bitZino - Bitcoin Casino - Blackjack, Roulette, 3 Card Poker, Slots and more!

[dooglus]

I'm sorry, let me be more clear.  The dealer had the 5 BJ's in a row. 

OK, so now I understand.  Thanks.  It would have appeared unfair if you had been dealt the blackjacks too, but not the kind of unfair that players tend to complain about...

[fwho]

I play (far too) often, and I admit I have had times where I was thinking WTF?!!? Between generally losing every hand and the amount of blackjacks hit by the dealer.

Then I sit back for a second and think about how fast I am playing, and how long I am playing. If I were at a casino playing at 1/4 the speed I play on bitZino, I would be broke in minutes... Since it is easy to play fast, and there are no other players, and its a program, its easy to have doubts. About the blackjacks, I have gotten at least four, and I want to say it was five, in a row at a physical table. Statistic support or not, I know its possible.

[joae1975]

I play (far too) often, and I admit I have had times where I was thinking WTF?!!? Between generally losing every hand and the amount of blackjacks hit by the dealer.

Then I sit back for a second and think about how fast I am playing, and how long I am playing. If I were at a casino playing at 1/4 the speed I play on bitZino, I would be broke in minutes... Since it is easy to play fast, and there are no other players, and its a program, its easy to have doubts. About the blackjacks, I have gotten at least four, and I want to say it was five, in a row at a physical table. Statistic support or not, I know its possible.

Yeah, when you're playing live, the chances of the dealer getting 3 or more BJ's in a row are ludicrous.  But if Bitzino shuffles 8 decks before each hand it seems more probable.  When playing live, they say the dealer wins the first hand 60% of the time.  Just ask any dealer.  That, in itself, is where Bitzino BJ (and all online BJ) is favored more for the house, imho.

Lesson, don't gamble!

[dooglus]

When playing live, they say the dealer wins the first hand 60% of the time.  Just ask any dealer.  That, in itself, is where Bitzino BJ (and all online BJ) is favored more for the house, imho.

Take a second to think about what you're saying.  The deck is shuffled randomly, both at the casino and at bitZino.  So the cards that come out on the first hand at the casino table are random cards.

Suppose you arrive at the table just after the first hand was dealt.  12 cards were used, and hundreds still remain.  The remaining cards are in a random order, just like the first 12 cards were.  Do you have any more or less chance of winning?

If you know that the first 12 cards were mostly high cards then you could say you have a lower chance of winning the 2nd hand, but that's just like saying if you knew the bottom 12 cards on the deck were mostly high then you'd have a lower chance of winning the first hand.

As you see more and more cards from the deck, you gain more and more information about the composition of the remaining cards.  But there's nothing about the top few cards of a freshly shuffled deck that make them 'unluckier' than the rest of the cards.  The dealer lets you cut the deck anywhere you like before he starts dealing anyway, so maybe it's your fault for cutting in the wrong place?

I don't know if you're going to buy that explanation.  I've been having a hard time recently trying to understand what other people are thinking.

The bottom line has it about right though: "don't gamble" (although I'd add "unless you see it as buying entertainingment, can afford it, or know how to win!")

[joae1975]

When playing live, they say the dealer wins the first hand 60% of the time.  Just ask any dealer.  That, in itself, is where Bitzino BJ (and all online BJ) is favored more for the house, imho.

Take a second to think about what you're saying.  The deck is shuffled randomly, both at the casino and at bitZino.  So the cards that come out on the first hand at the casino table are random cards.

Suppose you arrive at the table just after the first hand was dealt.  12 cards were used, and hundreds still remain.  The remaining cards are in a random order, just like the first 12 cards were.  Do you have any more or less chance of winning?

If you know that the first 12 cards were mostly high cards then you could say you have a lower chance of winning the 2nd hand, but that's just like saying if you knew the bottom 12 cards on the deck were mostly high then you'd have a lower chance of winning the first hand.

As you see more and more cards from the deck, you gain more and more information about the composition of the remaining cards.  But there's nothing about the top few cards of a freshly shuffled deck that make them 'unluckier' than the rest of the cards.  The dealer lets you cut the deck anywhere you like before he starts dealing anyway, so maybe it's your fault for cutting in the wrong place?

I don't know if you're going to buy that explanation.  I've been having a hard time recently trying to understand what other people are thinking.

The bottom line has it about right though: "don't gamble" (although I'd add "unless you see it as buying entertainingment, can afford it, or know how to win!")

Just ask a dealer next time you're at the casino.  Ask them if the dealer wins the majority of the first hand dealt from a new shoe.  I don't know why this is, it's just the way it is.  I always bet the minimum on the first hand when playing live. 

[dooglus]

Just ask a dealer next time you're at the casino.  Ask them if the dealer wins the majority of the first hand dealt from a new shoe.  I don't know why this is, it's just the way it is.  I always bet the minimum on the first hand when playing live. 

