XDN

IMHO - I wouldn't hold bitcoin as a currency...however since I started using it the price of on bitcoin went from the low $300s (USD) to the low $400's so had I held some I could have made some cash ... but it could have cratered to. Bitcoin price dove a few months ago when the European Union started talking about regulating it. So things like that can cause people to dump bitcoin and cause the price to go down. My opinion is bitcoin is a good tool to move money, thats all. The bitcoin market is very volatile. So with safety in mind, I try to hold bitcoin less than the 15 minutes it takes to buy bitcoin, generate the address and complete the transaction with 5dimes. I am not any kind of investment market guy but next year, if the price of bitcoin migrates down, I might buy some in late october to hold until Christmas. There are finite "bitcoins," I might take the bet that as the holiday season buying ramps up the price of bitcoin will go up as more people use them to shop online. Purely speculation on my part however, the price did go up significantly from Oct to Dec. I guess the proof will come over the next few months...we'll see if it migrates down as holiday shopping slows down. But it's a reasonably safe way to transfer money in short term transactions. If you want to transfer $100 bucks, you buy $100 worth of bitcoin. It doesn't really matter what the price of bitcoin is. Your $100 might buy you .25bitcoin or .1 bitcoin depending on the market bitcoin price. When you transfer that .25 or .1 bitcoin to 5 dimes they convert it back into currency based on the current price of bitcoin. I've not had any problems with 5dimes transacting my bitcoin. It usually takes less than 15 minutes for the USD to show up in my account after I tell my coinbase account to "send money." I guess 5 dimes wants the money in my account asap :-) Like Bacc however, it's probably best to study about bitcoin a few weeks before you jump into it, so you can understand how the market works. You don't have to but it just helps you form your own knowledge base on using it.

The mtman and I met up at "The Pot" (aka Potawatomi in Milwaukee) on the 23rd. Played 2 shoes, ham and egged it to +5 per shoe each for +10 overall. Lots of fun, slow and steady won the night!

5 dimes here...I use bitcoins for deposit/wds to save on fees. I did sign up for betonline a while back but their fees seem high. They charge both ways, deposit and withdraw, even with bitcoin. So...I voted with my money and don't use them anymore. Plus like was mentioned above. 5 dimes has 2 bac "casinos" the "Las Vegas Live" and the "Rebate Live." The "Rebate Live" studio at 5 dimes is the same one as is on betonlines single bac studio. So 5 dimes, lower/no fees with bitcoin, 2 studios, one of which is the exact same studio as betonline offers. Why would anyone use betonline? I'm very careful with my transactions however. In a nutshell, 5dimes can only talk to my bitcoin account (which I only use to move money in and out immediately, I don't let any site there). My bitcoin account can only talk to an intermediate account (not my primary bank account) this intemediate account can talk to my personal account and I only keep money there long enough to move in or out of my bitcoin vault or personal account. It's a little extra hassle and takes some extra time for funds to clear but I want the online casino at least 1 step away from my personal account. Bitcoin provides the most secure way to seperate them from your cash. To send 5 dimes money, you have to generate a "crypto address" that is good for only a very short time. You take that address to your bitcoin account and say "send money to that address" The addresses only exist for a short time and the encryption used to create the addresses is well beyond the ability of current computers to break. So basically you are not giving 5dimes et. al any access to your accounts. probably overkill on my part but I wanted the seperation. However, i've also seen someone say that the online casinos probably wouldn't create any problems or cheat you out of deposits/withdrawls. They don't have to as most of the money that people hold in their accounts probably stays there :-)

Online casino FYI - If anyone is planning to join 5dimes and or betonline to play Baccarat i've found out something interesting to share (you all may already know this :-) I joined 5 dimes a couple of months ago and just joined betonline last week. I remembered seeing a post that 5 dimes shoes were more biased than betonline so I wanted to try out betonline as well to see if the shoes were much different. Well, 5Dimes has 2 "casinos" one is thier "Las Vegas Live" from Costa Rica. The other is "rebate live." Not sure where rebate live is from but it's dealers are usually very "gifted" young ladies dressed up in burlesque type "uniforms." So it's easy to tell its the same place. Turns out the "rebate live" casino at 5 dimes is the exact same casino as the one at betonline! Had I known this I wouldn't have set up a bet online account only because the fees are higher than at 5 dimes. I'll be closing my betonline account in the near future. I'd like to at least try to win a few units to get the fees back.

