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Love your site and tutorial. I’ve really been enjoying playing blackjack because of it. However, I’m confused or have a problem with one thing. You say to walk away when TC is -1. If I actually walked away, I’d wind up never playing. -1 occurs very very often, I don’t understand how you expect people to walk away. One time I went to the casino with my friends and we took up the whole table, so I was able to sit out a bunch of hands…when the count was negative, without looking suspicious. That was awesome. But I just can’t figure out how to do it when playing not-with-friends without looking suspicious. Can you give me a few pointers? Thanks
I think GameMaster’s advice here is impractical for most players. As you note, a true count of -1 happens very often. Too often for most players to want to, or even be able to switch tables. Realistically, switching tables at TC -2 is still tough but manageable if you are in a casino with plenty of tables. If that is still too difficult, at least save your restroom breaks for when the count really tanks.
AM INTERESTED IN DOWNLOADING THE BASIC BLACKJACK PROGRAM, NOT THE MORE SOPHISTICATED CASINO VERITE (YET). WHAT COST? HOW TO DO IT? HAD BEEN USING A CRAZY HERMIT “DRI SUPER BLACKJACK” BUT IS NOW UNSUPPORTED. STILL NEED A PRACTICING VEHICLE WITHOUT COUNTING. FEEL BEST RESULTS WHEN SOLIDLY FOCUSED ON BASIC STATEGIES.
There is no download for the trainer here. If your device is not compatible with Flash, the current version hosted here on this page will not work. I’m hoping to have a new mobile-friendly version available here in early 2016, with LOTS of new features. It’s in progress.
I have a question about playing at home and playing at the casino. Why is it when i play at home i can win and at the casino its lot harder to beat. At the casino the dealer seems to always win. Is it the way the cards get shuffled? I think that i shuffle very good and it is much different at the tables.
there is a rogue casino i felt much obliged to report: the www_188bet_com——-Chinese version. According to them,they are legally regulated and licensed by the Isle of Man,which,as most of us know, is one of the most reputable gambling regulation authority.However,there is something odd about this.when you enter the webpage of its “table games”,the little icon of Isle of Man at the bottom of the main page suddenly turns into the icon of First Cagayan.I shared with them this confusion I had and they gave no explanation. When I play their microgaming single deck black,something even weirder happened.I won in a long string when i bet small like 10/20.But When I started to increase my bets,the odds just seemed to be all against me.i lost like 30 out of 40 times when i bet big and my bankroll just reduced from 10000 to 1500 while the maximum bet i made was no more than 450. Seriously,when i bet big,i just kept losing and losing and losing, and no one would not feel the same as i did if you ever were me there.Since there is no law in China to regulate online gambling ,I strongly suspect that they are exploiting some loophole to install a rigged game for the Chinese players,which probably is why they don’t show any information about relationship with Isle of Man at the Chinese version’s table game page.Because they know you have no authority to turn to even if you are cheated by an unfair game. I mean I don’t have any statistics here but as a seasoned blackjack player who has been playing this game in many other brick and motar casinos,I just got this instinct.The experiences are so apparently different to not be noticed.So here i sincerely encourage all players located in jurisdictions where online gambling is not in any way regulated not to play online blackjack on 188bet or ,if you can, any online blackjack without a live dealer.
I’m not sure how much I can trust this calculator because it really ought to give some kind of error message if you give it an unbalanced system. Or at least come with some explanation of what it does for an unbalanced counting vector. This casts doubt on whether I can trust ANY of its results.
