TomM

God bless Ellis, Relieved to hear your made it over the first hurdle. I hope the rest goes well. It is rare to meet someone in this day and age that can speak with hands on knowledge of a subject that is so misunderstood and misguided by the so called established gambling gurus that in the past ruled the printed page and now continue to spew inaccurate information via the internet. It is rare to find someone of such conviction and so knowledgeable of a subject and dedicated to dissolving the ignorance that pervades and entire industry. It's a breathe a of fresh air that we would all sorely miss if quenched before you can write your autobiography tentatively titled "The Player". It is clear to me that even though I readily admit to having gaps of understanding of your works, I am sure myself and others would stand in line to have you sign a copy of your book. Here's hoping that even with the uncertainty that we all face you are able to overcome the odds and are granted the time to write a book that only you are in a position to write. Hang in there. Don't let the bastards get you down. Tom

As long as you are recovering and have some time away from the daily grind let me tell you a story of one of the dumbest things I said to another human being. The Roy Rogers thing brought it to mind. I was renting out the 2nd story of a house in Denver that got bought by a guy that turned out to be an ex-cop that was looking for a place to live in while his life transitioned from former cop to working at a funeral parlor and an artist by night. I didn't know it at the time but he was looking to flip the house. It just so happened I had started a painting business out of pure necessity, not exactly love for the game. It paid the bills. So the first real conversation I had with the guy was about painting the house. The paint was in good shape and had just been pressure washed by the previous owner so he seeing my paint van he asked me if I would like to do the job and how much. After a survey of the job and having a painful memory of under bidding a similar older Victorian that's skin was in very bad shape I figured I would be done in less then 8 hours by myself taping and blowing one coat of premium paint with an airless. He wanted to do all the trim and gingerbread painting himself so perfect for me as I liked to blow down new construction with the airless and not mess with trim work. So I told him I'd do it for a months rent. From start to finish took me 8 hours or so. Anyway it was done that Saturday. I guess he was thinking I screwed myself doing it for a months rent probably because most homeowners were still hand brushing in those days. I don't remember what rent was exactly back then but I figured I could do it myself in day and it would be like 25 to 30 bucks and hour in 1973 dollars if I didn't fall off the ladder. So I'm cleaning up my airless and throwing it in the back of my van and he is impressed with how good it looked. By the time I had all my crap stowed away I walked in and he invited me in for a drink. He had a liter of Wild Turkey that already had a fairly sizable dent in it. After a couple belts he told me some cop stories and eventually got around to why he quit the force. Turns out he got shot with a 22 cal. that hit him in the clavicle bone and ricocheted out his back. The dumb line from me was " Did it hurt ? ". Anyway he kind of gave me a WTF look and went on to say it hurt like hell, and I could read in his body language that he was baffled by my response, so before he could say another word I said "Sorry man never been shot before ". It got weirder as the night lingered on, but not before he broke out his stash of some premium weed. Up until that time in my life I did not go looking for cops to hang out with. Most of the time it was trying not to get pulled over. This whole encounter with an ex-cop was a newbie for me. He did have some great cop stories, and we became friends for years to come. Anyway that's my dumb cop question story. Hope you can get back on your horse before long. Everybody should be able to get shot in the shoulder 472 times and come back singing “Back in the saddle againâ€.

Ellis, Not smoking anything these days, just schrooms lol. Seriously though I just do as you say with NOR. I wait for the strongest bias, try to get going as soon as I identify the best system and often settle for less than 10 units if the going gets tough. I still run SAP and enter a simple fractional dual Sap # on a standard vertical card and enter the direction of the OT vs. TBL every ten hands and keep the running C/S count. Other than that not much different than most. I try to keep in mind the bogey man of each system and look for overlap and try to select correctly the first time but keep an eye out for each systems nemesis. Anthony, I resized the image to the guidelines but I am still getting the red dot next to the uploaded file saying I do not have enough storage capacity left. I may have to contact Keith on that one. I don't know whats up with this forum and my Explorer 8 browser. Maybe have to check plug-ins or something else. I don't have any problems with Explorer 8 on anyplace else than here. I am using Firefox again tonight. I'll look into it when I have some time. Thanks.

