FLASH1296 said:
The book that you cite is mistaken.
May is not a mathematician. Griffin was.
Take note that tracking such rare "subsets" as alluded to is ludicrously difficult,
(when compared to a "True Count"), and can only occur when a very small number of cards are left in the shoe.
Such super-deep penetration is NOT the case and has not been since the early days of Baccarat
when it was played with cash and Dr. Thorpe made a small fortune betting on the natural 8" and "natural 9" bets.
The 'even cards' subset advantage is relatively easy to 'count' and a player can expect to gain a 62% advantage approx 1 in 10,000 decisions. You can detect such a situation by assigning a value of +1 to odd cards. When (and if) your count reaches 160, you know that the average distribution of cards will give you a huge 62% advantage. The beauty of counting baccarat is that there is NO HEAT and although some other subsets are more difficult to monitor, you can record your count and subsets on the baccarat record sheet the casinos provide and no one will have a clue what you are up to! You can also 'sit in' and 'sit out' at will and use spreads of $10-$250K with reltively little heat attention. Also baccarat players are treated like VIPs at most casinos and can expect to earn more comps than BJ players which is an added bonus!
Here is John May's answer to the Griffin argument:
"While the greater part of what these highly respected theorists say is true, it is not impossible to create a card-counting system which can win to a greater extent on the tie bet.
For example, say there are no odd cards remaining in the pack. There are only 5 possible totals:-0,2,4,6,8. The odds of a tie are doubled. You have an advantage of 62% on average.
You can detect such a situation by assigning a value of +1 to odd cards. When (and if) your count reaches 160, you know that the average distribution of cards will give you a huge 62% advantage.
The optimal bet (the bet which best balances risk with returns) is 7.8% of your bankroll. The optimal bet size is so high because the bet is so favourable.
So, given initial bankroll of $50,000 you ought to bet roughly $3800. You would expect to win an amazing $2,356 on average each time you made this bet.
Unfortunately this very favourable opportunity occurs rarely. Assuming we make our last wager having seen all but a generous 8-13 cards we can calculate the opportunity by the following methods: The chance of 8 even cards appearing on the bottom of the deck is mathematically the same as 8 cards off the top. This is given by dividing 416 by 256 (total number of even cards) to determine the chance of one even card appearing, then multiplying this figure by the result of 415 divided by 255, and so on until we reach 404/244. Then take the probabilities of having this extreme subset occur for 8 through to 13 cards, add them up, then divide by 6. It turns out we will encounter an all-even subset roughly once in every 10,000 hands!
This represents an earning per hundred hands of roughly $24. Subtracting the effects of making 10,000 $5 (roughly 1% house edge) table minimum bank wagers, we see that the system earns roughly $19 per hour. Not bad perhaps, but not a particularly good return on investment when we consider the alternative earnings from blackjack and poker."