What I’m trying to do is find something which has a low correlation with hi-lo (dot product with the vector -1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1, but with the last vector component counting 4 times as much since it’s 10 J Q or K, and then divide by the magnitudes of the 2 vectors) so that it’s undetectable to the people behind the eye in the sky the way they’re on the lookout for counters, but has a decent betting correlation. I’m playing around with 1 -1 -1 1 2 0 2 1 -1 -1 tentatively, which has a correlation of 0.3 with hi-low because A, 2 and 3 are reversed. But can I actually TRUST this thing’s results?
i would love anyone who saw my post to share it with other players in other casino forums.Even if you think i am just a paranoid soar loser who got pissed by nothing but simply regular bad luck,at least get this information talked about and debated on so as to either prove me wrong or warn others. If any Chinese blackjack players can see this,Please be cautious ever after or PM me if you have anything else related you would like to share with me（中国的朋友看过来！）
they are doing a promotion of an UNLIMITED 1% deposit rebate and that means if you play single deck game with a house edge of 0.3%,you will end up with a player edge of 0.7%.Now I know what “when its too good to be true,it probably is” means.
Uh. Wow. I’m not so sure how accurate the claims on this page could be. This isn’t anything like my results. I have kept a log. 80 days. On 80 different days in my life I have gone to casinos. I have gained $US 1458.74 after tips I have left dealers, waitresses, money I’ve spent in restaurants because the mealcomps I got for gambling didn’t QUITE cover the meal, though I also received much free stuff, like 140 dollars worth of prepaid credit cards/gas cards/gift cards (about 1000 dollars worth of mealcomps) and a bunch of other free stuff like boxes of chocolates and thermos bottles with the casino’s name on it and whatnot. But we’re still talking 80 trips, probably 3 hours each on average, so that’s 240 dollars for 1458.74 and 1600 miles worth of driving or so so what is that, 500 dollars worth of gas probably because my car sucks. That’s not even minimum wage. I would have done better to get a job as a blackjack dealer. If they’d hired me. They wouldn’t have done that. And I’m actually GOOD at it. In fact, as far as individual lone wolf people go and not teams, I’m probably the best there’s ever been. I’ve worked out the exact function of bet amount as a function of truecount to minimize risk of ruin, even tackling the murky issue of how much you should resplit and double after split under different conditions to minimize risk of ruin (so for instance, it’s bad to split a bunch of times and double on all of them on a big bet, and if you’re just playing to maximize the expected value of your return you should do it fearlessly, but if you’re obeying the kelly criterion, you’re trying to maximize the LOG of your bankroll at the end of the bet – though it’s not QUITE the same as that, the minimum bet throws a monkeywrench in that, so I go for linear gains instead of exponential and go for an exponentially decreasing risk of ruin, but it’s still quite high even starting from 10000 dollars, it’s like 50%). And yet it’s not lucrative for me. It’s crap. Absolute crap. And for making a tiny amount of money, I’ve been banned from 3 casinos in the process, or well, one of them I can still play baccarat technically, and I COULD, I also worked out how to count the panda8 and dragon7 sidebets but I’m forced to take the main bets and it’s just not worthwhile. I really don’t understand how you can call this the world’s greatest job. Working at walmart would be better.
Not so sure that’s so devastating as you make it out to be. A loss of 1.4% to the house could be worth it to play a 1-deck game. That’s only the same difference in player/house edge as 2.8 in the truecount. And that can happen prettttty easily in a 1-deck game, if you’re halfway through the deck, that’s a count of only 1.4! The standard deviation of the truecount halfway through a n-deck shoe is sqrt(40/n), which means if n is 1, that’s straight-up the square root of 40 or 6.5. Which means a full 16% of the time, the truecount will be over 6.5 halfway through a single deck. I’ve seen the truecount get up to 15 in a 6-deck game near the cutcard and I’ve seen it go to 12 in a 2-deck game, both of which with the cutcards 1 deck before the end. It depends on where that cutcard is. Is it with 26 cards left? 22? 30? That 16% of the time when it’s over 6.5, that’s when you’d be betting big, 6:5 blackjack or 3:2. The 1.4% house edge or 2.8 in the truecount is only 0.4 standard deviation of the truecount with 26 cards left and it’s no obstacle at all if the count is 10 and the player gets a 5% advantage from it. Though I guess it wouldn’t quite be the same 0.5% per truecount since it’s the increased probability of blackjack that accounts for much of the advantage you get from the count being high, so it’s probably more like 0.4% then. The question is, how serious are they about catching people trying to count their 1 deck game with the 6:5 blackjack, and what is the min and max bet at the table? If it’s a 50 dollar min and 300 max or if there’s serious heat then I’d say screw it. But if that’s what they do in atlantic city where they’re not allowed to prohibit card counting players, I could very well go there and make them very very sorry they offered a 1-deck game myself, with or without a 6:5 blackjack payoff. Hell I’d go there and count cards out loud just to mess with them, that would be funny, 6:5 blackjack payout on a 1-deck game is hardly an obstacle in a 1-deck game it seems to me!
