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Kelly Criterion: Huge Bankroll Needed for Blackjack Card Counting

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The Kelly criterion tells you the optimum amount to put at risk when you have an advantage in gambling, sports betting, or investment, for example, blackjack card counting or casino management. You don’t need to understand the underlying math to take advantage of its principles.

In a nutshell, the Kelly formula says that to get the fastest rate of money growth, bet a fraction of the bankroll equal to your advantage in the gambling game.

For example, if you know that a coin lands heads 50.5% and tails 49.5% of the time, and a coin-flip game pays 1:1, you have a 1% advantage betting on heads. In this situation, you should always bet 1% of your bankroll on heads. As your bankroll grows or shrinks with winning and losing streaks, adjust your bet to 1% of your current bankroll. Betting less than 1% has a lower rate of wealth accumulation due to less money riding on the profitable bet, which is fairly obvious. But betting more than 1% also has a lower rate, due to the effects of large losing streaks that drive down your bankroll.

Betting in proportion with your current bankroll causes you to win more during winning streaks and lose less during losing streaks. However, it also has a built-in drag (reduction) on your return in when there are no winning and losing streaks. You can easily calculate this drag effect by considering what happens with a two-bet, win-loss sequence. Betting the Kelly amount provides the best balance to optimize overall bankroll growth.

Blackjack card counters often target betting of one-half the Kelly optimum bet size because it results in one-half the bankroll volatility while providing three-fourths of the maximum possible bankroll growth rate. However, some gamblers like volatility and therefore bet the Kelly optimum or even a little more. However, if you bet as much as twice the Kelly optimum, the bankroll growth rate falls to zero, and betting more than that causes you to actually lose money in the long run, with losing streaks driving your bankroll toward zero, in spite of you having an advantage on each bet.

To support a long-term win rate of $10 per hour counting cards at blackjack, the Kelly criterion requires you to have a bankroll of at least $10,000, as explained in Part II of this presentation:



Source: YouTube

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Kelly Criterion: Huge Bankroll Needed for Blackjack Card Counting

10 thoughts on “Kelly Criterion: Huge Bankroll Needed for Blackjack Card Counting”

  1. NO ONE should listen to this man, 1/3 of what he says is TRUE but he fails to tell you other things such as
    10an hour = 10k roll but he fails to say 30hr an hour would require 30kroll
    he does mention losing streaks can occur back to back but doesn't say you can lose 8-1200$$$ 4 decks in into an 8 decker game and being the average joe walking into the house with 500 smackeroones in your pocket you will never walk out a winner, would need atleast 12-15 max bets to leave a winner

    there other things he says i disagree with but im sure he believes hes right

  2. better off playing FPDW or down town deuces 0.92 right off the bat every turn and just need 500$ to get started not 5,000 but carry on G Chang

    yep all that card counting, kelly betting and other crap flys out the window when you have lost 12-20 max bets in 1 night and wondering what just happened? thats why he says you need atleast 100 max bets so 1/5 is just a drop in the bucket

  5. Is the bankroll growth rate at 1.5% the same as the growth rate at .5%? Looks like it. If it is, will the bank also grow at 3/4 of the max growth rate in the same way as betting .5% of the bankroll?

  7. A coin that lands heads 50.5% of the time will give you a .5% advantage. How do you say that you have a 1% advantage on betting on heads??

  8. Can you also let me know how you plotted bankroll growth rate vs bet percentage??

  9. His videos are pretty damm accurate. Also I was a dealer for 15 years and I have seen many people go home broke after counting cards because they were not accurate counters and or they did not have the bankroll to handle lossing streaks that do happen often with card counting. Also with only a 10 grand bankroll you definitely wont make much counting cards. Dont quit your day jobs people. Even if you had 1 million dollars to count cards with you will still be spending countless hours playing on any given day

  10. And yes 1 percent of your bankroll is what you bet and even then your profits will be small unless you have a 30 thousand dollar bankroll or more

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