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Young Earth creationism. That the Earth is flat. That water has a memory and homeopathy is legit. That you should split 7’s against an 8. That half the politicians in Washington are reptile aliens that have assumed human form. It just goes to show, someone out there is self-assured they know some great truth, no matter how ridiculous it is.
But no. There is no count high enough, or low enough, to justify splitting 7’s against an 8. You hit. Or actually stand, if the truecount gets to like 13, I’m sure, but I only figured these things out up to +12. You stand 15 against 8 if truecount>9.30, but with 14, the threshold will be even higher. But other than that remote possibility, there’s no threshold to remember because you should always do the same thing. It is a rule that is cut and dry, unrelenting and absolute. Though interestingly enough, you should split 2’s against an 8, if the truecount>3.48. But never split 7’s against an 8. If you split them, if the count is super high, you’ll likely turn one lousy busting hand into two lousy 17’s against an 18, but if the count is super negative, EVERYTHING is a losing proposition so having fewer hands is better and you should try to minimize the number of hands you play until the end of the shoe, but you’re also much more likely to redeem the one bad situation and not bust by hitting instead of splitting and end up with a single good hand. Also it is better to defer to a smaller standard deviation of outcome if there is a decision whose threshold is incredibly close, because “only if DAS is allowed” means you’d better be prepared to have at least 2 but possibly 3 or 4 side by side DOUBLED hands all losing together rather than one single hand. Even if I was wrong, and I’m not, but even if I was, if you had a bankroll of 1000 dollars, and you bet 10 dollars on a coinflip with a fair coin being heads, would you be willing to raise your bet to 50 for the privilege of using a coin that was heads 50.01% of the time instead? You shouldn’t be.
Consider it a decree from the great grouch, god of blackjack. Thou shalt not split 7’s against an 8.
Thanks for your opinionated decree, but I’ll stick with Peter Griffin in the definitive work on blackjack math, The Theory of Blackjack. You can also confirm this with the independently developed CA software available for free here : https://www.blackjackinfo.com/free-blackjack-combinatorial-analyzer/.
All of these sources agree. When DAS is available, in 1 or 2 decks, splitting 7s vs 8 is correct basic strategy.
For the record, the Hi-lo index is -1. Split at -1 or better. I personally verified that index for my Hi-Lo index cards using CVData. Perhaps you’ve never researched DAS games. It makes a huge difference on this particular play. In games where you cannot double after split, you’re right. Never split this hand in those games, regardless of the count. But when DAS is available, it’s an entirely different matter.
Whatever. Believe what you want. I’ll do the same.
I agree DAS opportunities is the main reason for splitting 7’s against an 8, and all the casinos I have visited allow DAS. So I always split 7’s vs. a dealer 8 even in 6 and 8 deck games, Am I wrong?
I agree DAS is the main reason for splitting 7’s against a dealer 8 and DAS is available at all casinos I’ve played in. So I split 7’s against a dealer 8 even in 6 and 8 deck games. Who thinks I’ right and who thinks I’m wrong?
What if the dealer hits on soft 17? They hit on soft 17 at my casino. Do I still proceed with the same instructions? How much of a difference does it make, percentage wise, if I follow these exact same rules you recommend if dealer hits soft 17
World’s greatest job my eye. It’s more like a job of last resort. The pay is low, comparable to minimum wage, but rather than a reliable pay of 10 bucks an hour it’s more like heads you win 510, tails you lose 490 in a given hour, and it’s the only job in the world where you’ll get fired by your employer for being too good at it. In other words, you’ll be banned from the casino. But since no one would ever hire me to do anything, it’s the only prospect I could ever have. But chances are, even if you do it WELL, your blackjack DEALER will get paid more than you.
