No, I think this site is in the dark ages when it comes to blackjack. It IS a poker site afterall.

I mean, I know how to play blackjack of course and Ive won a fair amount of money playing it over the years, but I have no idea what youre talking about. What is RoR?

Return on ______ ?

RoR = risk of ruin.

My comment was releated to risk of ruin. That's where it seems some of you need help on.

Probably so, but risk or ruin is almost impossible to calculate unless you have a very large database in which you can use to calculate your SD.

Also, normally, a poker player will move down in stakes if he loses X amount of his roll, which lowers his RoR even further (almost to zero as long as he is willing to keep moving down). In this particular $5/$10 project, I wont be moving down, but I stll cant calculate the RoR until Ive played 50,000 hands or more and by that time, the point will be mute.

>Probably so, but risk or ruin is almost impossible to calculate unless you have a very large database in which you can use to calculate your SD.

You can get this info from PT or statking, or do it yourself with a formula provided by Mason Malmuth on 2+2. You don't need as many rounds as you think for SD. EV is a different story. Do a search on this subject on 2+2; you might suprise yourself.

Best of luck on the project and email if you still need some xtra bank.

-GeoC

I just want to wish you all good luck with this project.
I think it is a very good idea. I am looking forward to the posts where everyone gets involved and the cheers and the aaah's.
I think it is gonna be one of the first online-soaps and the community will grow.

I have faith in you Ice and I hope you ( and all ) win from the beginning so you don't have to fight back from a loss which can get to you in the long run if you have to post it on here everyday. It's to me if my wife was always sitting next to me when i play.

From the bottom of my heart I wish you all good luck.

tommyhawk.

Thanks. It amazes me how many nice guys we have here on this forum.

Johnny,

I'm not sure I completely understand your recent post. You open by bascially saying that you don't really understand why good players would need to be staked, but the rest of your article is about the virtues of staking and selling some portion of tournament profits (as a hedge I suppose). Is it the difference in cash games and tournaments?

As one of Iceman's stakers, perhaps the better question is why would someone want to stake a player if good players should not need to be staked. I cannot speak for the other stakers, but I staked Iceman NOT b/c I thought it was some excellent investment opportunity with a high potential rate of return, etc. I did it because I believe in his abilities, wanted to support someone I respect, and have a deep gratitude for the help he and others on this site have provided my novice poker game.

I realize these reasons are probably not standard poker staking reasons as they occur in the poker economy.

If Ice's project failed 100% and I lost my entire stake, I wouldn't begrudge or regret my decision for one second. I reckon a typical staker would not agree with my last statement.

Tim

From what I understand what Ice gets out of it is the experience of playing at the $1000 buy-in game against the regular players there; while carrying the risk of playing a $500 buy-in game. It's hard to get into the mindset of dropping several buy-ins at the $1000 level without it affecting your play.

When his experiment is over hopefully he will be confident that he can beat that game, and he will have a lot of experience against many of the players at that level. It usually takes awhile to get comfortable at a new level no matter how good you are, and it takes awhile to figure out how the other players may be playing differently than you expect. It seems reasonable to start a new level and get those things figured out while carrying less risk than normal.

I believe that Ice could have completely staked himself and done this experiment, but doing it this way seems like a good way to manage risk while gaining improved confidence and skills.

This is a fairly unique way to deal with staking, and probably pretty rare. I think it's an interesting idea; but few players will be in a position to be staked in this manner.

So far so good as far as I'm concerned

I've been staked for enough to start much lower stakes after "failure", than Ice at "success". Both of my investors have got the return they expect, one continues to do so and will get a piece of me for a long time to come. My case is different than Ice, in that I actuallay needed a new start up stake instead of having a roll and wanting to play higher. Staking for cash games can come from many reasons. A good player goes broke, it happens, if you don't think it can happen to you, well you might beat it but it can happen. A good player that has an edge should be playing a bigger game, this I think happens more frequently, and is the case for Ice. Imagine if you had the money to put down for Phil Ivey to play bigger than he can afford, which I have a hard time imagining that kind of money, but I'm sure more than three people can gamble like that and that Phil might well be better a card player than two of them. That scenario seems like a solid bet. If Ice is playing Party and Prima, I'm confident he is better than a majority of Sweden by 10:1 as a nation and Party as a whole.

Tournament play and selling pieces is one thing, it is variance reduction and a way to say good luck I believe in you and you believe in me. It has little to do with cash games and saying here is "our" roll, you go play it.

Black Jack is for suckers, you better be a master counter and work with a team.

Time for the second 40oz. Wake up early and beat some swedes Ice.