How to build a bank roll for beginner?

[Mbasics]

Dear Ellis,

Hope you are feeling better every day for your speedy recovery :-)

Would you please provide your expert advice on how to build a bank roll for baccarat player from $2000 or $3000 bank roll base to start betting $15 per unit. E.g. how many unit to play a trip? How many shoe to play assuming flexible on timing? There is a win max cap per shoe and per day? And a stop loss per shoe and/or per day? Also is it possible to build the bank roll to $10K without playing blackjack on the downday since I only know baccarat game.

Thank you so much in advance.

Mbasics (student of mastering the basics)

[Guest]

Dear Ellis,

Hope you are feeling better every day for your speedy recovery :-)

Would you please provide your expert advice on how to build a bank roll for baccarat player from $2000 or $3000 bank roll base to start betting $15 per unit. E.g. how many unit to play a trip? How many shoe to play assuming flexible on timing? There is a win max cap per shoe and per day? And a stop loss per shoe and/or per day? Also is it possible to build the bank roll to $10K without playing blackjack on the downday since I only know baccarat game.

Thank you so much in advance.

Mbasics (student of mastering the basics)

Wow! What an excellent question! It sounds like a in case I die question.

OK first, as you say, let's eliminate BJ. But not W/O what I fully realize sounds like a sales pitch:

Watch my lips: The ONLY place in the whole world you can learn how to win at BJ is right here on this forum. But it takes a lot of time and a LOT of practice. I'm talking thousands of hours of practice. Card Counting is the surest road to ruin that exists. OK, enough said about that.

So we are talking Baccarat:

Suppose, for a moment, you had to make ONE life or death million dollar bet in a casino. Where would you make it and how would you find that opportunity?

It would be Baccarat because your starting odds of winning the bet are 50/50 (not counting the slight Bank edge) and those are the best odds in the whole casino. Forget commission because you are only going to pay it IF you win the bet. And at that point, you won't care. This is why I argue that commission should not be included in the game odds any more than waitress tips. But try telling that to a mathematician! Sometimes math only serves to cloud the issue at hand. Hell, 99% of the Math Professors in the U.S. got the shell game question wrong! This should give you some idea of their gambling qualifications.

OK, lets take a short revisitation of that question:

I started every BJ seminar (hundreds) with 3 cups on the podium. I asked for a volunteer to select the cup that had the $100 bill under it. Whichever cup she selected I turned over a different cup and showed her it was empty and asked her if she would like to change her mind???

A) Should she change her mind?

What is your reason for your answer?

Mathematicians make poor poker players because poker is not about math. It is about reading the other players. They make poor Bac players too because Bac is not about math either. It is about Statistical Analysis. Mathematicians assume all is always random - a fatal mistake.

Now, Back to the million dollar bet at hand:

How do we seriously improve our odds to more than 50%???

In a word: SELECTION

But selection comes in several forms:

Casino selection

Game type selection

Time of day selection

Table (shoe) selection

Casino selection:

I'm going to pick a casino that does NOT use preshuffled cards - That at least starts with 8 sealed boxed card order decks and preps those 8 decks in plain view at the table. (Original Baccarat)

WHY? Because card preps produce biases. You can't shuffle 8 decks of boxed card order cards to a random condition in 5 minutes. It would take at least hours. Therefore casinos use a formal card prep. We need to know what shoe type their formal card prep is producing, if any. Again, I beat Gold Strike Tunica nearly every shoe for 3 years by sticking to new cards in the morning because their formal card prep religiously produced OTB4L shoes.

Game type selection:

Already stated: New boxed card order cards.

My second choice would be new cards every shoe but those are usually $100 min games. But I don't care about the minimum do I. I'm making ONE million dollar bet. I want the best odds on that single bet that I can find.

Time of day selection:

New cards in the morning where I have already determined that their card prep produces a consistent game type. I don't really care which game type it produces. I care about consistency!

Table selection:

I'm going to pick the strongest bias I can find regardless if it is Chop (S40) Streak (F) Strong side (F) or Neutral (OTB4L)

Look, I don't care what Mathematicians think. If you bet an Opposite in a shoe that ended up 2/3 Opposites, your chances of winning the bet were 2/3 weren't they. Argue that!

Now, in the real world, we aren't going to walk into a casino and make a single million dollar bet are we. BUT, the amount of your bet doesn't change the odds does it. The cards don't know the color of your chips - the cards are color blind, aren't they. The point I'm trying to make here is you play as if ALL your bets WERE a million dollars. You go through the same motions. You look for the BEST conditions in the BEST casino at the BEST time.

