Here's what I'm doing...

[Hinoon]

I figured I'd post my practice routine here because I'm a moderate-newbie, and it'd be great to get some advice.

Currently, I go to bju21.com and load up their counting drill. I use standard Hi-Low with 15 cards per screen, 5 screens per round. The cards are displayed in three rows of five.

I'm getting pretty good at "reading" groups of 5 cards, so first I establish the RC. Then, before I click "next screen", I look at each column of 3 cards and treat them as if the top 2 are my cards, and the bottom card is the dealer's up card. So I have to make 5 accurate BS plays before I move on.

By the time I get to the end of the 5 screens and get to check my count, I've also completed 25 BS hands (well, the first decision anyway).

This seemed like a good way of merging my counting/BS drills. I don't think there are any major flaws...but I could be wrong. The BJU drill seems to give a pretty random count, sometimes it ends on 0 and sometimes on -14. This routine does slow me down a considerable amount...but it also forces me to start retaining the RC while I switch my focus to the correct BS. Right now, if I can do it in about a minute, I feel pretty snazzy. I do wish that the BJU drill had a stopwatch at the end, but my computer's clock will have to do.

Thoughts? Suggestions on making this more efficient?

Back to the grind

-Hinoon

 

[The Mayor]

Any practice is good practice...

I have not visited the site in question, but as long as your are doing the work to improve, and you are doing a wide variety of exercises, the ultimate test will be at the tables to see if this is working or not. I do suggest you do as many exercises as you can think of with an actual deck. Here are a couple I do.

* Remove 2 cards from the deck, count it down, then attempt to tell what possible combinations those last two cards could be at the end of the count down.

* Do random flashes of 2-5 cards and "grok" their count, then recheck to see if you got it right. For this, you show yourself the cards for the least period of time you can, sometimes it is just an instataneous flash.

* Grab a pile of cards and attempt to say how many cards you are holding out of the deck. Verify. Do not reference the other pile when you are guessing, just the pile you are holding.

Variety is what you need -- life throws a lot of curves,

--Mayor

 

[Rob McGarvey]

"Variety is what you need -- life throws a lot of curves,"

Just make sure you only swing at the right ones and you'll do fine. ;>