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You really should know it’s better to use 2-7 against 9 10 and A instead of 2-6 against 10 and A. Hi-lo may be the original and of historical significance, but it’s better to use 7’s as low cards and 9’s as high cards with only 8 as the one not counting for anything. It’s just as easy a method to do in practice, and it is better for everything except the insurance correlation (the truecount threshold for taking insurance is 4.000 doing it that way instead of 3.333 with hi-low, which is 20% higher, but of course the standard deviation of the count will be sqrt(1.2) times as high, 10% higher, with 1.2 times as many cards having point values).
If you find a place with a super promotion, so that you actually have a slight advantage even flatbetting, you could practice with another vector when the pressure is off and you can stop trying for the rest of the shoe, but the casinos will be most looking for hi-lo first and foremost, and if you are doing something that is not quite the same, yet works better, that means they are less likely to detect you, because you may be betting low when they’re expecting you to be betting high and vice versa, AND you’re more likely to leave the casino a winner instead of a loser.
As such, it is a bad plan to burn this into memory and indoctrinate yourself with the habit of seeing a 7 and an 8 and saying that’s 0 points. No, it’s 1 point. Or seeing a 4 and a 9 and saying that’s 1 point. No, it’s 0. Break that habit before you make it in the first place, don’t train yourself to follow an inferior method as if it was 2nd nature.
Actually, Hi-Lo has a betting correlation (BC) of 0.9682, while your recommendation (AKA the Silver Fox count) has a very slightly lower BC of 0.9625 instead. (See https://www.blackjackinfo.com/card-counting-efficiency-calculator/ or https://qfit.com/card-counting.htm) Yes, the playing efficiency (PE) is improved with Silver Fox, but the Insurance Correlation is far weaker. For beginning players I absolutely stick with my recommendation of either Hi-Lo or KO. These counts are so similar in practice that you are unlikely to gain much camouflage value by including the 7s and 9s. Yes, I agree that the 7 is effectively a low card, and the 9 effectively a high card, but to weight them the same as the others is iffy. If these kinds of things concern you, use the more complex count that I actually use, Wong’s Halves.
I disagree. 1-deck games are not lucrative, they always come with horrible caveats, like blackjack paying 1-1. I’d even say the 6 deck games are better than the 2 deck games. The 6 deck games, they usually have the cutcard 1 deck before the end. The 2 deck games, they also have the cutcard 1 deck before the end. But the standard deviation of the count is a parabolic function of your progress through the shoe. Meaning 1 deck before the end, you’ll be at the top of the parabola of a 2-deck game, in a 6-deck game, it’s most of the way to the base of it. The bottom line is that the standard deviation of the count, 1 deck before the end of a 6-deck shoe, will be sqrt(5/3) times as high as it is 1 deck before the end of a 2-deck shoe. It’s easier for that 1 deck at the end to be jampacked full of the high cards from all 6 decks than it is to be jampacked with just the high cards of 2 decks, basically. You just have to suffer through counting through 5 decks accurately, that’s the cost. But the minimum bet of a 6 deck game is generally 5 and sometimes 3 dollars as opposed to 25 or 15 in the 2 deck game. Your expected earnings are actually about the same if you play to minimize risk of ruin in either case, except the risk of ruin in the 6 deck game is smaller for a given bankroll size.
As for playing face down, what I do is just count them when they’re overturned and I don’t play if there are more than 2 other people at the table face down. But who needs that, 6 deck games are almost always face up.
There are still good one-deck games in northern Nevada, but you are right that the games are rarely found elsewhere. The GameMaster’s lessons were obviously written a few years ago when 1-deck 3:2 games were not dinosaurs.
The “M” isn’t a variable. It’s a mental shorthand for keeping track of the fact that the count is negative. Instead of thinking “minus 1”, just think “M1”. The answers for questions 7 and 9 are exactly correct as posted.
I live in France. I was a Blackjack player who use indexes by Stanford WONG, I am mastered the way Hi-lo. Because of big accident, I had a problem for my bankroll. If somebody need to organize a blackjack team, please tell me. Thanks!
