Can you gain an edge my Card Watching?

[Carmine782]

Good Evening Everyone, I Enjoy to play blackjack mostly as a form of enterainment, but i have a strategy that i use, i like to play at full or nearly full tables and play two hands, and watch the cards, if i see a couple rounds of small cards, i raise my bets, if i see a couple rounds of big card i keep the bet at the minimum. I say to myself, "ok i seen a couple hands with alot more 2-6's then 10's and then i seen a couple hands of alot more 10's so were even now" Other times i might think ok I have been about 3 hands with many 2-6's I raise my bets, then i see more hands with mostly 10's and lower my bet, then i maybe one more hand with mostly 2-6's and higher it again, not as high as when i seen 3 hands but still higher then the minimum. Anyway, I was wondering am i gaining any mathemical edge by doing this? it seems to be working, im making money, but im waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I play perfect BS.
The rules i play mostly are S17, DAS, RSA, 6 Decks about 80 Pen.

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[godeem23]

Good Evening Everyone, I Enjoy to play blackjack mostly as a form of enterainment, but i have a strategy that i use, i like to play at full or nearly full tables and play two hands, and watch the cards, if i see a couple rounds of small cards, i raise my bets, if i see a couple rounds of big card i keep the bet at the minimum. I say to myself, "ok i seen a couple hands with alot more 2-6's then 10's and then i seen a couple hands of alot more 10's so were even now" Other times i might think ok I have been about 3 hands with many 2-6's I raise my bets, then i see more hands with mostly 10's and lower my bet, then i maybe one more hand with mostly 2-6's and higher it again, not as high as when i seen 3 hands but still higher then the minimum. Anyway, I was wondering am i gaining any mathemical edge by doing this? it seems to be working, im making money, but im waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I play perfect BS.
The rules i play mostly are S17, DAS, RSA, 6 Decks about 80 Pen.

Write back
Thanks

Are you opposed to actually counting?

 

[Carmine782]

Are you opposed to actually counting?

No i tried, i just cant do it

 

[davidpom]

Sounds like you're doing a very basic count of sorts to me in any case... simply by identifying that there are a few small cards out, you're already making an assumption that there are larger ones remaining. That of course is better for the player, so you're betting higher (and winning).

You'll get better results with a more indepth count, but the basics of what you are saying make sense to me. I do think however its not a wise strategy for the long term. A game without a counting advantage is a game with a long term edge favouring the casino... a perfect count only puts the game in the players advantage by a tiny percentage. An imperfect count, like the one you're undertaking, will keep the casino advantage intact...

 

[godeem23]

No im tried, i just cant do it

Practice, practice, practice!! Anyway, it's difficult to determine your advantage (or disadvantage) unless your using an exact system. We can't tell a computer "raise the bet if you see some small cards." It needs to be more accurate. I guess I'll let one of the pros like Sonny or Rhino decide if they think you have an advantage or not.

 

[Sonny]

Most likely you’re not getting an advantage. You might be reducing the house edge a bit if you are very accurate, but probably you’re just losing more money by raising your bets in neutral situations. It takes a lot of small cards to come out before you get an advantage, and that number changes based on how many decks are left. The biggest problem is that the cumulative removals (what we call the running count) are probably getting less accurate as more cards are dealt. You may be keeping track accurately for the past several rounds, but you really need to know the overall ratio of all cards played so far to know where you stand against the house. This above assumes that you are playing perfect basic strategy as well.

You also don’t mention how much you raise your bets when you perceive an advantage. A card counter will often bet up to 10 or 15 times his minimum bet in order to get an advantage. Using a very small bet spread will not give you an advantage no matter how accurate you are. For that reason, most card counters will not even play unless they have the advantage. Your chances of success are greater when you aren’t losing money to the house edge 75% of the time.

And even if you did get an advantage you would need a very large bankroll in order to keep from going broke during a normal losing streak. Those chips can disappear very quickly once you start raising your bets, especially if you are doing it in neutral situations by accident. Any card counter will tell you that it can be very tough to get a decent advantage even when you’re playing with incredible accuracy. There is very little hope for someone playing by the seat of their pants. I’m not saying it can’t happen, just that it probably won’t for most people.

As for card counting being to hard, I can sort of agree with you on that. I thought the same thing when I started learning hoe to count. I thought it again when I started learning how to estimate the discards. I thought it again when I started doing true count conversions. I thought it again when I started learning how to bet properly. I thought it again when I saw how fast they deal in casinos. I've had that same thought almost every step of the way. But, with a lot of practice, I learned how to do all of those things well enough to make some decent money. It just takes time and patience.