Want me to demonstrate the prospects are that bad? It’s about like this, if you’re counting cards, your edge on the house is about 1/10 as large as theirs is on you all the time if you play roulette. So the average dollar you bet will return 1.005. So if you’re at a 10 dollar table, your average bet will be oh, 15 bucks let’s say, because most of the time you’ll bet the minimum, occasionally there will be a small advantage and you’ll be betting 50 or 75, and a very small fraction of the time you’ll be betting more like 200. If you’re playing to minimize risk of ruin, which is what you should be doing if you don’t have f*** you money (and if you have f*** you money, you shouldn’t be playing blackjack in the first place). This depends on the generosity of the casino with the rules they offer and where they put the cutcard of course. So 15 dollar average bet, at a .5% advantage on average, meaning the average you will earn per hand is 7.5 cents. If you play 100 hands an hour, that’s 12.50 an hour. So much for the dramatization of rainman or 21. Me, after 4 years, the most valuable thing I’ve gotten from it is a bunch of free food. In terms of money, I think about 800 dollars ahead last time I figured it out. After 4 years. (I WAS 1900 ahead in March 2016.) And being banned from 3 casinos.
But it beats the stock market at least. The stock market is like a casino where all the cards are blank and the house decides what their values are after they’ve been dealt to you, decides whether you win or lose at their discretion. Team A is you, team B is everyone else, and team B decides what everything is worth. Ponder THAT for a minute and you’ll see you’re still better off gambling in a casino if you have to gamble. At least the odds in casino games are calculable with math.
Do you know how many times I have been booed off a table for splitting tens with a high true count? Or how many times the dealer had an upcard if 6 and the cou t was like 2.5 3.2 and the third base guy hits on a 16 making the dealer get 18-20-21 when I had 250 in the hand only to loose standing with 12. I see a lot of people on here talking about all this theory. And that’s great but there is a lot of things you can’t be taught. I think this is the primary reason there is so much card counting Info online and it is still possible. Because not everyone can do it or they don’t have the patience. One thing I would love to add I have t seen anywhere when starting out 1st base is the safest bet. Because regardless of your cou y if you loose it you stand a good chance of getting blackjack or a pat hand. Because you o oh lost the previous rounds cou t not two…
Idiots always think they’re smart. It’s the dunning kruger effect. Your method would do just as well in roulette. Which is why anyone with a functional brain can see that it doesn’t work at all. The roulette ball doesn’t remember the previous spins, nor do cards remember your previous wins. Raising your bet or lowering it based on whether you win or lose is bullhonkey. It doesn’t matter which spins you bet what amount of money on, your total expected loss in roulette is 1/19 of the total money bet. And if you’re using the same method for blackjack, you’re no better.
Totally wrong. You would have to play a lot more than 100 thousand hands to have less than a 1/100000 probability of being behind while playing blackjack correctly and counting cards. I calculated the statistical advantage of a 2 deck game where you bet the minimum bet plus 3*the minimum bet for each 1 the truecount is past 2, if it is past 2, and the minimum bet if the truecount is 2 or less, which is the best way of doing it btw, is 1.94% of the minimum bet per hand. But with a standard deviation of 3 times the minimum bet. Meaning 1 hand, with a 15 dollar min bet, has a mean of +29 cents and a standard deviation of 45 dollars. The standard deviation scales in proportion to the square root of the number of hands while the mean scales in proportion to it. So after 100 hands, the mean is +29 dollars and the standard deviation is 450 dollars. After 10 thousand hands, the mean is +2900 and the standard deviation is 4500 dollars. And after 100 thousand hands, the mean is now +29 thousand and the standard deviation is 14230. So it’s getting close. A million hands will do it. But at only 100 thousand, breakeven is only 2 standard deviations down, meaning about 4% of the time you will be behind. That’s hardly less than the probability of being hit by a car. That’s also if you do it perfectly, and of course note that 100 thousand hands will take you 1000 hours or 6 weeks straight. Realistically that’s a year of dedicated blackjacking. You will be banned from the casino long before that. And yes it’s still gambling. Just like buying stocks is gambling. I don’t care if the odds are theoretically slanted in your favor, you can lose, and if you can lose, you will lose, because murphy’s law.
WHAT IS MY SCORE ON THE ABOVE QUIZ?
Your score is shown when you complete the quiz. Did you answer every question?
No results for me either
Doh sorry about that. Does it show you any error message? Can you try again? I’ve changed a couple things….hopefully should be working correctly now
Working now thx!
Can you run spanish 21 Sims with this?
Great quiz, it’s quick but has all of those close decisions that make the difference between almost perfect play and average.
It still tells me to split 7s against a dealer’s 8. At least with it set to a 2 deck game. WRONG!
Nope, the engine and the game are exactly correct. In a 2-deck game where you can DAS, you should split 7s against a dealer 8.