Wong. I’ve heard that name. Well Mr. Wong, if you read this, let me tell you something, that if I see someone “wonging in” the middle of my shoe, stealing my high cards when the deck is rich, or wonging out, leaving me to take the low cards when the deck turns bad, I will be very incensed, and if you do it repeatedly, I will consider reporting what you are doing to the pit boss even though it would probably mean I’d be banned from the casino too unless I’m very cautious about how I do it. Since that practice is actually stealing from the other players. That’s what it is. Remember that, Mr. Wong. If you mid-shoe enter, when the count goes high, or when you leave in the middle of the shoe when it goes super negative, you are actually stealing from the other players, not merely improving your performance against the house. If I’m the only one at the table and the count swings high and there are enough cards left in the shoe for 15 hands with only me at the table, it will only be enough cards for 10 more hands with one other person instead, since if it’s me, someone else and the dealer, that uses 1.5 times as many cards per hand as just me and the dealer (a little worse than that actually, since the dealer will never split hands, so on average, the player uses more cards than the dealer, so it’s maybe a ratio of 3.2 to 2.1, maybe it’ll be 9 instead of 15 hands remaining). I’m happy to play at the same table as someone else who’s counting, hell, if I figure it out, and I lose count, I might just watch you and bet the same thing you bet, and you’re welcome to do the same for me. But if you leave halfway through a sour shoe or step in when I’ve suffered through the first half, absorbing low cards all the way in order to MAKE it hot in the first place and yet to be denied my hard-earned prize by someone who swoops in like that, you might as well be stealing chips from my stack and I won’t stand for it. I expect you to take your punishment right along with me if you want to count cards with me at the table, suffer through it yourself when the count is bad and don’t just exploit me as a tool to use up the cards you don’t want. You’ll also be less likely to be banned by the casino too. Even when I’m playing alone, I’ll sit there and take my punishment, I’ve seen the truecount get down to -14! And I’ll do CRAAZZZY things when it does, I’ve hit on 14 against a dealer’s 6 before, I’ve hit on hard 17 before, and you can be sure I bet the minimum, but I still sit there and take my punishment.
I have a question. What is better: bet $100 in one place or $50 in two places at the same table, considering a positive count?
I believe that at the same table there is a high correlation among the hands. On the other hand, the risk of playing two places at the same hand is fewer.
Wow. While you were at it, did you contact the united chess federation while and ask if it’s against the law to think about your moves before you make them or if you’re legally required to move randomly when playing chess (not just by the rules of the game, but under penalty of law)? Maybe ask if it’s a misdemeanor or a felony to not move at random? You obviously either think we live in Orwell’s 1984 subject to enforcement by thought police (what, it’s illegal to try to REMEMBER something now? And we’re not even talking about a GOOD memory, a FISH could remember that much, it’s laughable how much an intellectual thing counting cards ISN’T) or don’t even know what counting cards is. All it is, is remembering a stupid number that starts at 0 at the beginning of the shoe, adding 1 to the total whenever you see a low card dealt out, subtracting 1 when you see a high card dealt out! Remembering a number. That’s IT! That’s all it is! That’s all it’s ever been! “Card counter” shouldn’t even be a NOUN! It’d be like “move thinker” in chess. If you’re not counting cards, it’s not that you’re avoiding cheating, you’re simply playing badly. Just like the chess player who refuses to do anything but move at random isn’t somehow doing something ETHICAL by refusing to form any sort of plan in his moves and play the game well, he’s just not playing the game well, he’s playing it like a 4 year old is all! You’re either counting cards or you’re playing badly. Those are your choices. And if you call the casino and announce your intention to count cards, you are an even bigger idiot than the people who go to the casino and play blackjack and DON’T count cards (i.e. play the game BADLY). Because the casinos make their money from stupid people. They don’t want people who play it well, they want imbeciles. And being a BUSINESS, they have a right to refuse to do business with anyone they want to, you’re just telling them you’re one of those people who they want to not do business with. Whatever. At best you’re a shill for a casino to ask a question like that on a website like this, but probably just someone who intellectually reaffirms my cynicism and disgust for the human race.
