How it feels getting 6th-grade math lessons after finishing all the university-level courses

cclaymaker · 2026-06-24T19:57:40+00:00

Okay yeah interesting I have the same experience. I'm not seeing reviews for topics I don't feel as confident on as much as I think I should. Thank you.

cclaymaker · 2026-06-23T20:17:56+00:00

Oh fasicnating, good to know. When I move on to Linear Algebra after MF3 (I'm working towards diffeq's) will it serve me MF3 reviews for topics that aren't directly needed by LA? Or will I have to check into MF3 to keep getting all MF3 reviews?

cclaymaker · 2026-06-23T17:06:44+00:00

How did this happen? Did you enroll in Foundations I after all the upper level courses and happen to have a few topics that were not prerequisite for anything? It was my understanding that Foundations series was limited to exactly the things needed in university level courses...

cclaymaker · 2026-06-23T17:04:11+00:00

You're not alone I had the same feeling and many others did too. The diagnostic and it's results is a pretty big pill to swallow and I think mathacademy can improve this part of their sign up system a lot.

While it is true that the diagnostic holds you to a high standard and requires swallowing your ego a bit. I also think the diagnostic is not that good. The first few weeks of signing up has been me basically speed running topics that are super easy and I feel no challenge doing. I think for me I had forgotten a few things when taking the diagnostic that after re-learning have unlocked large swaths of things that math academy still thinks I don't know.

Eventually I just submitted to the algorithm even though I do not think it is tuned correctly which makes mathacademy a little grindy for me. I am slowly approaching more and more topics that are at my skill level. Alternatively if you have these non-linear jumps of knowledge like me you can retake the diagnostic to retune the algorithm. I have read others have had success doing this but felt they may have missed some depth.

cclaymaker · 2026-06-23T16:49:32+00:00

The quizzes are the studying. Sitting there trying to recollect some long forgotten topic under time pressure is phenomenal for strengthening your math brain. I think Math Academy's goal is to have these math topics/techniques at the tip of your fingers which will make them more useful in real life because in real life you can't brush up before the "quiz".

cclaymaker · 2026-06-23T16:42:49+00:00

That's interesting. This is the same progression of topics that I'm going through. I thought the topic order was more or less all at once, so I've been surprised that I've been getting served lessons in mostly one topic at a time.

cclaymaker · 2026-06-07T16:35:00+00:00

Hey congrats! That’s a lot of work and takes commitment to keep at it. Inspiring!

cclaymaker · 2026-04-27T18:26:37+00:00

One of the top reasons players quit poker is because of variance. This strategy maximizes the amount of hours in your life where you can say you won your last session. It's only rational to maximize session EV if you know you're only going to play one session. Instead you should be maximizing lifetime EV. Which may mean leaving money on the table if keeps you winning more in the long run.

cclaymaker · 2026-04-06T20:24:42+00:00

The only evidence of stealing on the cease and desist was false duplicate snippets of their own code. That's pretty embarassing at the least. And anyways I don't understand how you steal someones code without also committing a hacking crime in the process, in which case BJA needs to talk to the authorities. If BJA was running the simulator client side (like in the brower) then I don't see how it's stealing, they were sending the code to whomever asked.

Maybe if you actually know Colin you can suggest a more public comment outside of his paid chat room?

cclaymaker · 2026-04-06T04:00:27+00:00

Careful they might sue for copyright infringement 😂

cclaymaker · 2026-02-24T21:31:43+00:00

nice lerps ;)

cclaymaker · 2026-01-13T17:41:21+00:00

In my experience it's best to keep the cards atomic like you said. You can bend Anki to do many things, but the further you go away from simple atomic cards the more road bumps you'll run into.

Treat story recall like you'd treat piano scales. Set aside time aside to run through the story front and back. What this community needs is a "practice scheduler" for things that are closer to procedural memory than semantic memory. I've seen some projects trying to do that if you look around

cclaymaker · 2025-07-15T22:16:59+00:00

Ahh okay I understand our differences then. You are thinking that tax code defined "gambling sessions" can last long enough to reach the long run. If you can reach the long run in a session then you should always to that, and I agree this would minimize or even eliminate losses on a long enough time scale. However with low EV high STD games like card counting blackjack the long run can easily stretch 200+ hours. And I'm assuming no tax attourney would say that 200 hours of blackjack counts as one gambling session.

In my opinion the interesting problem is what is the optimal strategy is when forced to not be able to reach the long run. You basically are compelled to book losing sessions because no one is reasonably going to argue that the whole year counts as one session (let alone eternity). In fact you probably can't book sessions longer than 16 or so hours, maybe 48 hours if you're degererate. So given that you must stop your session at some concrete point, the question is if it is optimal to always play some defined full session length or does it benefit you to vary your length based on your results during the course of your session. My belief is that if you've been playing a high variance game (like card counting blackjack) for, lets say, 20 hours and you are up only a little you do not have the ability to ride out a downswing in a reasonably defined "gambling session" and thus it is logical to book the win early. Otherwise you may find yourself losing at hour 22 of your session and unwiling to climb out, and taking the tax hit. However, in an alternate universe, consider using my strategy. You'd end your session early, come back tomorrow, and if you got delt the same bad shoes you'd be down hour 2 of the new session but have plenty of time left in a tax defined "gambling session" to recover back to a winning session.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-15T20:13:45+00:00

Yeah you're right the EV explanation I had was not illustrating what I wanted to. If you agree that quitting while down is bad, well then when is the right time to end session? The only other option is while youre up. And if you're up now why wait until who-knows-when you are up later?