-Sonny-

 

[Carmine782]

As for card counting being to hard, I can sort of agree with you on that. I thought the same thing when I started learning hoe to count. I thought it again when I started learning how to estimate the discards. I thought it again when I started doing true count conversions. I thought it again when I started learning how to bet properly. I thought it again when I saw how fast they deal in casinos. I've had that same thought almost every step of the way. But, with a lot of practice, I learned how to do all of those things well enough to make some decent money. It just takes time and patience.

-Sonny-

Well to tell the truth i have practiced and tried, I can almost do it accuratly in a perfectly quiet enviroment. But i had a couple my friends deal to me, make small talk like delaers do, with the tv and radio on to simulate the caisno enviroment and i just get lost after only 10 cards lol.

 

[EasyRhino]

If you played single deck, you'd at least make it to the second round.

I'll second the idea that, at best, you're just reducing the house edge slightly. All you can say after seeing a bunch of baby cards come out on one hand is that you have a advantage compared to the previous hand, but who knows what the advantage/disadvantage was on that previous hand? So the effect would be minimal.

Using an unbalanced count like KO, Red 7, or KISS might help if you don't have to divide by remaining decks. But it still takes a lot of practice.

 

[sagefr0g]

Good Evening Everyone, I Enjoy to play blackjack mostly as a form of enterainment, but i have a strategy that i use, i like to play at full or nearly full tables and play two hands, and watch the cards, if i see a couple rounds of small cards, i raise my bets, if i see a couple rounds of big card i keep the bet at the minimum. I say to myself, "ok i seen a couple hands with alot more 2-6's then 10's and then i seen a couple hands of alot more 10's so were even now" Other times i might think ok I have been about 3 hands with many 2-6's I raise my bets, then i see more hands with mostly 10's and lower my bet, then i maybe one more hand with mostly 2-6's and higher it again, not as high as when i seen 3 hands but still higher then the minimum. Anyway, I was wondering am i gaining any mathemical edge by doing this? it seems to be working, im making money, but im waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I play perfect BS.
The rules i play mostly are S17, DAS, RSA, 6 Decks about 80 Pen.

Write back
Thanks

i need to study what you say your doing. it'll have to wait cause right now i'm gonna go do some card watching ala fuzzy count. a mixture of card watching and exact hi/lo count circa 25% hi/lo and 75% watching with fuzzy count methodology.
so i'll let you know what i think later on.
but yes you can gain an edge watching the cards. gotta do it right though.

 

[sagefr0g]

Good Evening Everyone, I Enjoy to play blackjack mostly as a form of enterainment, but i have a strategy that i use, i like to play at full or nearly full tables and play two hands, and watch the cards, if i see a couple rounds of small cards, i raise my bets, if i see a couple rounds of big card i keep the bet at the minimum. I say to myself, "ok i seen a couple hands with alot more 2-6's then 10's and then i seen a couple hands of alot more 10's so were even now" Other times i might think ok I have been about 3 hands with many 2-6's I raise my bets, then i see more hands with mostly 10's and lower my bet, then i maybe one more hand with mostly 2-6's and higher it again, not as high as when i seen 3 hands but still higher then the minimum. Anyway, I was wondering am i gaining any mathemical edge by doing this? it seems to be working, im making money, but im waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I play perfect BS.
The rules i play mostly are S17, DAS, RSA, 6 Decks about 80 Pen.

Write back
Thanks

hi Carmine i'm back. if card watching works it would sure be hard to prove it by the results of my recent foray lol. i got my butt handed to me on a silver platter that i paid for lol. but i found your post very interesting. what your saying is pretty close to what i've been trying to do with this idea of fuzzy counting. but going by what your saying in your post above i'm not able to acertain just exactly what it is you do when and how. but i think i understand the why of what your trying to do. and i know it is very hard to explain just what it is that you do when your doing something like card watching. i mean i just did my version of it for about twenty hours straight and i'd be hard pressed to tell you just what it was that i did. but anyway the kind of approach you are talking about is like what i've been trying to develope a skill at. i've practiced many hours of my approach using Qfit's CVBJ software. well i say my approach but that is really a nebulous thing indeed. cause i keep changing it as i learn more about what i'm doing and thinking about what the ramifications of the approach are and the problems involved. but anyway CVBJ is capable of keeping a log of your play. so what i've been able to do is look at the logs in excell and sort the hands by the true counts and then look and see how my betting really correlates with the true count. so i can tell you that from my own experience it is possible to bet according to the advantage from just card watching and an understanding of what you are doing. the problem is my logs and the results are just a small sample and can't prove that one would be able to do this consistantly. just that it is possible at least sometimes. unfortunately my logs also show that lots of errors occur (as one might well expect) where one ends up betting high in negative counts. not a good thing especially if it happens consistantly.
i think Sonny is giving it to you right with his post:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=74697&postcount=6
another thing i'd like to add is that from what i remmember about your posts in the past is that i think you play some rather high stakes tables. i'd just have to say i would never want to chance that kind of money on an approach as nebulous as i think we both know just card watching is. i wouldn't want to chance that kind of money on card counting either for that matter. but if i had to choose between either card counting or just card watching at that kind of money i'd definately take card counting. that said it's your money and you can do what you want with it. but just know that nobody can really tell you that your likely playing with an edge or not at least from the description that you've given above. at least that's what i think.