That comment indicates you fundamentally don’t understand how it works to use a counting system to supplement basic strategy decisions. There is no counting system where you just break basic strategy in a consistent way for any reason that is not dependent on the count! For any balanced counting system, when the count is ZERO, then your decision table should match basic strategy exactly. That means you split 2’s and 3’s against a dealer’s 2 or 3, if the count is 0, and that’s why basic strategy says to do that, because on average the count WILL be 0. However, splitting 3’s against a dealer’s 2 IS the one which has its threshold pretty close to a count of 0. For instance, in the classic method known as hilo (I don’t know about knockout), where 2-6 get +1 and A and 10 get -1, the threshold is about -0.3. So you’d hit if the count divided by number of decks left goes under negative one third. If it’s 0, you split. If it’s positive, you split. A pair of 3’s against 3 and the threshold drops to -3.6. Against a 4 and it’s -6.8. A pair of 2’s against 2 and it’s -3.4, a pair of 2’s against 3 and it’s -6.1, a pair of 2 against a 6 and it’s -2.2, against a 3 and it’s -4.7. You can see why basic strategy is what it is because the basic strategy table tells you what you do when the count is 0, or more precisely, what the count would be on average by being dealt that hand. For instance, you double 9 against 2 when the count per remaining deck is more than 1.0, and that also demonstrates why you double on 9 against 2 in a 2-deck game, because just to get a 9 in the first place, you have to have gotten 2 low cards, and the dealer shows a low card, which means the count is 3, so in a 2-deck game, just by dealing a 9 against 2, the truecount is already 1.5, while in a 6-deck game the truecount is 0.5 since it’s a matter of dividing 3 by 2 or by 6, and so in the 2-deck game, basic strategy says double 9 against 2 because 1.5 is more than 1.0, while the 6-deck basic strategy says hit 9 against 2 because 0.5 is less than 1.0. But bottom line, if you’re varying strategy in accordance with ANY counting method, it will always be a function of the count. The decisions that hinge on a threshold that’s very close to 0 are the ones where it also won’t matter much on average if you do one thing or the other if you’re not counting and just using basic strategy. The decision thresholds that are closest to 0 are 16 against 10 hit/stand, 11 against A hit/double and soft 15 against 4 hit/double. Decisions that are kind of close to 0 are 3-3 against 2, soft 19 against 6, soft 18 against 2, and soft 13 against 5. In all of these, it won’t make a huge difference whether you do one action or the other if you’re not counting cards and you can just as well assume the decision thresholds are AT zero as to remember the exact numbers they are (11 against ace, the threshold is -.03, that’s super-super close, that means removing one high-card from a 30-deck shoe makes it no longer worthwhile to double 11 against ace).
Wagering the same amount split up over two spots instead of one will decrease your variance. In that case, your expected win is still the same but the swings will be smaller. Also, because the variance is lower, you can afford to make a larger total bet instead. If your bankroll allows you to make a $100 bet on one spot, you can afford to bet $75 on each of two spots and incur the same overall risk. With total action of $150 instead of $100, your win rate goes up but risk stays the same.
Ken, when trying to print this lesson, the charts don’t print in color. Not sure why, but it shows up fine on-screen but just doesn’t print in color.
Thanks for pointing out this issue. It is fixed. Printing will now show the colored decision text.