The problem is, the dealer won't know.  He doesn't keep stats of which hands he wins or loses on I'm sure.  He's just as human as the players, and just as subject to superstition.

I found it on a list of ploppisms on a blackjack forum:

Big card follows little card. Little card follows big card. Dealer wins first hand x% of the time, usually between 80% and 90 - yes dealers are ploppys too. Lower your bet when the relief dealer burns a card. Surrender? You may as well mail in a check. I'm due for a win. Quit when you're ahead. Never split anything that starts with the letter f. Always take even money it's a sure win. Drop/add a hand to change the cards. You'll win more if you tip.

but can't find any real analysis of it.  http://www.bjmath.com/bin-cgi/beginner.pl?noframes;read=1974 looks promising, but the site's down at the moment.  I can see a link to it in google's cache.  Then there's this question, but nobody answered him.  I tend to agree with him though:

There's no logical reason to expect the first hand of the shoe to
play out any differently from any other hand.

[jmumich]

Answer me this how are the cards dealt in blackjack on bitzino?  Is it a new deck of 52 cards every deal?  

Short answer: our blackjack game uses 8 standard 52-card decks which are reshuffled before every hand.

Long answer: Every single blackjack hand played on bitZino is a fresh set of 8 decks of cards (each of the 8 decks are standard 52-card decks, thus making a blackjack deck contain 416 cards). Before each hand a fresh blackjack deck (containing 416 cards) is shuffled on bitZino's servers using a cryptographically secure random number generator. The hash of this "initial_shuffle" is then presented to you, and your browser are also asked to generate a random "client_seed" (you are also free to manually modify this client_seed). BitZino's servers then reshuffle the deck using the client_seed provided by you as the source of randomness.

This reshuffling process is what allows the game to truly be provably fair. Since our servers have no knowledge of the client_seed until the exact moment the game is starting, it is impossible for us to manipulate the outcome of any games, without making it obvious that we've done so.

I'm happy to answer any more questions about our provably fair process! We also wrote up a detailed technical blog post if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty details: https://techblog.bitzino.com/2012-06-30-provably-fair-shuffling-through-cryptography.html

The odds of a single player getting blackjack on the first hand of a fresh 8-deck shoe are 2*( 4/13 )*(( 4*8 )/( 52*8-1 )) or 4.7451344%.

The odds of that happening 5 times in a row, assuming each new hand is a new shuffle and is completely independent, are (2*( 4/13 )*(( 4*8 )/( 52*8-1 )))^5, or 0.00002406%.  Put another way, there is a 1 in 4,156,276 chance of that happening over the course of 5 hands.  Very unlikely, but the more hands you play, the more likely it becomes that it will happen.  Bitzino's blackjack can be played very fast. I haven't calculated my rate of play but I wouldn't be surprised if I could play 15-20 hands per minute if I really tried.  I've seen some major streaks, both good and bad.  It is amazing how your mind will trick you even when you know the odds and are reasonably certain the game is provably fair.  And it it seems like a natural human tendency to think "Hey, I'm lucky!" or even "Hey, I'm good!" when a streak went in your favor (as a few did for me last week), and "Hey, they must be cheating somehow I haven't thought of!) when a streak went against you (as a few have for me recently).  Of course, there was no horseshoe up my ass that later left, and the game is fair.  

At the end of the day (and I have no stake either other than as a player) I choose to gamble at Bitzino for two reasons - (1) a solid reputation of honesty, openness, and fairness built over time and (2) pretty much the most favorable game of blackjack for the player that you can get.  The house edge is very small here.

[libertaad]

I was really curious what the effect of constant shuffling actually has on the house edge in blackjack. I thought I remembered reading about it on wizardofodds.com a while ago, so I went and dug up the article I read:

http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/appendix/10/

This article discusses the impact of using a continuous shuffling machine (CSM) in blackjack. As the wizard says: "With one in use it is like playing against a freshly shuffled shoe every hand", so this is effectively the exact same thing bitZino is doing.

According to the wizard (and he seems to be very spot-on with all his statistical analysis), using a CSM actually lowers the house edge. In an 8 deck show (as bitZino uses), it seems to lower the house edge by 0.014%.

The reason for this phenomenon isn't really because the first hands have better odds for the player, it's that the last hands in a shoe can sometimes wind up in a situation with much worse odds for the player. As the article says:

However if the dealer deals out much more than the average number of hands in a cut card game the last hands tend to be very bad for the player. This is because in the early hands the players and dealer didn't hit much, which in turn is because lots of large cards came out, leaving more small cards for later in the shoe.

So, by reshuffling the deck before every hand, there is no chance that the player winds up in a situation where the show is unfavorable because it is rich in small cards.

