More 8D at the Borg

[21forme]

The difference in house edge is minuscule, only 0.02% The bigger issue for APs is a positive count comes along less frequently. You will be playing or back-counting a lot longer before you find an advantage.

Changing to H17 would have been a much bigger advantage for the house (0.22%) That will come next. I predict that they will change the pit near the poker room firsr, just as they did to 8D, to see what impact it has. Then, it will spread to other pits.

 

[assume_R]

The difference in house edge is minuscule, only 0.02% The bigger issue for APs is a positive count comes along less frequently.

Wouldn't this also mean that if you do happen to hit a positive count, it stays positive for longer? Or does that brush up against the TC theorem...

I mean if it's a balanced count you could also say that negative counts come along less frequently.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Wouldn't this also mean that if you do happen to hit a positive count, it stays positive for longer? Or does that brush up against the TC theorem...

I mean if it's a balanced count you could also say that negative counts come along less frequently.

Yes, and yes. That's why going from 8D to 6D isn't that disastrous.

If BJ had 0% edge at a neutral count, the effect would be zero. But being you start a shoe with a slight house edge, you have to have some kind of deviation from neutrality to even start to have an advantage, and being all deviations from neutrality become less frequent as number of decks increases, you are stuck in slight -EV situations slightly longer. That's where all of the added disadvantage of 8D shows up.

In practice, the loss you take going to 8D might be partially or fully abated by the increased hands per hour due to less frequent shuffles. But on the other hand, many dealers set penetration as a percentage of the whole shoe rather than a fixed number of decks, and increasing the size of the cutoff by a third really will hurt you.

 

[ArcticInferno]

You don't want the positive counts to stay positive for a long period.
The drop in count is what you want, which indicates that high cards came out.
If a positive count (or negative count) stays unchanged, then nothing interesting
has happened.
A change in count (the slope or the derivative) indicates interesting events.
That's when you win lots of money (or lose lots of money because you didn't
take insurance, LOL).

 

[assume_R]

Thanks Monkey. Yeah, since the initial advantage is -EV, I suppose that means there's a slightly higher frequency of -EV situations.

You don't want the positive counts to stay positive for a long period. The drop in count is what you want, which indicates that high cards came out. If a positive count (or negative count) stays unchanged, then nothing interesting has happened.

I disagree - the RC can drop, and the "good cards" can come out, but the TC doesn't need to drop for you to have an advantage. Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[ArcticInferno]

I wasn't talking about true count vs running count.
However, they both go up and down together, although not the same amount.
When the RC drops, the TC does indeed drop, although maybe a fractional amount.
RC and TC drop equally when there's exactly one deck left.
RC drops more than TC when there's more than one deck left.
RC drops less than TC when there's less than one deck left.
This is mostly theoretical, but does have some practical applications.

 

[assume_R]

I suppose that given the RC drops, then the TC will also drop (but possibly by a different amount).

I think what the TC Theorem actually says is that when you also take into account the probability that the RC will drop, the expected TC between rounds (or between cards dealt) is the same.

 

[ArcticInferno]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but,...
The bet variation is directly proportional to TC, so you want to know the TC.
What you're doing at the table is keep track of the RC, and the estimated undealt cards is used to calculate the TC.
So, TC = RC/(undealt cards). Undealt cards is always a positive number.
As you can see, TC and RC are proportional. They always go up and down together.
However, since the undealt cards is always changing, the amount that they change is different.
For example, in an 8-deck game, when the dealer burns a 10 at the beginning of the shoe, the RC is -1. The TC is -1/8, so TC is -0.125. As you can see, both RC and TC dropped, although by a different amount.
When you're betting, you have to estimate the TC by either truncating or rounding it to the nearest integer.

 

[muppet]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but,...
The bet variation is directly proportional to TC, so you want to know the TC.
What you're doing at the table is keep track of the RC, and the estimated undealt cards is used to calculate the TC.
So, TC = RC/(undealt cards). Undealt cards is always a positive number.
As you can see, TC and RC are proportional. They always go up and down together.
However, since the undealt cards is always changing, the amount that they change is different.
For example, in an 8-deck game, when the dealer burns a 10 at the beginning of the shoe, the RC is -1. The TC is -1/8, so TC is -0.125. As you can see, both RC and TC dropped, although by a different amount.
When you're betting, you have to estimate the TC by either truncating or rounding it to the nearest integer.

just for the sake of argument, some counter-examples:

case 1. RC decreases and TC stays the same. this occurs if the deck only has high cards remaining.
case 2. TC increases and RC stays the same. this occurs in a positive count when a neutral card is dealt.

:cat:

 

[ArcticInferno]

Muppet, you're right. Let me correct my statement.
It's possible for the TC to remain the same as RC drops because the denominator (undealt cards) is constantly changing.
If neutral cards such as 7, 8, 9 (in Hi-Lo) comes out, then the RC doesn't change while the undealt cards decreases, so TC would increase.
This is something that should be obvious, but I got ahead of myself as I was typing.
Sorry.

 

[ArcticInferno]

Consider a hypothetical 6-deck shoe.
The first six cards out are all 5 of Spades, so the RC is 6 and the TC is 1.
Next, the rest of one entire deck comes out. Now the RC is 5, and the TC is still 1.
When the rest of one entire deck came out, one extra high-value card came out,
because 5 had already come in the beginning.
In this hypothetical example, drop in RC corresponded with one extra high-value
card coming out.
I think this whole analysis is all theoretical and academic, with little value in
real-life application. You vary your bets based on TC. The drop in RC (or the TC)
is something that you notice after the fact.