Love your site and tutorial. I’ve really been enjoying playing blackjack because of it. However, I’m confused or have a problem with one thing. You say to walk away when TC is -1. If I actually walked away, I’d wind up never playing. -1 occurs very very often, I don’t understand how you expect people to walk away. One time I went to the casino with my friends and we took up the whole table, so I was able to sit out a bunch of hands…when the count was negative, without looking suspicious. That was awesome. But I just can’t figure out how to do it when playing not-with-friends without looking suspicious. Can you give me a few pointers? Thanks
I think GameMaster’s advice here is impractical for most players. As you note, a true count of -1 happens very often. Too often for most players to want to, or even be able to switch tables.
Realistically, switching tables at TC -2 is still tough but manageable if you are in a casino with plenty of tables.
If that is still too difficult, at least save your restroom breaks for when the count really tanks.
Alright, noted. At least that’s one less thing I have to worry about doing wrong. Thank you for such a quick reply!
AM INTERESTED IN DOWNLOADING THE BASIC BLACKJACK PROGRAM, NOT THE MORE SOPHISTICATED CASINO VERITE (YET). WHAT COST? HOW TO DO IT? HAD BEEN USING A CRAZY HERMIT “DRI SUPER BLACKJACK” BUT IS NOW UNSUPPORTED. STILL NEED A PRACTICING VEHICLE WITHOUT COUNTING. FEEL BEST RESULTS WHEN SOLIDLY FOCUSED ON BASIC STATEGIES.
There is no download for the trainer here. If your device is not compatible with Flash, the current version hosted here on this page will not work. I’m hoping to have a new mobile-friendly version available here in early 2016, with LOTS of new features. It’s in progress.
I have a question about playing at home and playing at the casino. Why is it when i play at home i can win and at the casino its lot harder to beat. At the casino the dealer seems to always win. Is it the way the cards get shuffled? I think that i shuffle very good and it is much different at the tables.
there is a rogue casino i felt much obliged to report: the www_188bet_com——-Chinese version. According to them,they are legally regulated and licensed by the Isle of Man,which,as most of us know, is one of the most reputable gambling regulation authority.However,there is something odd about this.when you enter the webpage of its “table games”,the little icon of Isle of Man at the bottom of the main page suddenly turns into the icon of First Cagayan.I shared with them this confusion I had and they gave no explanation. When I play their microgaming single deck black,something even weirder happened.I won in a long string when i bet small like 10/20.But When I started to increase my bets,the odds just seemed to be all against me.i lost like 30 out of 40 times when i bet big and my bankroll just reduced from 10000 to 1500 while the maximum bet i made was no more than 450. Seriously,when i bet big,i just kept losing and losing and losing, and no one would not feel the same as i did if you ever were me there.Since there is no law in China to regulate online gambling ,I strongly suspect that they are exploiting some loophole to install a rigged game for the Chinese players,which probably is why they don’t show any information about relationship with Isle of Man at the Chinese version’s table game page.Because they know you have no authority to turn to even if you are cheated by an unfair game. I mean I don’t have any statistics here but as a seasoned blackjack player who has been playing this game in many other brick and motar casinos,I just got this instinct.The experiences are so apparently different to not be noticed.So here i sincerely encourage all players located in jurisdictions where online gambling is not in any way regulated not to play online blackjack on 188bet or ,if you can, any online blackjack without a live dealer.
I’m not sure how much I can trust this calculator because it really ought to give some kind of error message if you give it an unbalanced system. Or at least come with some explanation of what it does for an unbalanced counting vector. This casts doubt on whether I can trust ANY of its results.