Sorry I posted in the public forum...I meant to post on this one. Hello Weddings...quick (respectful) question about your spreadsheet (just trying to learn here..and thank you for posting this!) On Row 11 we see O3 go to P. My current understanding is when a disparity goes SS we are to choose the SS of that disparity...in this case the strong side of 3 rows back. Questions/Observations 1. Player never goes strong...starting from the beginning of the shoe. It's always behind banker. It is strong from the start of tracking. Is this correct? 2. When we choose the SS of O3 ... do we go 3 rows back from the Next (empty) cell or the current cell? I've been going back 3 from the next / empty cell hope i've been doing it right. Again thank you!!

Happy belated birthday mtman!!

Hi Grinder...I am fairly new as well, about 3-4 months in. My opinion so far is (as you have probably read others say) NOR is a good START. When I first started I would nail about 1 out of 4 shoes for about +15, felt great. But the other 3 shoes, I was at my stop loss and out of the shoe in under 25 hands because I had to learn that NOR systems don't handle when biases change within a shoe. I've seen others say NOR will work but you can't bet every play. I've seen that. If a nor method is working and you get up a few units, expect that method to stop working and stop betting until you identify the new bias. Read all the posts you can about systems that attempt to identify changing biases. Nor is kind of like basic training, but soon you'll see the more specialized systems work better. Basic training teaches the basic skills but you want to be a sniper.

Just keep a good eye on the shuffling Since we played I went back once and sat in seat 1 right beside the black boxes....yep auto shufflers. I felt the table vibrating, looked over and it said "416 cards/shuffling." I distinctly remember that S40 shoe being table shuffled, the cards were put directly back in the shoe. After that, every shoe I have played there is the auto shuffler garbage they talk about on the forum. I get about 5 1iars early, they throw a couple of 4's in a couple of 6-8's and a nice pyramid there which hammer S40 (i'm getting hammered on 4's with s40 as mode selection seems to rarely work for me) ...so i've got some more reading to do. Summary of Potawatomi Shuffling Shenanigans 1. Cards are "show" shuffled on the tables, those cards are dropped into the auto-shuffler. 2. Dealer gets a shoe of cards from the auto shuffler and you get the no bias/short run/baiting shoe. 3. Once in a while they table shuffle the cards and put them back in the shoe. -MtMan - Do you remember the pit boss waited about 10 minutes before letting the dealer finish the shoe before we jumped into that s40 shoe? What is your opinion? Was he waiting on the call from "upstairs" to allow a table shuffled shoe instead of the auto shuffled shoe? Thats my guess. There really wasn't any reason for him to stop play that long. I'm going to have to pick up brads OTBL M2/M3 method to work the auto shuffled shoes, then keep S40/NOR for those rare hand shuffled decks. Next time you go, let me know if you pick up this same kind of shuffling shenanigans.

Got to play with MtMan at Potawatomi Monday night. We had a perfect S40 shoe. He picked up in it about 10 hands sooner than me, but I'm a newb...and got there eventually :-) he had to leave for dinner and I left+6 about 1/2 way through the shoe. I wish I could have stayed longer, I walked past the table after cashing out. It was still s40. Oh well have to keep the family happy too haha. Thanks MtMan it was fun!

Hi guys, I'm an app developer and willing to help port this spreadsheet to a .Net exe application (Web app type of thing is a whole different can of worms so let's skip that for now). Excel can do some powerful stuff but it gets difficult to scale up and has lots of ancillary issues, scripting security etc.... I'm also a newb and think this would be an excellent way for me to learn/master NOR. We could do open source hosting on codeplex. Looks like you've already got a significant shoe database so that is a great starting point. Where the teamwork comes in is, coming up and reviewing code requirements..if interested in collaboating, I can set up a codeplex account this weekend and get started. I won't do any reverse engineering on your code unless I get your permission. You've obviously put a lot of time in on it and deserve the credit !!