 

[BJApprentice21]

Good Evening Everyone, I Enjoy to play blackjack mostly as a form of enterainment, but i have a strategy that i use, i like to play at full or nearly full tables and play two hands, and watch the cards, if i see a couple rounds of small cards, i raise my bets, if i see a couple rounds of big card i keep the bet at the minimum. I say to myself, "ok i seen a couple hands with alot more 2-6's then 10's and then i seen a couple hands of alot more 10's so were even now" Other times i might think ok I have been about 3 hands with many 2-6's I raise my bets, then i see more hands with mostly 10's and lower my bet, then i maybe one more hand with mostly 2-6's and higher it again, not as high as when i seen 3 hands but still higher then the minimum. Anyway, I was wondering am i gaining any mathemical edge by doing this? it seems to be working, im making money, but im waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I play perfect BS.
The rules i play mostly are S17, DAS, RSA, 6 Decks about 80 Pen.

Write back
Thanks

Well, I'm not yet a counter, but I like to think I have some common sense :cool2:. So, if anything, I'd go ahead and sum it up as very lazy insufficient counting. I'd also say you are probably not really gaining an advantage, but rather...giving the house a bit less of an advantage. However you should probably quit while your ahead because this can and probably will turn around and bit you in the ass in the long run.

-Apprentice

 

[sagefr0g]

Well, I'm not yet a counter, but I like to think I have some common sense :cool2:. So, if anything, I'd go ahead and sum it up as very lazy insufficient counting. I'd also say you are probably not really gaining an advantage, but rather...giving the house a bit less of an advantage. However you should probably quit while your ahead because this can and probably will turn around and bit you in the ass in the long run.

-Apprentice

the point of trying such an approach might have an element of lazyness with regard to some aspect of counting that one might find tedious or difficult. like where i've been pondering over the idea of what i call the fuzzy count. part of it is just card watching. like what you do when you count the RC and see a pair of cards that cancel one another out. no need to really count them but you could count them and say that's zero then add that to the RC. lol but that's really unneccesary. we can just ignore those cards. so you could say that recognizing those pairs or groups of cards that cancel one another is sort of a visual skill maybe rather than actual counting. see it, know it forget it and go on to something that is meaningful. take that a bit further and we also know that circa 75% of the time our actual counting is of little consequence since we know from the get go that in the long run (talking six deck shoes here) we are going to spend that much time counting if we take the trouble to count them either zero or negative true counts. this might help us if say we are gonna perform negative matice basic strategy departures. but for the real meaningful action of betting the count is of little consequence in those cases (circa 75% negative or zero TC) as we are just going to either leave the table or just bet our unit or lower. it's pretty easy but it does take some skill to just watch the cards and recognize if the situation is going negative or positive on a round by round basis from the start of a new shoe. and if your playing some crappy penetration game that has a relatively full table it's even easier. in such conditions if you see the situation just getting more and more into 'some' increasingly negative territory and the discards are piling up to say near two decks maybe one deck in there or so. guess what? you might as well bail out or just flat bet and play basic strategy cause that count a'int going anywhere. (ok maybe very rarely it will).
like the cancellation thing with high card low card pairs no need to count it.
so but if you see that the RC is starting to run positive this is when you do want to knuckle down and count. overall if you play it this way you should spend about 25% of your time counting and about 75% not. that's my crazy synopsis of the situation at any rate. but i just play six and eight deck shoes with crappy penetration and usually crowded. so i couldn't say about one and two deckers. it may seem like a lazy approach and inaccurrate and well i guess maybe it has elements of those attributes. but in math and working math problems there are many ways to approach a problem. shortcuts are a great thing in math. estimation, approximation, extrapolation and awareness of significant numbers and other tricks of the trade. should be able to do stuff like that with a pack of cards as well.