Possible error in Modern Blackjack ?

I am a newbie counter and am reading up stuff on Blackjack.

I recently bought the excellent book "Modern Blackjack" by Norm Wattenberger. It looks like one of the pages has a misprint.

Page71 indicates that IRC for 4 D is -12 while Page 79 indicates that the IRC for 4D is -13. Please clarify.

regards
Zenflesh21

zenflesh21 said:

I am a newbie counter and am reading up stuff on Blackjack.

I recently bought the excellent book "Modern Blackjack" by Norm Wattenberger. It looks like one of the pages has a misprint.

Page71 indicates that IRC for 4 D is -12 while Page 79 indicates that the IRC for 4D is -13. Please clarify.

regards
Zenflesh21

Click to expand...

Thanks for the catch. In fact, the ideal IRC is about halfway between -12 and -13. I'll change it to -12. But, either is OK.

QFIT said:

Thanks for the catch. In fact, the ideal IRC is about halfway between -12 and -13. I'll change it to -12. But, either is OK.

Click to expand...

Gee, was this half an author-error? I find this something of a disturbance in my (naive?) belief system. I had complete and danged faith that this book - above all others - was the hot gospel, according to StQ. :angel: And now, how can I stop myself from imagining there might be more imperfections lurking in the next paragraph I read?

I also misspelled Aladdin on page 292. I'm waiting to see if Bill Zender notices the err.

The read

I've been glancing at the book when I can and wouldn't have caught the mispelled words if there were any. I do find it a very good read Mr. Qfit. I'm glad you are ready to answer any questions on the book's information. Thanks for writing such an informative book.

QFIT said:

I also misspelled Aladdin on page 292. I'm waiting to see if Bill Zender notices the err.

Click to expand...

Good god, Norm. Now all of your work is tainted! :laugh:

Just kidding. I have thought it was tremendous since I first read it. An easy, yet very informative read. Explains concepts that a beginner can understand as well as those of us that aren't beginners can learn from or see in a different light than we did before. I recommend it, every chance I get.

FLASH1296 said:

QFIT, Speaking of errata, you also mistakenly said that the House Advantage at PaiGow Poker is low.
The H. A. is disturbingly high. The fact that there are circumstances leading to Advantage Play —
where you can "book" the large bets of other players doesn't alter the H. A.

Click to expand...

If you play PGP the proper way, you will bank whenever it is your turn. Doing so results in a low house advantage, if any. This isn't a special circumstance as in banking BJ. It is a standard PGP rule. This does not require banking only high bets. You are not allowed to bet low and bank high.

FLASH1296 said:

Also, for your reader's sake, M.B. contains an apocryphal story re: a pathological gambler spontaneously
and verbally recruiting players (complete strangers) to bet the table max at baccarat for him.
Such open flaunting of the betting limits would never have been permitted anywhere, under any circumstances.

Click to expand...

The stories in the book are true to the best of my memory. This was at CP in the early 80s. The player was "connected" and was an extremely heavy loser for years. There are many examples of casinos bending rules for some players. Particularly in older days.

From what I recall — primarily from S. Wong's book on P.G.P. — it can only be profitable when the ratio of your bets to those of the other players is quite substantial. This is so because you still pay the absurdly high 5% commission on winning bets.

The ideal is to get to bank more often than once per number of players+1. But, even with poor banking rules, the loss per hour is very low in comparison to the betting level. Oddly, the best place in LV that I found used to be Barbary Coast, famous as a BJ burn joint.

Shack has some tables at http://www.wizardofodds.com/paigowpoker

Thanx muchly for the fine WOO link.

QFIT said:

I also misspelled Aladdin on page 292. I'm waiting to see if Bill Zender notices the err.

Click to expand...

Apparently minor spelling errors are taken more seriously by some BJ authors than others. Which may be a salute to professorial status... or something. For the rest of us, we couldn't really give a rat's arse if you spell Aladdin or Allaaddiinn. How about VARIENCE instead of VARIANCE. A certain prof pinned my ears back on that one, once. :grin:

Or Katweasel...

21forme said:

Or Katweasel...

Click to expand...

:gun::gun::gun::gun::bomb:

Modern Blackjack — my comments.

I really like both volumes, the content of Vol. I is definitively substantive.
QFIT notes that iVolume II is essentially a collection of afterthoughts.

I judge a text by what I learn from it. How else ?

Here is a “pearl“ of wisdom to whet your appetite:
Sims demonstrating that counts have varying power
depending upon the Depth of Penetration.
Some counts only perform well with deep cuts,
others do well with shallow cuts.

Laying to rest the notion that Hi-Opt II is a weak count for shoe games is another “gem”.

Modern Blackjack shines brightest by advancing the cause of “user-friendly” counts, especially his FELT COUNT,
without being dismissive of advanced counts.

The biggest part of my displeasure resides in the fact that if you read Modern Blackjack and are NOT an owner of QFIT’s extraordinary
software, you may feel that you are reading a software’s user’s manual. I found this to be quite disconcerting. “Your mileage may vary.“

FLASH1296 said:

The biggest part of my displeasure resides in the fact that if you read Modern Blackjack and are NOT an owner of QFIT’s extraordinary
software, you may feel that you are reading a software’s user’s manual. I found this to be quite disconcerting. “Your mileage may vary.“

Click to expand...

Easy solution, FLASH. Anyone that isn't an owner of QFIT's software should become an owner of QFIT's software. :laugh: Especially anyone even semi-serious about counting.

FLASH1296 said:

I am fully aware that QFIT has strident idiosyncratic anti-Mac biases.

But if the S/W was ported to the Mac I would own it all.

I despise Windoze and P.C. emulators too.
Windoze runs better on a Mac than on a common Intel box.
but my enmity for the inferior platform dominates my S/W choices.

Click to expand...

My bad, Flash. I didn't realize, you were speaking of yourself. I thought your reference was concerning a newer player who read MB without owning the software, so my purchase suggustion was not directed at you.

Although, :laugh: with laptops going for just peanuts these days, you could purchase a computer to use solely to run the software.

FLASH1296 said:

I am fully aware that QFIT has strident idiosyncratic anti-Mac biases.

Click to expand...

Didn't know that about myself.

FLASH1296 said:

But if the S/W was ported to the Mac I would own it all.

Click to expand...

I never understood this. The question is not why hundreds of thousands of developers won't port millions of apps to Macs. It is why one company won't support millions of apps. Why is it on us?

FLASH1296 said:

Windoze runs better on a Mac than on a common Intel box.

Click to expand...

Macs are Intel boxes.

QFIT said:

I never understood this. The question is not why hundreds of thousands of developers won't port millions of apps to Macs. It is why one company won't support millions of apps. Why is it on us?

Click to expand...

Well, in all honesty that depends on how the software was written. If the software uses MFC (or Microsoft's own libraries), then the Mac OS would have to fully implement a large subset of the windows libraries, which is what Wine has attempted to do for Linux and is a quite unwieldy solution. However, several pieces of software can be compiled for many different platforms if it uses a set of cross platform libraries, such as wxwidgets or qt for a gui, or standard c++ libraries for algorithms, in which case it would be easy to compile for a Mac, beOS, Linux, etc. Depends a lot on what libraries the software depends. It would be excellent if windows released some compiled Mac or Linux libraries which would make porting software quite easier on the developers who write software using Windows' libraries.