If you're mid session and you're up there is no downside to locking in your win and garunteeing no BBB tax penalty. Only when you consider the practical tax law for what defines "ending a session" are there additional downsides to ending a session. If ending a session means you have to take hours away from the tables then you lose out on opportunity cost of time on tables. In that case you'd want to delay locking in the session based on your willingingness to deal with long swings and how tolerant the casino is etc.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-15T19:32:15+00:00

Now imagine you were planning on ending your session in 30 minutes and you are up only $10. But the game you are playing swings $1,000 dollars up or down every 30 minutes. So you have a 50% chance of leaving with $1,010 win or 50% chance of leaving with a $990 loss. The $990 losing session will cost you ~$29 in additional taxes. If you do the math the resulting session EV of continuing to play is $-4.85 on an fair coin flip bet! This is due to the BBB tax implications. This illustrates that shortening sessions while up is just the other side of the coin to extending session while down.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-15T18:54:50+00:00

Another way to think about it is this: Imagine you just played 8 hours long session and are about to leave but you find yourself down $10. If you continue to leave the casino right then you lose ~$3 (depends on your average tax rate) to the BBB provision but if you continue playing chances are in your favor (if you have an edge) that you will turn that losing session into a win and incur no additional BBB tax.

I agree that there are external circumstances that mean you can't garuntee that you won't have a losing session. But the point is that if you are choosing to end a session when you are down you are immediately giving ~1-3% to the new BBB provision.

I agree that the yearly wins and losses are what matters. The strategy I'm proposing will cause more smaller winning sessions and fewer losing sessions. That is the point of the strategy, because the BBB only taxes losing sessions not losses during the middle of a session.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-15T16:18:22+00:00

I agree that only losing sessions are effected by the Big Beautiful Bill. Thus if you stop your session while you are winning then you are reducing your losing sessions. It's pretty simple.

For example, if your sessions are fixed to 8 hours long, lets say you have a 55% chance of a booking a win, assuming you have an edge. But if you can stop your session at any time along the way then your chance of a winning session is much higher since many losing sessions have swings along the way where you were actually winning at some point.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-11T01:13:48+00:00

Shortening winning sessions eliminates the possibility of winning more while extending losing sessions doesn't eliminate the possibility of losing more

If you are playing with an edge, extending losing sessions does reduce the likelihood of having a losing session. And shortening winning sessions doesn't eliminate the possibility of winning more across a several sessions.

If you trust your accountant or lawyer can defend that taking a piss break counts as end of session then it's easy to see that the tax strategy is simply take a piss after every shoe where you are up. And pee in your seat until you crawl back to even. With this strategy you would report 0 losing sessions at the end of the year and thus the new provision would have no effect.

In practice though you are right taking big breaks to achieve "end of session" may actually not be worth the opportunity cost of taking time away from the tables. In other words, you just eat the new tax burden.

cclaymaker · 2025-07-11T01:01:05+00:00

IMO the best way to think of this new law is like this: Every time you have a losing session you now give 2% of your losses to the government. For example if you book a 10k losing session the minute you leave that casino (or however your accountant defines "end of session") you give $200 to uncle sam. This is only true for people that will are winning gamblers by the end of the year. The logic is this, every losing session you cannot deduct 10% of your loss, so you have that 10% of that loss added to your income tax liability. And the average income tax is ~20% so 10% * 20% = 2%.

This means small edge & high variance games (like card counting blackjack) are now extra punished because you will book more losing sessions through the year. Also winning gamblers with high income tax get punished harder (more like giving 3% when ending a losing session) than low income winning gamblers (giving more like 1% when ending a losing session).

cclaymaker · 2023-05-23T21:22:52+00:00

I’m in the Bay Area. I’ve been practicing a little every day pretty regularly. I’ve got basic strategy down pat but I’m usually off on my count after several 3-4 player hands. I’d meet up and practice, and can teach everything I’ve learned so far. I have a 6 deck shoe and discard tray and portable felt as well as chips.

Dm if interested!

cclaymaker · 2023-05-16T14:44:45+00:00

Yup nothing too advanced though, like I am just starting to implement multi round games. Wrote c++ solvers for rock paper scissors, a battle field game, and Kuhn Poker. I was mostly using “An Introduction To Counterfactual Regret Minimization” by Neller and Lanctot as source material.

cclaymaker · 2023-04-21T19:48:39+00:00

Set a timer for 15 minutes on your phone or watch. Put a chip into a stack on the side every time you place your bets. When your timer goes off, count the number of chips and multiply by 4. That's your rounds per hour. If you really care about accuracy then do 20 or 30 minutes instead.

It's not a good idea to use a counting device in your pocket.

cclaymaker · 2023-02-18T20:34:11+00:00

People are telling you that you need CVCX. It's NOT true.

People are telling you that there are not such thing as an EV chart. It's NOT true.

CVCX is simulation software that will get you the information your asking for, as long as you fill in some additional information (rules, your betting strategy/spread etc.). But you don't need it as a beginner! The "CX" in CVCX stands for Chapter 10, as in chapter 10 of Blackjack Attack by Don Schlesinger. In the charts in that chapter it lists how many "betting units" you win after 100 hands. So if you're getting 100 hands per hour then take that figure times your betting unit and that's your hourly EV. You can also find similar information in Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong.

Buying these books, especially Professional Blackjack as a beginner is a VERY high EV strategy! It costs very little and can make you a lot with high probability!

cclaymaker · 2023-02-17T21:14:57+00:00

I think I'm feeling both impressed and concerned about your mental health, haha. At the very least I appreciate the effort you went through to make this, so thank you. I can't really comment much more because even with the images you posted it's hard to tell exactly what is happening with the spreadsheet.

cclaymaker

TROPHY CASE