Hi Ken I’ve learnedken Uston Advanced plus minus really kind of struggling with all the – numbers is there any reason to learn the minus numbers above -5 you aren’t you’re not going to run into that much. I would like your advice on that.. and do you think this is the best count for today’s action or should I switch to a high low I don’t think I’m able to play level 2 account thank you spraymaster and I’m also from the same area you are from would love to meet you sometime I admire all your website very much and very respectful to your knowledge I would like to find someone to help find tune
A few points: 1) You are correct about ignoring the high negative count indexes. You shouldn’t be playing many of those counts anyway, and when you do you will have your minimum bet out. It’s not worth the effort knowing the indexes for these situations. 2) I recommend everyone start with either KO or Hi-Lo until you are quite experienced. The extra errors you will make with a complex count combined with the mental fatigue will mean you are likely to do worse with an advanced count. I know one full-time pro who still uses KO exclusively. He understands that ease of use really is important. 3) You mention being from the same area, but I suspect you are mistaking me for the GameMaster. As for me, I’ve recently moved from Mississippi to Texas.
hi ken !!! these choices are the same also for european blackjack ? in very bad- low counts a hand like pair of 6 against a 4 or a 5 dealers how should be played ? hit stop or split ?knowing the remaining cards it plays a little with your mind and the bs .thanks 4 your answer
The answer is it depends on the parameters of the game. Where the cutcard is. If you’re giving the money in pounds, you’re probably playing by different rules, in England don’t they check for blackjack after you double down? In America you don’t even have an opportunity to double down or split if the dealer has blackjack. In the US though, if the cutcard is 1 deck before the end, if the dealer checks for blackjack first, if double after split and resplit aces is allowed, then the correct answer is to add 3 times the minimum bet for each 1 the truecount gets past 1.8. You bet the minimum bet as long as the dealer has the advantage. You add to it when you start having the advantage, which is at a truecount of 1.8, that’s the breakeven point. So if the truecount is 0, you bet the minimum. I the truecount is 1, you bet the minimum. If the truecount is 2, you bet the minimum, if the truecount is 3, you bet 4 times the minimum, if the truecount is 4, you’d bet about 7 times the minimum. This is how you minimize risk of ruin. If you want to maximize statistical expected return on a linear scale without concern of ruin, you would bet the minimum bet whenever you have the disadvantage and the maximum bet whenever you have the advantage, however slight, with nothing in between, and if you can do that, you can expect to lose all your money in a hurry and if you don’t, you can expect to be thrown out of the casino in about 20 minutes.
I would imagine that the list is mostly accurate. These conditions change over time, but this is a fairly recent effort it appears. It certainly should give you an idea where to start looking once you are in Vegas.
Thank you for the reply, I typically play $25/$50 tables to get the better parameters and no Mid-Shoe Entry. Hopefully with those minimum bets I can get a good game out there. I found this website while searching online, any idea if it is pretty accurate or up to date? http://wizardofvegas.com/guides/blackjack-survey//
There’s nothing wrong with that bet ramp if you’re getting away with it. 20:1 will definitely win the money! I like big spreads. Especially if you have the flexibility to travel a bit. And some out-of-the-way casinos are just clueless.
Probably not much to be done. These databases are pretty much one-way. In my experience, once you’re listed, you’re listed. The good news is that virtually every pro I know has made a lot more money in the years after they were in Griffin than before. It’s not as fatal as it sounds.
It’s been a while now since I have been to Vegas, but TI consistently gets the best reviews for low limit blackjack games with decent rules. Anywhere on the strip, it’s getting hard to find 3:2 BJ at low limits. Many places just don’t offer it at all until you get to $25+ limits. You also will find most games are now H17. Even downtown is no longer immune. Depending on how serious you are, it may be worth buying a subscription or single issue of Current Blackjack News at bj21.com. They show all the current conditions, updated monthly.