Young Earth creationism. That the Earth is flat. That water has a memory and homeopathy is legit. That you should split 7’s against an 8. That half the politicians in Washington are reptile aliens that have assumed human form. It just goes to show, someone out there is self-assured they know some great truth, no matter how ridiculous it is.
But no. There is no count high enough, or low enough, to justify splitting 7’s against an 8. You hit. Or actually stand, if the truecount gets to like 13, I’m sure, but I only figured these things out up to +12. You stand 15 against 8 if truecount>9.30, but with 14, the threshold will be even higher. But other than that remote possibility, there’s no threshold to remember because you should always do the same thing. It is a rule that is cut and dry, unrelenting and absolute. Though interestingly enough, you should split 2’s against an 8, if the truecount>3.48. But never split 7’s against an 8. If you split them, if the count is super high, you’ll likely turn one lousy busting hand into two lousy 17’s against an 18, but if the count is super negative, EVERYTHING is a losing proposition so having fewer hands is better and you should try to minimize the number of hands you play until the end of the shoe, but you’re also much more likely to redeem the one bad situation and not bust by hitting instead of splitting and end up with a single good hand. Also it is better to defer to a smaller standard deviation of outcome if there is a decision whose threshold is incredibly close, because “only if DAS is allowed” means you’d better be prepared to have at least 2 but possibly 3 or 4 side by side DOUBLED hands all losing together rather than one single hand. Even if I was wrong, and I’m not, but even if I was, if you had a bankroll of 1000 dollars, and you bet 10 dollars on a coinflip with a fair coin being heads, would you be willing to raise your bet to 50 for the privilege of using a coin that was heads 50.01% of the time instead? You shouldn’t be.
Consider it a decree from the great grouch, god of blackjack. Thou shalt not split 7’s against an 8.
Thanks for your opinionated decree, but I’ll stick with Peter Griffin in the definitive work on blackjack math, The Theory of Blackjack. You can also confirm this with the independently developed CA software available for free here : https://www.blackjackinfo.com/free-blackjack-combinatorial-analyzer/.
All of these sources agree. When DAS is available, in 1 or 2 decks, splitting 7s vs 8 is correct basic strategy.
For the record, the Hi-lo index is -1. Split at -1 or better. I personally verified that index for my Hi-Lo index cards using CVData. Perhaps you’ve never researched DAS games. It makes a huge difference on this particular play. In games where you cannot double after split, you’re right. Never split this hand in those games, regardless of the count. But when DAS is available, it’s an entirely different matter.
Whatever. Believe what you want. I’ll do the same.
I agree DAS opportunities is the main reason for splitting 7’s against an 8, and all the casinos I have visited allow DAS. So I always split 7’s vs. a dealer 8 even in 6 and 8 deck games, Am I wrong?
I agree DAS is the main reason for splitting 7’s against a dealer 8 and DAS is available at all casinos I’ve played in. So I split 7’s against a dealer 8 even in 6 and 8 deck games. Who thinks I’ right and who thinks I’m wrong?
No, you’re better off hitting in those games. For example, in 6D, H17, DAS:
Hitting loses 0.37771 of a bet. Splitting loses 0.39052 of a bet, which is worse.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20060214092652/http://www.bjmath.com:80/bjmath/ev/6dh17.htm
You can find the other games at
https://web.archive.org/web/20051126143403/http://www.bjmath.com/bjmath/ev/ev.htm
From there, you can see that in 2 decks, splitting is slightly cheaper. In 2D H17 DAS, hitting loses 0.38953, while splitting loses slightly less at 0.38704.
What if the dealer hits on soft 17? They hit on soft 17 at my casino. Do I still proceed with the same instructions? How much of a difference does it make, percentage wise, if I follow these exact same rules you recommend if dealer hits soft 17
World’s greatest job my eye. It’s more like a job of last resort. The pay is low, comparable to minimum wage, but rather than a reliable pay of 10 bucks an hour it’s more like heads you win 510, tails you lose 490 in a given hour, and it’s the only job in the world where you’ll get fired by your employer for being too good at it. In other words, you’ll be banned from the casino. But since no one would ever hire me to do anything, it’s the only prospect I could ever have. But chances are, even if you do it WELL, your blackjack DEALER will get paid more than you.