I tried uploading Kelvins shoe #2 that Anthony tackled and we played the same so that's fine. I end up with +5 at #40 but I think that is because of a math error at top of his replay and maybe there is another I didn't look further than that. Or perhaps we both have a math error's. I have uploaded a lot of shoes in the past so I am wondering why when I tried uploading the dinky 184 kb jpeg it said I had exceeded my 5 mb limit. There was a little red dot next to the file that when I hovered over it tossed out a dialog box saying this so I gave up after a few attempts and resizing again but no go. I have been having periodic problems when I log in via Explorer 8 brower forcing me to relog sometimes 2 or 3 times before I can enter the NOR forum. So I switched to Firefox and it works better so that's what I am on now, but still having the same trouble yesterday with the jpeg upload attempt. I wrote a commentary yesterday to post with that shoe so I will just post that to get it off my desktop. Here goes something hopefully lol. Alright, I have made my share of transcription errors, but to carry on with Kelvins shoe #2 from lasts nights attempt on my part when I started I just compared Kelvin's play #'s to MVS' card and it looked right so I jumped in but when I hit play #32 I figured it must be a transcription error but it was late so I just did it the way I would have (same as Anthony's as it turns out), but last night I did not finish playing the column and made a math error and thought I would finish the 2nd column +3 but now in actually playing it out I caught my mental math error and it is better than I thought. So now my score with corrected math stands at +5 at #40, which isn't so bad all things considered, however with the 4's coming on strong in the second column and the 2's reduced to just one in that column I would probably just quit there. Also the score had bounced off +3 four times before arriving at that single +5. But if I pressed into the 3rd column I hit +6 and then lost the 1,2 bet against the Bank side which dragged me down once again to +3. If I was alert I would have quit there. If I did decide to go on I would only bet 1 unit because even though the 4's have been solid to this point the C/S count just hit a high minus of -4, the TB4L bets were outpacing the OTB4L in the prior column and that trend was continuing into the 3rd column. So taken as a whole, IF I didn't get out earlier I would make the one unit bet at #44 and losing just make +2 my bottom line and quit the shoe. I believe you said, once you hit +6 don't make a bet in that shoe that will take you below zero. So if you make the 4 unit bet on Bank and it stays a 5R you would have gone from +6 to -4 in five hands and the worst part is your running out of shoe and the SAP count isn't so great at 8, 8, 12,12...you might decide to just bet repeats but the 6 Ops that comes out spoils most of that. I think be grateful for what you got in this shoe and cut and run at either +3, or +5. Besides when the shoe ends 2's are least common and the 6 Ops in the third is a mode buster. At least that is how I see it. I would have definitely started OTB4L but as the shoe unfolded I would be looking for a good escape point in this one. P.S. In the first two columns the most consistent event was the 4 Ops which I may have added a chip or two to that bet at #33 that confirms the 4 Ops (the count was also favorable and 1‘s running slightly below normal) but I like to do that with money already won in the shoe and at that point my score was zero so only the standard NOR bet. Some of the counts online are much easier to calculate if you use Plasia’s Bac Helper. If it’s the first shoe of the session often entering while the shoe is already under way I will just use the Helper to get up to speed and then I like to have a card when I bet cash, but if you enter the game correctly all the shoes vital statistics are right there and if it is opportune you can begin cash play and catch up on the card later. But it is a good tool for me online. I don’t know if I have the latest version but if you are saving your shoes to documents and it ends with a 4 or more my version of Plasia’s Bac Helper will not count the final run because it doesn’t end with an opposite so you have to manually change that in Documents if you want the 4 or more count to be accurate but other than that I almost always run it along side the board online. Often in the heat of a game I will forget to enter or fall well behind so I often find myself entering the whole shoe when it ends. That way I quickly check for errors in the various counts and can save the whole thing to documents with any color commentary if there was something memorable about the shoe, shuffle etc. I know this shoe was played in a B&M casino but you can use Plasias Bac Helper to catalog your shoes in Documents and add any commentary if needed.