You really should know it’s better to use 2-7 against 9 10 and A instead of 2-6 against 10 and A. Hi-lo may be the original and of historical significance, but it’s better to use 7’s as low cards and 9’s as high cards with only 8 as the one not counting for anything. It’s just as easy a method to do in practice, and it is better for everything except the insurance correlation (the truecount threshold for taking insurance is 4.000 doing it that way instead of 3.333 with hi-low, which is 20% higher, but of course the standard deviation of the count will be sqrt(1.2) times as high, 10% higher, with 1.2 times as many cards having point values).
If you find a place with a super promotion, so that you actually have a slight advantage even flatbetting, you could practice with another vector when the pressure is off and you can stop trying for the rest of the shoe, but the casinos will be most looking for hi-lo first and foremost, and if you are doing something that is not quite the same, yet works better, that means they are less likely to detect you, because you may be betting low when they’re expecting you to be betting high and vice versa, AND you’re more likely to leave the casino a winner instead of a loser.
As such, it is a bad plan to burn this into memory and indoctrinate yourself with the habit of seeing a 7 and an 8 and saying that’s 0 points. No, it’s 1 point. Or seeing a 4 and a 9 and saying that’s 1 point. No, it’s 0. Break that habit before you make it in the first place, don’t train yourself to follow an inferior method as if it was 2nd nature.
Actually, Hi-Lo has a betting correlation (BC) of 0.9682, while your recommendation (AKA the Silver Fox count) has a very slightly lower BC of 0.9625 instead. (See https://www.blackjackinfo.com/card-counting-efficiency-calculator/ or https://qfit.com/card-counting.htm) Yes, the playing efficiency (PE) is improved with Silver Fox, but the Insurance Correlation is far weaker. For beginning players I absolutely stick with my recommendation of either Hi-Lo or KO.
These counts are so similar in practice that you are unlikely to gain much camouflage value by including the 7s and 9s. Yes, I agree that the 7 is effectively a low card, and the 9 effectively a high card, but to weight them the same as the others is iffy. If these kinds of things concern you, use the more complex count that I actually use, Wong’s Halves.
I disagree. 1-deck games are not lucrative, they always come with horrible caveats, like blackjack paying 1-1. I’d even say the 6 deck games are better than the 2 deck games. The 6 deck games, they usually have the cutcard 1 deck before the end. The 2 deck games, they also have the cutcard 1 deck before the end. But the standard deviation of the count is a parabolic function of your progress through the shoe. Meaning 1 deck before the end, you’ll be at the top of the parabola of a 2-deck game, in a 6-deck game, it’s most of the way to the base of it. The bottom line is that the standard deviation of the count, 1 deck before the end of a 6-deck shoe, will be sqrt(5/3) times as high as it is 1 deck before the end of a 2-deck shoe. It’s easier for that 1 deck at the end to be jampacked full of the high cards from all 6 decks than it is to be jampacked with just the high cards of 2 decks, basically. You just have to suffer through counting through 5 decks accurately, that’s the cost. But the minimum bet of a 6 deck game is generally 5 and sometimes 3 dollars as opposed to 25 or 15 in the 2 deck game. Your expected earnings are actually about the same if you play to minimize risk of ruin in either case, except the risk of ruin in the 6 deck game is smaller for a given bankroll size.
As for playing face down, what I do is just count them when they’re overturned and I don’t play if there are more than 2 other people at the table face down. But who needs that, 6 deck games are almost always face up.
There are still good one-deck games in northern Nevada, but you are right that the games are rarely found elsewhere. The GameMaster’s lessons were obviously written a few years ago when 1-deck 3:2 games were not dinosaurs.
7 and 9, your answers are wrong. 7 is 0.4*M-2 and 9 is M/3-1. You forgot to divide your variable M by the number of decks left too.
The “M” isn’t a variable. It’s a mental shorthand for keeping track of the fact that the count is negative. Instead of thinking “minus 1”, just think “M1”.
The answers for questions 7 and 9 are exactly correct as posted.
I live in France. I was a Blackjack player who use indexes by Stanford WONG, I am mastered the way Hi-lo. Because of big accident, I had a problem for my bankroll. If somebody need to organize a blackjack team, please tell me. Thanks!