[dooglus]

That's an interesting article.  I searched that site yesterday when trying to find a definitely debunking of the "dealer wins the first hand too much" assertion, but didn't find it.

At first I thought he had his tables backwards - how can a freshly shuffled deck have more high cards come out than low cards?  But after thinking about it, it's because I tend to hit more when I have low cards, and when I do the remaining deck is slightly rich in high cards (since I have the low cards already).  When I have high cards (and so the deck is richer in low cards) I don't hit.  That means I tend to see more than my 'fair share' of high cards if you shuffle every hand.

So, by reshuffling the deck before every hand, there is no chance that the player winds up in a situation where the show is unfavorable because it is rich in small cards.

I can't agree with that statement.  When playing through to a cut-card, the player gets into this situation if the cards near the cut-card are rich in small cards.  That's just as likely to be the case as the top of the deck being rich in small cards.  The only difference is that when playing through the shoe the player can count the number of hands he's played, and if it's too high he can know that he's in a bad situation, and so he can lower his bet accordingly, or walk away.  When playing with a freshly shuffled deck he's just as likely to be in this bad low-card situation, but has no way of knowing it.

[libertaad]

So, by reshuffling the deck before every hand, there is no chance that the player winds up in a situation where the showshoe is unfavorable because it is rich in small cards.

I can't agree with that statement.  When playing through to a cut-card, the player gets into this situation if the cards near the cut-card are rich in small cards.  That's just as likely to be the case as the top of the deck being rich in small cards.  The only difference is that when playing through the shoe the player can count the number of hands he's played, and if it's too high he can know that he's in a bad situation, and so he can lower his bet accordingly, or walk away.  When playing with a freshly shuffled deck he's just as likely to be in this bad low-card situation, but has no way of knowing it.

Yeah, you're right. My attempt at a summary was overly simplified. The reasoning behind the difference in odds is more complicated.

But, the underlying conclusion is still right: If the player is playing basic strategy and not counting cards, then the first hand in a freshly shuffled shoe has a slightly lower house edge.

[dooglus]

Where am I going wrong here?

If there's a cut-card 70% of the way through the deck, 30% of cards are unplayed.

If those unplayed cards are rich in low cards:
 * the played cards are rich in high cards
 * so hands use relatively few cards (players don't hit much)
 * so relatively many hands are played per shoe
 * and players do well (high cards are good for player)

Conversely, if the unplayed cards are rich in high cards:
 * the played cards are rich in low cards
 * so hands use relatively many cards (players hit more with low cards)
 * so relatively few hands are played per shoe
 * and players do badly (low cards are bad for player)

So the players with see many good hands, or few bad hands per shoe.

That sounds like on average players will do better with a cut-card than if you shuffle every hand, since they'll see more good than bad hands.

The wizard's simulation shows exactly the opposite to be true.  So where am I going wrong here?

[libertaad]

Where am I going wrong here?

If there's a cut-card 70% of the way through the deck, 30% of cards are unplayed.

If those unplayed cards are rich in low cards:
 * the played cards are rich in high cards
 * so hands use relatively few cards (players don't hit much)
 * so relatively many hands are played per shoe
 * and players do well (high cards are good for player)

Conversely, if the unplayed cards are rich in high cards:
 * the played cards are rich in low cards
 * so hands use relatively many cards (players hit more with low cards)
 * so relatively few hands are played per shoe
 * and players do badly (low cards are bad for player)

So the players with see many good hands, or few bad hands per shoe.

That sounds like on average players will do better with a cut-card than if you shuffle every hand, since they'll see more good than bad hands.

The wizard's simulation shows exactly the opposite to be true.  So where am I going wrong here?

I am curious too, because your reasoning does sound right. I found this other article linked to from the wizard's page: http://www.blackjackincolor.com/blackjackeffects1.htm

I like their explanation:

In this set of circumstances, if you deal to a cut card you may get five, six or seven rounds depending on the cards. This is because the player and dealer can have hands of two cards or many cards. If there are many high cards (e.g. tens) dealt, we will end up with two- and three-card hands. If there are small cards dealt, we will end up with hands with many cards. So, if we are dealing to a fixed point, and we are dealt a lot of large cards, then we will use fewer cards per round and get an extra round or two. The problem is that these extra rounds will be dealt from a deck with fewer high cards because they have been used up. And we know that a deck with few high cards left is bad for the player.

I also like their chart. It shows that the earlier hands will have the same odds regardless, the difference in odds comes later on, in the extra hands that are being played as a result of the earlier good hands.

[dooglus]

I also like their chart. It shows that the earlier hands will have the same odds regardless, the difference in odds comes later on, in the extra hands that are being played as a result of the earlier good hands.