What I’m trying to do is find something which has a low correlation with hi-lo (dot product with the vector -1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1, but with the last vector component counting 4 times as much since it’s 10 J Q or K, and then divide by the magnitudes of the 2 vectors) so that it’s undetectable to the people behind the eye in the sky the way they’re on the lookout for counters, but has a decent betting correlation. I’m playing around with 1 -1 -1 1 2 0 2 1 -1 -1 tentatively, which has a correlation of 0.3 with hi-low because A, 2 and 3 are reversed. But can I actually TRUST this thing’s results?
i would love anyone who saw my post to share it with other players in other casino forums.Even if you think i am just a paranoid soar loser who got pissed by nothing but simply regular bad luck,at least get this information talked about and debated on so as to either prove me wrong or warn others. If any Chinese blackjack players can see this,Please be cautious ever after or PM me if you have anything else related you would like to share with me（中国的朋友看过来！）
they are doing a promotion of an UNLIMITED 1% deposit rebate and that means if you play single deck game with a house edge of 0.3%,you will end up with a player edge of 0.7%.Now I know what “when its too good to be true,it probably is” means.
Uh. Wow. I’m not so sure how accurate the claims on this page could be. This isn’t anything like my results. I have kept a log. 80 days. On 80 different days in my life I have gone to casinos. I have gained $US 1458.74 after tips I have left dealers, waitresses, money I’ve spent in restaurants because the mealcomps I got for gambling didn’t QUITE cover the meal, though I also received much free stuff, like 140 dollars worth of prepaid credit cards/gas cards/gift cards (about 1000 dollars worth of mealcomps) and a bunch of other free stuff like boxes of chocolates and thermos bottles with the casino’s name on it and whatnot. But we’re still talking 80 trips, probably 3 hours each on average, so that’s 240 dollars for 1458.74 and 1600 miles worth of driving or so so what is that, 500 dollars worth of gas probably because my car sucks. That’s not even minimum wage. I would have done better to get a job as a blackjack dealer. If they’d hired me. They wouldn’t have done that. And I’m actually GOOD at it. In fact, as far as individual lone wolf people go and not teams, I’m probably the best there’s ever been. I’ve worked out the exact function of bet amount as a function of truecount to minimize risk of ruin, even tackling the murky issue of how much you should resplit and double after split under different conditions to minimize risk of ruin (so for instance, it’s bad to split a bunch of times and double on all of them on a big bet, and if you’re just playing to maximize the expected value of your return you should do it fearlessly, but if you’re obeying the kelly criterion, you’re trying to maximize the LOG of your bankroll at the end of the bet – though it’s not QUITE the same as that, the minimum bet throws a monkeywrench in that, so I go for linear gains instead of exponential and go for an exponentially decreasing risk of ruin, but it’s still quite high even starting from 10000 dollars, it’s like 50%). And yet it’s not lucrative for me. It’s crap. Absolute crap. And for making a tiny amount of money, I’ve been banned from 3 casinos in the process, or well, one of them I can still play baccarat technically, and I COULD, I also worked out how to count the panda8 and dragon7 sidebets but I’m forced to take the main bets and it’s just not worthwhile. I really don’t understand how you can call this the world’s greatest job. Working at walmart would be better.
Not so sure that’s so devastating as you make it out to be. A loss of 1.4% to the house could be worth it to play a 1-deck game. That’s only the same difference in player/house edge as 2.8 in the truecount. And that can happen prettttty easily in a 1-deck game, if you’re halfway through the deck, that’s a count of only 1.4! The standard deviation of the truecount halfway through a n-deck shoe is sqrt(40/n), which means if n is 1, that’s straight-up the square root of 40 or 6.5. Which means a full 16% of the time, the truecount will be over 6.5 halfway through a single deck. I’ve seen the truecount get up to 15 in a 6-deck game near the cutcard and I’ve seen it go to 12 in a 2-deck game, both of which with the cutcards 1 deck before the end. It depends on where that cutcard is. Is it with 26 cards left? 22? 30? That 16% of the time when it’s over 6.5, that’s when you’d be betting big, 6:5 blackjack or 3:2. The 1.4% house edge or 2.8 in the truecount is only 0.4 standard deviation of the truecount with 26 cards left and it’s no obstacle at all if the count is 10 and the player gets a 5% advantage from it. Though I guess it wouldn’t quite be the same 0.5% per truecount since it’s the increased probability of blackjack that accounts for much of the advantage you get from the count being high, so it’s probably more like 0.4% then. The question is, how serious are they about catching people trying to count their 1 deck game with the 6:5 blackjack, and what is the min and max bet at the table? If it’s a 50 dollar min and 300 max or if there’s serious heat then I’d say screw it. But if that’s what they do in atlantic city where they’re not allowed to prohibit card counting players, I could very well go there and make them very very sorry they offered a 1-deck game myself, with or without a 6:5 blackjack payoff. Hell I’d go there and count cards out loud just to mess with them, that would be funny, 6:5 blackjack payout on a 1-deck game is hardly an obstacle in a 1-deck game it seems to me!