Ellis, On the second shoe that Kelvin submitted and you do a verbal replay in your post #9 I am with you until play #31 then you have it as "OK my second col was: 121 on P, 2B, 3P, 1231B, 1,1P, 1,1B, 1231P, 2B, for a +8" From the 1,1B that starts at #32 I lose your train of thought. I only managed to finish the 2nd column with a +3 with my understanding of the NOR modes regarding OTB4L. Since the downloaded shoes did not have an OTB4L shoes shifting between modes this may be a good example shoe to include in the samples. I was going finish and post this shoe but lost it at #32 so would appreciate a clarification from that point in the shoe to the finish. Or if the transcription is correct maybe someone else can work it out and post ?

Thanks Keith, Very clear and concise. Well done. Looking forward to the sample shoes.

]I think MVS covered Betphoenix or Bogartcasino.com (same live table) if you get lost in the Betphoenix kingdom of websites. I was hoping that someone that plays more than one online casino would start a thread about online (live dealer) games. I don't feel qualified to do it as I only play at Betphoenix live dealer baccarat so my observations are based on that and a couple thousand practice shoes at Dublinbet.com a couple years back. I have not played at Dublinbet lately simply because I don't have a cash account there but when I did practice there a lot their baccarat games were very good IMO even though they can deal absurdly fast during their day hours. If you want a slower dealt game try playing after midnight Dublin Time when the table fills up with the mostly Asian players. They do a good job of slowing down the dealer and it takes them a little longer to do pay-offs and such. As far as Betphoenix goes it can be hit or miss at times as sometimes they have technical problems and they may go down in the middle of the shoe or the video feed may go out entirely. Personally I have come to trust the shoes when the video is down because the shoes do not seem to take any more than the usual twists and turns. It just seems like business as usual without the video to me. Betphoenix itself is sort of an odd creature. I stumbled upon it as someone that rarely posts mentioned it as a place that accepted Americans. I checked out their site 3 months before I joined because it looked so goofy to me with the oversized cards and the mostly female dealers dressed provocatively and I guess the whole thing looked contrived and also it was based in Costa Rica which had a bad reputation for their online casino's in general back then. Always do your homework when it comes to any casino. Three months later lamenting the travel times and general crappiness of the nearest B&R casino I took a chance and deposited. So far my experience has been good and some bad. The first few months there bac shoes where like dreams from the past. Huge runs both opposite and repeat, and their signal was rock steady as according to the sports betting forums they had their own ISP then and was a huge well financed operation. The bad experience's is the day I joined they went off the air for an entire week ( as if my joining totaled the whole thing) and when I was about to kiss my deposit goodbye they were up and running again. Ever since then their signal out of Costa Rica has not been all that reliable. If I had access to Dublinbet and the rest of the highly ranked live player casinos I would probably not play there that much. But if you have no option either because you live in a country like the USA that has online gambling regulations that make it hard to use other online casinos you may want to give Bph a try. They do have a nice setup displaying the shoe on a horizontal card and a vertical card that you can scroll through if you want. The average shoe takes about an Hour and 15 minutes but can extend a bit when the dealers seem to be staring off into space not sure of what to do. I personally think they are cued to pull a card to the bank or player by staging lights like at a drag strip or something to that effect. This is one way they keep dealer errors to a minimum IMO. But you still have to deal with dropped games occasionally and or a play that freezes and then suddenly BLIPS and you are on the next hand. Your money is refunded usually. I had one occasion to contact them on this because I thought they shorted me $ 10.00 bucks but they never answered a couple of emails so I blew it off. Another time I tuned in and the dealer was dealing a perfect pattern of I forget exactly what but something like 2112 or 3113 and me just coming alive I just put $10.00 dollars on the pattern and it never broke for the whole shoe at which time they abruptly closed the table. I won 20 bets in a row so close to $200.00. So to make a long story short they credited me the winning then took it back saying the dealer had neglected to shuffle the cards. So I shot back via email that being it was only a couple hundred forget about it as accidents happen. Of course what I wanted to say was pay