I agree, but the bad hand or two at the end seems like it wouldn't negate the advantage from all the good hands the player saw in the rest of the shoe.  The part of the deck that isn't dealt is still either high or low card rich (or neither - we can ignore those), and so my previous argument follows.

Except the simulation results seem to prove that it doesn't...

[libertaad]

but the bad hand or two at the end seems like it wouldn't negate the advantage from all the good hands the player saw in the rest of the shoe.

I think there actually is no advantage for the cards in the beginning of the shoe (assuming you're just playing basic strategy and not counting). Apparently there is actually a proof of this (according to: http://www.bjmath.com/bjmath/conseq/cutcard/cut1.htm). So, that means that the only thing that affects the odds are the potential extra hands that get dealt a the end, which are always worse.

[libertaad]

To get to those potential extra hands, though, the initial hands in the shoe would have been advantageous.  If, on average a shoe gives a full table say, 6 hands, then a table that reaches the 8th hand most likely had more advantageous cards during the hands that came before it.  There was just no way of knowing it at the time.  I think it is accurate to say that there is no known advantage at the beginning of a shoe.  But, without counting cards (but counting hands), one can assume that an 8th, 9th, 10th, etc. hand at a table that averages 6/shoe is less advantageous than an average first hand.  But it is so only because the initial hands were more advantageous.

Ok, I think I found some good reasoning that actually makes sense! I kept reading the thread on the bjmath.com site, and the exact question is answered:

I agree with you that if the cut-card is placed such that the number of rounds dealt is usually three, then on those occasions when a fourth round is dealt it will be dealt from a 10-poor deck.

But on those occasions, the first three rounds will have been dealt from a set of cards rich in 10s (and other high cards).

That is right. But those three rounds that are rich in 10s are already reflected in the Basic Strategy (no cut-card) EV. That is, without a cut-card we are going to some rounds which are rich in 10s, and some which are lean. The average of all of these is reflected in the BS expectation.

Here is a though experiment which may help clarify. Imagine two players Me (M) and my Shadow(S) betting on the same spot. S is basically making "over-the-shoulder" bets on my box. The hands are played in accordance with BS and we both must put up more money when we split and double.

Suppose the games is dealt with the cut-card listed above. M flat-bets on all the rounds. S bets the same on the first three rounds, but never plays a 4th round. Now S's EV should be that of Basic Strategy (full-deck). My EV is clearly less than S. The only difference between us is the money I lose on those negative 4th rounds. So M is worse off with the cut-card.

Now when there is a 4th round, the first 3 rounds are favorable to M. But they are also favorable to S. S gets all the benefits of those, but doesn't actually bet the negative 4th round.

This is in the domain of strange counter-intuitive probability outcomes, kinda like the Monty Hall problem.

[dooglus]

Could it be that the advantage to the player of having hands rich in high cards is less than the advantage to the dealer of having a deck rich in low cards? 

I think that must be the case,yes.

Ok, I think I found some good reasoning that actually makes sense! I kept reading the thread on the bjmath.com site, and the exact question is answered:

That's interesting, but still leaves me confused.  Thanks for digging it up.

[murfshake]

This site just errored in their favor of .5 BTC or 5000 units while playing craps.  I sent a support ticket with details and hope to see this resolved.  I will update one way or another because this was my go to site..

*edit... I am a moron....  Here is a copy of the email they sent back.  No joke, they really did not have to do this.  In all honesty, this was the only time I played for micro transactions in over 2.5 BTC, and I stopped the instant I thought there was an error.  Still, egg on my face.. 

Thank you for reaching out to us! I am sorry for the problems you have experienced while playing at bitZino. I am also sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I have take a look into your craps gameplay from the last 12 hours, and I believe I see what happened. I have also attached a log of all your craps gameplay for the pat 12 hours, so you can take a look yourself as well.

Looking at your craps gameplay logs, it looks like the gameplay between 14:46:44 and 14:53:39 are the games you are talking about. You cashed in for 500, and then worked it up to nearly 1000, and then cashed out. However, it looks like these games were all for μ฿, not m฿. This means that when you cashed in 500, you were only cashing in 0.0005 BTC, rather than 0.5 BTC. Then, when you cashed out, you were only cashing out 0.001 BTC, rather than 1 BTC.

I am sorry for your confusion in this matter! I have decided to just go in and comp you with a 0.5 BTC bonus in order to make up for the confusion, and make it as if you were actually playing for m฿, since it is clear that this is usually what you play at.

As a reminder for the future, you can always see what stakes you are playing at by referring to the lower-left corner of the table.

Please let me know if you have any more questions or concerns, and thanks for playing at bitZino!

[Junko]

Nice.

[joae1975]

hey give comp? Do you have a registered account for comp?  I think I deserve comp

[carpetbagger]

Any comments on this, libertaad:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1frm4x/provably_fair_by_bitzino_not_provable_with/