"Inverse Hand Spreading"

zengrifter

zengrifter

Banned
Blackjack Insider Newsletter, June 2004, #53
http://www.bjinsider.com/newsletter_53_inv.shtml

Inverse Hand Spreading/"The Grifter's Gambit"

Introduction

Dan Pronovost is the owner and president of DeepNet Technologies, makers of a wide range of blackjack training products and software. Their web site is: www.HandheldBlackjack.com, and all products are available for free trial download. Dan is the creator of the new card counting system Speed Count, which is being taught in the Golden Touch Blackjack courses by Henry Tamburin and Frank Scoblete: www.GoldenTouchBlackjack.com. Check out the great feedback from students in the first two GTB courses: http://bjinsider.com/gtb_course_feedback.shtml.

Inverse Hand Spreading

In last month's May BJI newsletter, LV Pro interviewed "The Grifter" (http://www.bjinsider.com/newsletter_52_grift.shtml). In the interview, The Grifter talks about an interesting card counter's technique called the "Grifter's Gambit" (honorably titled after the creator). The strategy refers to flipping the normal card counter's strategy of spreading to more hands as the count becomes advantageous for the player, and instead playing less hands. In the Gambit method, you start by playing three small bet hands by default, and reduce to one much larger bet hand as the count increases. This method can be applied to any card counting system.

I was intrigued by the Grifter's Gambit, and decided to run my own simulations using Blackjack Audit, my company's own professional blackjack simulator (www.HandheldBlackjack.com/bjaudit.html). While Grifter provided excellent background and information about his method, I wanted to see more analysis. My simulations show that this method indeed works as the Grifter documents, but there are many practical caveats counters should be aware of before throwing this technique in their bag of tricks!

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http://www.bjinsider.com/newsletter_53_inv.shtml
 
zengrifter

zengrifter

Banned
"Inverse Hand Spreading" my comments

My comments on Dan's excellent analysis of "Inverse Hand Spreading" betting:

Dan's analysis of a variant of The Grifter's Gambit ('TGG') yielded not-unsurprising results - inverse spreads out perform traditional spreads.

That said, however, Dan has analyzed variants of TGG which lose much of the real strength of the technique as I have revealed it - that being CAMOUFLAGE!

My 'standard' TGGs, based on Mason Malmuth's "consolidation betting", use the lowest possible apparent spread between negative and positive counts (ie, 1D = 3x1u to 1x3-4u; 2D = 3x1u to 1x7u). This low (3 to 3-4 or 3 to 7) net-apparent spread is the primary strength of TGG.

Also, as I did point out, TGG 1D-2D betting is best accomplished with heads-up play. Perhaps it will still work in a 2D game with 3 other players, but I would rather use a traditional spread in that environment - allowing the other players to eat the negative counts while I spread to 2-3 hands in the positive counts, which will achieve superior results, I believe.

I have also used heads-up TGG in 6D-8D games where my approach converges with Dan's 6D analysis model - I spread from 3x1u to 1x20u.

The above notwithstanding, Dan's analysis has validated my TGG 6D variant (which was strictly intuitive and not previously recommended by me) ... and he has further enlightened me to the power of the technique which will likely lead to additional variants.

zg
 
R

Royam

Well-Known Member
Question on heat

Interesting article that explains cleary what I had not understood from the interview.

Now, I have no difficulty to believe that playing 3 $15 hands when the count is negative is better than playing one single $45 hand, because you eat more "bad" cards while risking the same amount of cash. Additionally, you spread your risk on 3 hands, which might help to reduce variance (?). Finally, it might provide camouflage by allowing you to seem to risk the same amount, but at a lower risk. This is however a situation different from the one I mentioned in the previous thread, where I assumed that the player was betting the table minimum in each situation and concluded that playing one hand seemed to be a better way to get rid of the "bad" cards at a low price.

The analysis speaks of 1 to 24 or even 1 to 72 bet range... Don't you think that this would draw extreme heat? I mean, the traditional way of spreading had the advantage that of spreading bets among several hands, each of which appeared smaller, thus drawing less heat... Don't you think that the inverse spread would have the opposite effect?

Royam
 
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toddler

Well-Known Member
I don't remember...I don't recall (thnx Peter Gabriel)

...thought I'd finally pop my head up out of the sand...

I seem to remember reading somewhere about the probability of true counts continuing southbound at specific negative counts, but don't remember where. In addition, I don't remember if the exact game specs were important.

My question is this... at specific negative TCs, what are the pct chances that the TC will continue southbound by an additional TC count of one before the count goes up by a TC count of one? So, if the TC is -2, what is the probability that the count will hit -3 before hitting -1.

Also, if using the GG, would you start spreading to more hands as the TC continues to head south (2x2u at -2, 3x3u at -3)?

toddler
 
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toddler

Well-Known Member
Hope this helps

Simply restated...

The current true count is -1. What is the pct chance the true count will reach -2 vs. reaching 0?

The current true count is -4. What is the pct chance the true count will reach -3 vs. reaching -5?

The same would hold with positive true counts. If I was staring at a +8, what pct chance would exist for the count to reach +9 vs. +7?

I believe at very positive or very negative true counts that a shift towards zero has a higher probability of ocurring than a shift away from zero. Thought I read somewhere where someone had calculated the percentages of movement in either direction at specific true counts.

Hope that clarifies.

toddler
 
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