me you cheap mothers cuz it ain't my problem your dealer didn't shuffle, but I bit my tongue on that one mostly because it is my only real money outlet. All in all I would describe Betphoenix as a learning experience in online baccarat play at an upstart casino who has to the date of this writing gone through so many shuffle maneuvers I have lost count. In the past week they have eliminated most good F-betting opportunities as their shoes are distinctly favoring OTB4L betting which is just dandy with me after I dust off Skor/ks (basically OTB4L with cues as to when to take the TB4L shots then retreat to OTB4L rinse and repeat). In that manner it is like NOR but flat bets except on what PJ has brought up recently on 2nd liners and also with options for those that want to play 212 or 222 down runs if one wants. Leaning toward flat betting is not a bad option at Bph as if the shoe BLIPS and you miss a hand it isn't as crucial as when you are on a progression run. In summary, I would think it is a good place to practice as they change their shuffle procedures so frequently that it will force you to learn every aspect of this game as a survival mechanism. And if you doze off like some of us old codgers tend to do, your bet is taken down after each hand unlike Dublinbet. I think anybody can open a fun account there and they let you play pretty much unmolested as long as you make a bet every forth hand fun or money mode. Just net bet a $5.00 on each side to keep from being tossed. You can even play dollar progressions to get the feel for whatever system you may be practicing with net bets based at a dollar until you see something worth a full unit bet. Also to save on score cards if you are screwing around and have a monitor of 20 inches or more you can run Plasia's Bac Helper program right next to the game and record it and save the shoe to documents and if you are really committed take those and put a whole session of several shoes as a cover sheet on the shoes you actually used a card on. I only wish that you could hit a button and the data from the Plasia's Bac Helper would print out a corresponding graph of the saved shoes. Are you listening Plasia ? wink, wink lol. P.S. For whatever reason with a monitor of 20" the Bac helper fits better with the firefox browser... the bac table is a little smaller then with explorer 8 anyway. Oh and if you can not stand to look at the dealers any longer with the deer in the headlights gaze happening do what I do and trim a post it note to just cover their torso so you can still see the discard rack and shoe. P.P.S I don’t remember where Plasia’s Bac Helper application is located in the forum....maybe someone can help. I can never seem to get the search function to work well here. DUH

Great Ellis, I have been having a hard time the last few outings at Bph. I was just about to review my cards to see what is up and devise something to handle there latest offerings. One thing they have added to the agenda lately is the blacking out of the video feed at the end of the shoe so you can not tell whether the cards are changed or not. The first time I encountered this I noticed that a streaky shoe was usually followed by a choppy one. That was fine but lately the shoes are far more difficult. Most shoes are very segmented and the various segments tend not to last long which can have you switching from betting opposites to F2/3 to OTB4L and back again. In the past I over used F3 with a very conservative progression and even slipping into F/4 at times with success but this current crop of shoes is not really ripe for that The weak side just doesn't stay weak enough long enough for that strategy any longer there. They may have just hired some talent to stack the decks. With the video blackout between shoes and having no idea how many shoes may be in play at any time makes speculating on the next shoe basically worthless IMO. Strangely, in my last two sessions there I had my winning shoes after I had quit money mode and switched to fun mode. In each case I had turned off the computer and poured myself some wine and flipped on the tube and then logged back into a shoe in progress and played very well just off the board without the hassle of all my multi-tracking devices. Even though all the tracking can be a hassle the one huge benefit for me is numerically seeing what comprises a tough shoe and quit it or make adjustments. In other words, if I see the numbers are against me and I continue to play it is easy to predict the outcome. You may not win every shoe this way but you will always know exactly why you lost one. This is one of the reasons I keep very accurate cards with a lot of data even though it is admittedly a PIA at times. Even though these highly segmented shoes are nothing new it does require more vigilance especially if you have no table selection as playing online or in a one table town. Perhaps ADN Net will help with these shoes. If not maybe I will toss the card have a drink and play the board and see what happens.