Now, once you have completely gone through all of your preparatory work, the BEST way you can play the game is NOR. It is the best way to react to the conditions (bias strength) you find.

Most important! If you don't find good conditions you DON'T play. You have that option. The casino doesn't. THAT is your only advantage over the casino but only if you USE that option.

Now, DO NOT decide which NOR system you are going to play BEFORE you get to the casino. That is pure amateur bull crap and it completely destroys your NOR advantage.

LIKEWISE, do not make goals before you get to the casino either. Your goals are determined by one thing and one thing ONLY - The quality of the conditions you find AFTER you get to the casino. Don't even decide whether you are going to play OR NOT before you see, first hand, what you are up against.

The 123 4 is good for TEN units but capture one unit as soon as you get to +6. You can increase your goal to +15 or +20 IF you get to +10 in the first 20 bets. But if you decide to take that risk, capture +7.

When you find particularly good conditions advance your betting to U1D2.

If you are hitting your 1 bets the vast majority of the time in Mode 2 advance to the 234 and then quickly to the 345 but NEVER more than that.

In exceptionally good conditions increase your unit size but NEVER bet more than 5 units with but one rare exception. In super streak showing LONG runs you can decide to bet an up as you win Fibonaci. I usually cap at ten. ( I end up quickly flat betting $1000 units until I lose. Then back to basics. I remind you, this is rare and usually only occurs in late night play. But the risk is very small.

Now, go back and read YOUR post again. I want you to fully recognize that many of your questions are NOT applicable to professional Baccarat play, are they.

BTW FYI the movie 21 STOLE my shell game start. No, they never paid me a dime! Bastards!

Edited February 3, 2013 by Guest

[Mbasics]

Dear Ellis,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply, very much appreciated.

since English is not my first language, I would like to recap here to make sure I capture your key points, please let me know if I get any point mis-understood.

Here is Recap of your points:

1. it's OK to build up a bank roll solely on playing baccarat NOR way.

2. do NOT make plans to play how many shoes per trip or use what NOR method before arriving the casino for each trip.

3. if no biased shoes or good table selection then do not play. ( ps. we only have one casino here so no casino selection applicable for me. but I can work on to select what time of the day to play after doing some home work in the next few weeks.)

4. if there is a good table selection with NOR type bias then betting as per your NOR instruction manual.

5. Treat EACH bet as your one and only million dollar bet so you get higher hit rate for your bet.

6. Higher hit rate in bacarrat will build up the bank roll over time and no other way.

++++++++++

for now, my hit rate is very low at 1:1 so I only use flat bet, no progressions until I improve my hit rate.

I hope this will make me on the track to the professional baccarat play :-)

Thank you and look forward to your full recovery so we can play baccarat with you in atlantic city!

[Guest]

Dear Ellis,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply, very much appreciated.

since English is not my first language, I would like to recap here to make sure I capture your key points, please let me know if I get any point mis-understood.

Here is Recap of your points:

1. it's OK to build up a bank roll solely on playing baccarat NOR way.

2. do NOT make plans to play how many shoes per trip or use what NOR method before arriving the casino for each trip.

3. if no biased shoes or good table selection then do not play. ( ps. we only have one casino here so no casino selection applicable for me. but I can work on to select what time of the day to play after doing some home work in the next few weeks.)

4. if there is a good table selection with NOR type bias then betting as per your NOR instruction manual.

5. Treat EACH bet as your one and only million dollar bet so you get higher hit rate for your bet.

6. Higher hit rate in bacarrat will build up the bank roll over time and no other way.

++++++++++

for now, my hit rate is very low at 1:1 so I only use flat bet, no progressions until I improve my hit rate.

I hope this will make me on the track to the professional baccarat play :-)

Thank you and look forward to your full recovery so we can play baccarat with you in atlantic city!

An excellent translation Mbasics!

Baccarat is about opportunities. Bac and goals don't mix well because the game is too volitile. Just do the best you can every time you play. Try to get your P.A. (Player Advantage) to a double digit percentile. That is goal enough!

P.A. = units won/units bet before commission.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Guest

[Mbasics]

Dear Ellis, would you please explain a bit more about P.A. since it's a fairly new concept for me.

P.A. = units won/units bet before commission. if I flat bet 20 units (1 unit per bet) and win 10 units (1 unit per win), the P.A. will be 10/20 = 50%, is that a double digit percentile? and it is good or bad?

thank you so much in advance.