ArkSobo, I just sent you a PM asking if you would mind a tag along. Are you going to be playing Rivers any time soon? I'd appreciate the chance to learn. Thank you!

Anyone playing at Potawatomi or Rivers Saturday or Sunday Oct 24 or 25th? I'm a newb and would love to sit with one of you guys. 2 weeks ago I had a good week with S40...bad shoes were -2 to 0, good shoes +10 to 15. But the the past 10 days i've played 4 shoes, i've been down 10 in less than 40 games. The first thing I notice is the modes rarely ever work for me. Even in the good shoes, if I start M2 it doesn't work, go to M3...doesn't work. This is scary constant. Like 80% of the time I miss the mode, meaning when I try to go OTR it switches back on my first OTR bet no matter what mode I choose (i'm using the OR count... M2 for + or M3 for -) Tonights shoe, hand shuffled, new table, new cards, just out of the packs P2123421111443 (and out at -10) I jumped in at the first banker, missed M2 on the first 3, missed M3 on the next 4 (down 7 after 10 bets) didn't bet the 2, got healthy on the 1s, missed M3 on the 4, tried M1 out of desperation, got 2, missed M3 on the 4 and the last bet on the 3 was my stopping point. My guess is I misread the shoe (and my guess is thats a very common problem with newbs), maybe it was a OTBL shoe or a shoe with no bias and I shouldn't have played it. I'm still positive about the system, when I got an S40 shoe it nailed it and I don't mind dropping some coin to learn. To answer a previous comment...I can't buy MTB+ now. If I can learn NOR and get it to work, I will buy it then. I realize that with NOR I may have to wait all day for the right shoe, or watch when a shoe changes and get out. I just can't afford the $1800 now. I'm hoping to get my bankroll up so I can buy it but for now i'm playing $10 units until I feel confident I can play correctly. So...anyone playing this weekend? I'd love to get some practical education. I would really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you!

My wife just introduced me to Bac recently and before playing I started to read anything I could, thats when I landed on NOR. It seemed to be a good place to start, I have no doubt MBD is better but i'm experienced enough in life to know one must walk before running. So here I am. I would like to get information about the boot camps and online learning opportunities.

Milwaukee Nor member here...i'm a newb and would love to sit in with some of you. I've been coming up to speed on S40 and have had decent luck. I noticed something interesting at Potawatomi Friday, you more experienced members probably already know what i'm about to type so just have a good chuckle at my naiveté. I watched a table for the last 10 hands, it was very biased/streak shoe so I thought I would play that table. I've read in some of the posts here, playing a table that had a bias previously is likely to generate a bias in the next shoe. Also during this biased shoe I noticed the pit boss walk over to a "card vault" (don't know the proper name but its to the left of the dealer, holds about 4 shoes worth the cards. The pit boss walks over, pulls out 1 set of cards, picks them up, caresses them like they were his baby and put the back in them vault. I didn't think too much of it. So the shoe ends and I watch the dealer, she is shuffling the cards manually...so far so good, after she shuffles, she puts the shuffled cards in the vault and pulls out the very set of cards the pit boss was caressing earlier. I know for a fact I have seen dealers hand shuffle and put the cards back in the shoe. But...I also heard that every table was loosing while I was there. So something was up. IMHO they may have designer shoes they put in play I was having the dealer hold a spot for me and left a "save chip." I went over, got my save chip and left, I am not equipped to play designer shoes at this point. What do you guys think, are they doing some sleight of hands to put some factory shoes in with hand shuffled or are they just randomizing decks over the session? Either way, it was an eye opener. After reading here, I understand some places put designer shoes into play but are they now trying to actively disguise this fact? I also noticed that particular table was EMPTY for like an hour. My guess is the locals know it. So now my new project, in addition to winning 8 chips is, if they are indeed mixing designer shoes with hand shuffled, is to bait them into putting the designer shoes in play and not playing the table. And to spread the word on the DL about this to the regulars.