I too, cannot access the NOR thread. Last time this happened it was straighened out the next day. I'll try again tommorow. In the meantime their are some current replies from Ellis and others in the IMSPIRIT blog you may want to check out.

Well said, Daytrader, I only attended two seminars in the 90's and they were well worth the admission fee. I hope this comes off without a hitch and the live games can be detailed to NOR specific play and any options that may appear. If the video/audio recording of the seminar are made available to paid lifetime members at a reasonable fee I am certain that would be acceptable to most members. I wish all the participants well. I hope you come away from it with a better approach to the game. Looking forward to the recording, and Ellis/Keith's observations as well as all that were able to attend. I hope this is not Ellis' last hurrah as mentioned ,as I would like to see at least one live play and seminar in a smoke free casino perhaps in Canada or any other smoke free environments'. Any suggestions ? My best to all attendee’s. Tom

Hmmm, I'll keep my eyes open for board errors. There have been good NOR shoes lately. Some real sweet super chop lately. Keep an eye out for TB4L/X even with the occasional 2 with over and under chop doesn't much matter. Depending on my mood I will usually sidestep the tough shoes if there is something else to do for an hour and check back just before the shoe ends to record the end of the shoe and go from there. Often times I find myself puzzling over the multiple ways to beat some shoes. Sometimes I pick the way that I think will win the most units and other times get lazy and F-bet some stuff just because it will work or am just getting tired and take the route of least resistance. It's a good problem to have.

If you mean the tote board was displaying more than one shoe, that is their intermittent somewhat interesting countermeasure I presume. I mean such a huge expenditure on technology and they forgot the auto delete button for erasing the tote board after a shoe is completed ! At least the connection was better on day shift today. If this trend continues I think I will switch to days. Have to reset my body clock though.

I can usually deal with no video but no video and the feed freezing and them resetting the game and not knowing whats going on is getting old. They need to do an upgrade to their upgrade, because the last one didn't do jack. I can't imagine anyone playing the 3C min table with these conditions. I think I will try early days or after midnight. Swing shift EST seems to be plagued with the most problems.

My 1st shoe tonight ended at 10:14 pm est. That's Monday night and my 3rd and final shoe ended 1:10 am Tuesday est. I didn't have any trouble tonight but they could easily have been down for any part of yesterday as I never even checked until after 10:00 pm est. In the break between the first and second shoe the screen went black just long enough for us not to see if they actually changed the cards. I know what you mean though, depending on what is going on in my life I try to schedule a session but sometimes I get all wired on coffee flip it on and get skunked. Been there done that could be me with the same report tomorrow. In one of the Oceans trilogy movies Clooney f'ed up and was knocking on Pitts door thinking the robbery was on for that day. Was kind of funny because they show Pitt opening the door to see Clooney obviously wired and once he convinces him the caper is on for the next day he asks him how many espressos he had and Clooney says 3 and the camera pans to the two of them sitting on the couch pouring generous drinks to unwind Clooney so they can get some sleep for the caper in 24 hours hence. I'm haven't a clue why that popped into my head, but it is 3:00 am and I'm done with my caper and downing some wine.

Happy Birthday Uncle E. Hey its just like riding a bicycle...hold on tight and don't fall off. lol