Well I guess more like 6.33 since 6.5 squared is 42.25. But still.
Wong. I’ve heard that name. Well Mr. Wong, if you read this, let me tell you something, that if I see someone “wonging in” the middle of my shoe, stealing my high cards when the deck is rich, or wonging out, leaving me to take the low cards when the deck turns bad, I will be very incensed, and if you do it repeatedly, I will consider reporting what you are doing to the pit boss even though it would probably mean I’d be banned from the casino too unless I’m very cautious about how I do it. Since that practice is actually stealing from the other players. That’s what it is. Remember that, Mr. Wong. If you mid-shoe enter, when the count goes high, or when you leave in the middle of the shoe when it goes super negative, you are actually stealing from the other players, not merely improving your performance against the house. If I’m the only one at the table and the count swings high and there are enough cards left in the shoe for 15 hands with only me at the table, it will only be enough cards for 10 more hands with one other person instead, since if it’s me, someone else and the dealer, that uses 1.5 times as many cards per hand as just me and the dealer (a little worse than that actually, since the dealer will never split hands, so on average, the player uses more cards than the dealer, so it’s maybe a ratio of 3.2 to 2.1, maybe it’ll be 9 instead of 15 hands remaining). I’m happy to play at the same table as someone else who’s counting, hell, if I figure it out, and I lose count, I might just watch you and bet the same thing you bet, and you’re welcome to do the same for me. But if you leave halfway through a sour shoe or step in when I’ve suffered through the first half, absorbing low cards all the way in order to MAKE it hot in the first place and yet to be denied my hard-earned prize by someone who swoops in like that, you might as well be stealing chips from my stack and I won’t stand for it. I expect you to take your punishment right along with me if you want to count cards with me at the table, suffer through it yourself when the count is bad and don’t just exploit me as a tool to use up the cards you don’t want. You’ll also be less likely to be banned by the casino too. Even when I’m playing alone, I’ll sit there and take my punishment, I’ve seen the truecount get down to -14! And I’ll do CRAAZZZY things when it does, I’ve hit on 14 against a dealer’s 6 before, I’ve hit on hard 17 before, and you can be sure I bet the minimum, but I still sit there and take my punishment.
I have a question. What is better: bet $100 in one place or $50 in two places at the same table, considering a positive count?
I believe that at the same table there is a high correlation among the hands. On the other hand, the risk of playing two places at the same hand is fewer.
