hours of number-crunching, and I was quietly going mad, and in retrospect started to lose my focus and method towards the end. Having had time to think about it, I am looking to go back to it with more clear rigidly defined approach, planning this time to build up databases and run programmes to calculate the best percentages, and be more patient to fully test ideas before using real money. As it happens, I have very little capital to mess with, as my thinking is if my methods work, the capital will build up, and if not, lose the money I have assigned and then give up. (I have a record of every bet I have ever made with a bookie or online so I know I am ahead, but not by as much as I should be as I increased my bet-sizes as my discipline was slipping and as I hit a bad patch.) However, if I ever do build up to a scale I can start to take an income from it, I will have to work out some formula for how much I can take out as income.

The other thing is how do you decide what stake-level to play at. I expect that is different in poker in that lower-stake games are probably easier to be profitable in than higher-stake games, in that I assume (perhaps incorrectly) the standard of play tends to be higher at bigger games, but if you can be profitable at a higher level you can make money quicker. It may be or not best as a player to play a level below that one might to make less money more often. I watched a documentary on some bigger-name British poker players, and was quite shocked that they often borrow money when a bad patch wipes them out, usually paying 50% of their winnings to whoever they borrowed from until they are able to pay back the full loan amount, which they have to find from the 50% winnings they keep; seems a recipe for eventual inevitable disaster. I was much more impressed by a player, I think Barney Boatman, who when wiped out by a bad patch went back to small-stake games and built his way up again to the tournaments and bigger games.

Anyway, I would be very interested in your insights on this, and how you organise the financial discipline needed to be successful at gambling. My own theory is a successful gambler needs to have a very boring accountant-like side to his or her approach, or eventually trouble will befall.

Cheers,

Sebastian.

12:41 PM
Mark T said...

I've never been to the Monte Carlo, so had no chance to recognize this -- except I should have! It looks identical to how it looked in the climax of last year's Amazing Race. Why didn't I remember that?

12:08 AM

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