Want me to demonstrate the prospects are that bad? It’s about like this, if you’re counting cards, your edge on the house is about 1/10 as large as theirs is on you all the time if you play roulette. So the average dollar you bet will return 1.005. So if you’re at a 10 dollar table, your average bet will be oh, 15 bucks let’s say, because most of the time you’ll bet the minimum, occasionally there will be a small advantage and you’ll be betting 50 or 75, and a very small fraction of the time you’ll be betting more like 200. If you’re playing to minimize risk of ruin, which is what you should be doing if you don’t have f*** you money (and if you have f*** you money, you shouldn’t be playing blackjack in the first place). This depends on the generosity of the casino with the rules they offer and where they put the cutcard of course. So 15 dollar average bet, at a .5% advantage on average, meaning the average you will earn per hand is 7.5 cents. If you play 100 hands an hour, that’s 12.50 an hour. So much for the dramatization of rainman or 21. Me, after 4 years, the most valuable thing I’ve gotten from it is a bunch of free food. In terms of money, I think about 800 dollars ahead last time I figured it out. After 4 years. (I WAS 1900 ahead in March 2016.) And being banned from 3 casinos.
But it beats the stock market at least. The stock market is like a casino where all the cards are blank and the house decides what their values are after they’ve been dealt to you, decides whether you win or lose at their discretion. Team A is you, team B is everyone else, and team B decides what everything is worth. Ponder THAT for a minute and you’ll see you’re still better off gambling in a casino if you have to gamble. At least the odds in casino games are calculable with math.
Do you know how many times I have been booed off a table for splitting tens with a high true count? Or how many times the dealer had an upcard if 6 and the cou t was like 2.5 3.2 and the third base guy hits on a 16 making the dealer get 18-20-21 when I had 250 in the hand only to loose standing with 12. I see a lot of people on here talking about all this theory. And that’s great but there is a lot of things you can’t be taught. I think this is the primary reason there is so much card counting Info online and it is still possible. Because not everyone can do it or they don’t have the patience. One thing I would love to add I have t seen anywhere when starting out 1st base is the safest bet. Because regardless of your cou y if you loose it you stand a good chance of getting blackjack or a pat hand. Because you o oh lost the previous rounds cou t not two…
It used to tell me I should split a pair of 7s against a 10. Every so often I see some ridiculous error in it.
Idiots always think they’re smart. It’s the dunning kruger effect. Your method would do just as well in roulette. Which is why anyone with a functional brain can see that it doesn’t work at all. The roulette ball doesn’t remember the previous spins, nor do cards remember your previous wins. Raising your bet or lowering it based on whether you win or lose is bullhonkey. It doesn’t matter which spins you bet what amount of money on, your total expected loss in roulette is 1/19 of the total money bet. And if you’re using the same method for blackjack, you’re no better.
Totally wrong. You would have to play a lot more than 100 thousand hands to have less than a 1/100000 probability of being behind while playing blackjack correctly and counting cards. I calculated the statistical advantage of a 2 deck game where you bet the minimum bet plus 3*the minimum bet for each 1 the truecount is past 2, if it is past 2, and the minimum bet if the truecount is 2 or less, which is the best way of doing it btw, is 1.94% of the minimum bet per hand. But with a standard deviation of 3 times the minimum bet. Meaning 1 hand, with a 15 dollar min bet, has a mean of +29 cents and a standard deviation of 45 dollars. The standard deviation scales in proportion to the square root of the number of hands while the mean scales in proportion to it. So after 100 hands, the mean is +29 dollars and the standard deviation is 450 dollars. After 10 thousand hands, the mean is +2900 and the standard deviation is 4500 dollars. And after 100 thousand hands, the mean is now +29 thousand and the standard deviation is 14230. So it’s getting close. A million hands will do it. But at only 100 thousand, breakeven is only 2 standard deviations down, meaning about 4% of the time you will be behind. That’s hardly less than the probability of being hit by a car. That’s also if you do it perfectly, and of course note that 100 thousand hands will take you 1000 hours or 6 weeks straight. Realistically that’s a year of dedicated blackjacking. You will be banned from the casino long before that. And yes it’s still gambling. Just like buying stocks is gambling. I don’t care if the odds are theoretically slanted in your favor, you can lose, and if you can lose, you will lose, because murphy’s law.