Wow. While you were at it, did you contact the united chess federation while and ask if it’s against the law to think about your moves before you make them or if you’re legally required to move randomly when playing chess (not just by the rules of the game, but under penalty of law)? Maybe ask if it’s a misdemeanor or a felony to not move at random? You obviously either think we live in Orwell’s 1984 subject to enforcement by thought police (what, it’s illegal to try to REMEMBER something now? And we’re not even talking about a GOOD memory, a FISH could remember that much, it’s laughable how much an intellectual thing counting cards ISN’T) or don’t even know what counting cards is. All it is, is remembering a stupid number that starts at 0 at the beginning of the shoe, adding 1 to the total whenever you see a low card dealt out, subtracting 1 when you see a high card dealt out! Remembering a number. That’s IT! That’s all it is! That’s all it’s ever been! “Card counter” shouldn’t even be a NOUN! It’d be like “move thinker” in chess. If you’re not counting cards, it’s not that you’re avoiding cheating, you’re simply playing badly. Just like the chess player who refuses to do anything but move at random isn’t somehow doing something ETHICAL by refusing to form any sort of plan in his moves and play the game well, he’s just not playing the game well, he’s playing it like a 4 year old is all! You’re either counting cards or you’re playing badly. Those are your choices. And if you call the casino and announce your intention to count cards, you are an even bigger idiot than the people who go to the casino and play blackjack and DON’T count cards (i.e. play the game BADLY). Because the casinos make their money from stupid people. They don’t want people who play it well, they want imbeciles. And being a BUSINESS, they have a right to refuse to do business with anyone they want to, you’re just telling them you’re one of those people who they want to not do business with. Whatever. At best you’re a shill for a casino to ask a question like that on a website like this, but probably just someone who intellectually reaffirms my cynicism and disgust for the human race.
That comment indicates you fundamentally don’t understand how it works to use a counting system to supplement basic strategy decisions. There is no counting system where you just break basic strategy in a consistent way for any reason that is not dependent on the count! For any balanced counting system, when the count is ZERO, then your decision table should match basic strategy exactly. That means you split 2’s and 3’s against a dealer’s 2 or 3, if the count is 0, and that’s why basic strategy says to do that, because on average the count WILL be 0. However, splitting 3’s against a dealer’s 2 IS the one which has its threshold pretty close to a count of 0. For instance, in the classic method known as hilo (I don’t know about knockout), where 2-6 get +1 and A and 10 get -1, the threshold is about -0.3. So you’d hit if the count divided by number of decks left goes under negative one third. If it’s 0, you split. If it’s positive, you split. A pair of 3’s against 3 and the threshold drops to -3.6. Against a 4 and it’s -6.8. A pair of 2’s against 2 and it’s -3.4, a pair of 2’s against 3 and it’s -6.1, a pair of 2 against a 6 and it’s -2.2, against a 3 and it’s -4.7. You can see why basic strategy is what it is because the basic strategy table tells you what you do when the count is 0, or more precisely, what the count would be on average by being dealt that hand. For instance, you double 9 against 2 when the count per remaining deck is more than 1.0, and that also demonstrates why you double on 9 against 2 in a 2-deck game, because just to get a 9 in the first place, you have to have gotten 2 low cards, and the dealer shows a low card, which means the count is 3, so in a 2-deck game, just by dealing a 9 against 2, the truecount is already 1.5, while in a 6-deck game the truecount is 0.5 since it’s a matter of dividing 3 by 2 or by 6, and so in the 2-deck game, basic strategy says double 9 against 2 because 1.5 is more than 1.0, while the 6-deck basic strategy says hit 9 against 2 because 0.5 is less than 1.0. But bottom line, if you’re varying strategy in accordance with ANY counting method, it will always be a function of the count. The decisions that hinge on a threshold that’s very close to 0 are the ones where it also won’t matter much on average if you do one thing or the other if you’re not counting and just using basic strategy. The decision thresholds that are closest to 0 are 16 against 10 hit/stand, 11 against A hit/double and soft 15 against 4 hit/double. Decisions that are kind of close to 0 are 3-3 against 2, soft 19 against 6, soft 18 against 2, and soft 13 against 5. In all of these, it won’t make a huge difference whether you do one action or the other if you’re not counting cards and you can just as well assume the decision thresholds are AT zero as to remember the exact numbers they are (11 against ace, the threshold is -.03, that’s super-super close, that means removing one high-card from a 30-deck shoe makes it no longer worthwhile to double 11 against ace).
Wagering the same amount split up over two spots instead of one will decrease your variance. In that case, your expected win is still the same but the swings will be smaller.
Also, because the variance is lower, you can afford to make a larger total bet instead. If your bankroll allows you to make a $100 bet on one spot, you can afford to bet $75 on each of two spots and incur the same overall risk. With total action of $150 instead of $100, your win rate goes up but risk stays the same.