Hi Ken I’ve learnedken Uston Advanced plus minus really kind of struggling with all the – numbers is there any reason to learn the minus numbers above -5 you aren’t you’re not going to run into that much. I would like your advice on that.. and do you think this is the best count for today’s action or should I switch to a high low I don’t think I’m able to play level 2 account thank you spraymaster and I’m also from the same area you are from would love to meet you sometime I admire all your website very much and very respectful to your knowledge I would like to find someone to help find tune
A few points:
1) You are correct about ignoring the high negative count indexes. You shouldn’t be playing many of those counts anyway, and when you do you will have your minimum bet out. It’s not worth the effort knowing the indexes for these situations.
2) I recommend everyone start with either KO or Hi-Lo until you are quite experienced. The extra errors you will make with a complex count combined with the mental fatigue will mean you are likely to do worse with an advanced count. I know one full-time pro who still uses KO exclusively. He understands that ease of use really is important.
3) You mention being from the same area, but I suspect you are mistaking me for the GameMaster. As for me, I’ve recently moved from Mississippi to Texas.
OK thanks for your help I will try this keep you up date in a few months
hi ken !!! these choices are the same also for european blackjack ? in very bad- low counts a hand like pair of 6 against a 4 or a 5 dealers how should be played ? hit stop or split ?knowing the remaining cards it plays a little with your mind and the bs .thanks 4 your answer
ken please inform us when your new project will be ready !i wish all the best !
Thanks, Ken. He was a great dad!!
Really helpful website and app; wish I had known about this in the 1st lesson before I made up my flashcards…
The answer is it depends on the parameters of the game. Where the cutcard is. If you’re giving the money in pounds, you’re probably playing by different rules, in England don’t they check for blackjack after you double down? In America you don’t even have an opportunity to double down or split if the dealer has blackjack. In the US though, if the cutcard is 1 deck before the end, if the dealer checks for blackjack first, if double after split and resplit aces is allowed, then the correct answer is to add 3 times the minimum bet for each 1 the truecount gets past 1.8. You bet the minimum bet as long as the dealer has the advantage. You add to it when you start having the advantage, which is at a truecount of 1.8, that’s the breakeven point. So if the truecount is 0, you bet the minimum. I the truecount is 1, you bet the minimum. If the truecount is 2, you bet the minimum, if the truecount is 3, you bet 4 times the minimum, if the truecount is 4, you’d bet about 7 times the minimum. This is how you minimize risk of ruin. If you want to maximize statistical expected return on a linear scale without concern of ruin, you would bet the minimum bet whenever you have the disadvantage and the maximum bet whenever you have the advantage, however slight, with nothing in between, and if you can do that, you can expect to lose all your money in a hurry and if you don’t, you can expect to be thrown out of the casino in about 20 minutes.
I would imagine that the list is mostly accurate. These conditions change over time, but this is a fairly recent effort it appears. It certainly should give you an idea where to start looking once you are in Vegas.
Thank you for the reply, I typically play $25/$50 tables to get the better parameters and no Mid-Shoe Entry. Hopefully with those minimum bets I can get a good game out there. I found this website while searching online, any idea if it is pretty accurate or up to date? http://wizardofvegas.com/guides/blackjack-survey//
There’s nothing wrong with that bet ramp if you’re getting away with it. 20:1 will definitely win the money! I like big spreads. Especially if you have the flexibility to travel a bit. And some out-of-the-way casinos are just clueless.
Probably not much to be done. These databases are pretty much one-way. In my experience, once you’re listed, you’re listed. The good news is that virtually every pro I know has made a lot more money in the years after they were in Griffin than before. It’s not as fatal as it sounds.
It’s been a while now since I have been to Vegas, but TI consistently gets the best reviews for low limit blackjack games with decent rules. Anywhere on the strip, it’s getting hard to find 3:2 BJ at low limits. Many places just don’t offer it at all until you get to $25+ limits. You also will find most games are now H17. Even downtown is no longer immune. Depending on how serious you are, it may be worth buying a subscription or single issue of Current Blackjack News at bj21.com. They show all the current conditions, updated monthly.