zengrifter
Banned
**My responses are embedded -
From: s_donelow
Subject: cover strategies??
The reason I stopped playing blackjack in the casinos after playing
pretty much full time for many months was the paranoia of the casinos
in regards to "counting". Even trying lots of "cover" techniques,
mostly concerning my behavior, joking, laughing, bringing several
very attractive ladies with me, pretending to be a "hic", etc,
eventually the casinos figure out what I am up to for the simple fact
that if you watch a counter's betting patterns long enough then you
know that he is counting.
**Tis true that a good act will not go as far as it used to. Perhaps do to your physical demensions, as well as the isolation in which you have developed your skills, I would say that you are playing too long per session - when you are in a gabling venue, 1hr per shift per day is max, and even that goes way beyond what most valid authors advocate.
So, I have been thinking about ways to mask the betting patterns. I
want to propose several ideas about this, ways to mask betting
patterns and get everyone's feedback in terms of what this will do to
edge, risk of ruin, etc.
One idea that I had was to use four different values as the "unit"
and then keep switching between them. I will give a simple example,
using the counting system of choice for the game being played make
the bet be one unit for true counts <= 2 and one "unit" X true count
(I know, I know, ideally it should be the true count -1, but I don't
want that complication) for counts > 2. Now I have three
different "units", one red chip, one green chip, and one black chip.
Assume that I am playing at a table with a minimum of $5 and a
maximum of $2000 (I found games like this at Biloxi). Every time I
go to bet I switch units, so the first time I have to bet the count,
I bet the count in black chips, the next time I bet the count I bet
the count in green chips, the next time I bet the count in red chips,
then I start over, cycling through black, green, red. At the shuffle
I change the order of the "units" from black, green, red to green,
red, black, and at every consecutive shuffle I change the order until
I get back to black, green, red.
**This is what Richard Reid calls "multi-tiered' betting in his new counting tutorial 'Dynamic BJ' (Dead link: http://www.extremebj.com) which I am in the process of reviewing for CC.com - interestingly, I had this as an original (my universe) idea when I was just strting out in the 70s though I never used it much. The tiered approach that you suggest is too extreme, however, and will add too much variance to the process. Reid advocates a less extreme approach along with the means for 'randomizing' the teirs throughout a given shuffle (contrary to TH's advice), and for calculating the range of your betting tiers.
The purpose of all of this is, of course, to make it difficult for
the pit to figure out what your betting pattern is. Now, of course,
in my example I used one chip as the "unit", in practice I would make
the unit something more difficult for an observer to catch onto the
pattern with, say three red, three green, two black, or some mixture.
I have a couple of questions:
First, would this actually fool anyone?
Second, is there a fallacy in my reasoning?
**Yes and no - as pointed out the range of your tiers is too extreme and the switch from one tier to the other should be randomized pursuant to one of a few techniques that Reid suggests.
This is the second cover strategy I want to talk about. it combines
a simple progression with the count. The minimum bet is 2 units
(I usually use red chips for this), if you win you press half the winnings,
if you lose you go back to the minimum. You keep the count and alter
playing decisions accordingly. Now, you bet either the count or the
next step in the progression whichever is higher.
I make some modifications to basic strategy when playing this way.
If the count says I should be betting less than the current bet, the
current bet being higher because of the progression, and I get a
double down I either do not double down or I double down for less,
but in no case do I double down so that I have more than the bet the
count would call for after the double down. As an example, say the
true count is 3 and I am using a 10 dollar unit and the current bet,
because of the progression, is $45 and I get a double down hand, the
most I will do is double down for less for $15 because the total bet
called for by the count if I had been betting the count and doubled
down accordingly would be $60.
**(((bong))) Really bad logic here SD
I make similar modifications for splitting decisions. Depending on
the cards to be split I may not split at all if the current bet is
way higher than the bet called for by the count.
**(((BONG!!))) It would appear that your psuedo-progression cover is severly flawed if it regulary causes you to bet "way higher than the bet called for by the count"
I don't see how anyone could keep up with your true count betting
pattern if they were watching the progression most of the time so I
think this is excellent cover. The real question is how much does
this cover cost?
**Possibly mucho!
**A twist on your spuedo progression can be borrowed from Carlson's BJBlood - he advocates a neg-progression during neg-counts (for cover) which nonetheless equate to the correct AVERAGE neg-count betsize.
**If you are playing handheld games in the south you may be able to glean some additional tricks from these previous posts -
http://www.cardcounter.com/main.pl?read=299 (Archive copy)
(Dead link: http://www.cardcounter.com/main.pl?read=147)
**zg
From: s_donelow
Subject: cover strategies??
The reason I stopped playing blackjack in the casinos after playing
pretty much full time for many months was the paranoia of the casinos
in regards to "counting". Even trying lots of "cover" techniques,
mostly concerning my behavior, joking, laughing, bringing several
very attractive ladies with me, pretending to be a "hic", etc,
eventually the casinos figure out what I am up to for the simple fact
that if you watch a counter's betting patterns long enough then you
know that he is counting.
**Tis true that a good act will not go as far as it used to. Perhaps do to your physical demensions, as well as the isolation in which you have developed your skills, I would say that you are playing too long per session - when you are in a gabling venue, 1hr per shift per day is max, and even that goes way beyond what most valid authors advocate.
So, I have been thinking about ways to mask the betting patterns. I
want to propose several ideas about this, ways to mask betting
patterns and get everyone's feedback in terms of what this will do to
edge, risk of ruin, etc.
One idea that I had was to use four different values as the "unit"
and then keep switching between them. I will give a simple example,
using the counting system of choice for the game being played make
the bet be one unit for true counts <= 2 and one "unit" X true count
(I know, I know, ideally it should be the true count -1, but I don't
want that complication) for counts > 2. Now I have three
different "units", one red chip, one green chip, and one black chip.
Assume that I am playing at a table with a minimum of $5 and a
maximum of $2000 (I found games like this at Biloxi). Every time I
go to bet I switch units, so the first time I have to bet the count,
I bet the count in black chips, the next time I bet the count I bet
the count in green chips, the next time I bet the count in red chips,
then I start over, cycling through black, green, red. At the shuffle
I change the order of the "units" from black, green, red to green,
red, black, and at every consecutive shuffle I change the order until
I get back to black, green, red.
**This is what Richard Reid calls "multi-tiered' betting in his new counting tutorial 'Dynamic BJ' (Dead link: http://www.extremebj.com) which I am in the process of reviewing for CC.com - interestingly, I had this as an original (my universe) idea when I was just strting out in the 70s though I never used it much. The tiered approach that you suggest is too extreme, however, and will add too much variance to the process. Reid advocates a less extreme approach along with the means for 'randomizing' the teirs throughout a given shuffle (contrary to TH's advice), and for calculating the range of your betting tiers.
The purpose of all of this is, of course, to make it difficult for
the pit to figure out what your betting pattern is. Now, of course,
in my example I used one chip as the "unit", in practice I would make
the unit something more difficult for an observer to catch onto the
pattern with, say three red, three green, two black, or some mixture.
I have a couple of questions:
First, would this actually fool anyone?
Second, is there a fallacy in my reasoning?
**Yes and no - as pointed out the range of your tiers is too extreme and the switch from one tier to the other should be randomized pursuant to one of a few techniques that Reid suggests.
This is the second cover strategy I want to talk about. it combines
a simple progression with the count. The minimum bet is 2 units
(I usually use red chips for this), if you win you press half the winnings,
if you lose you go back to the minimum. You keep the count and alter
playing decisions accordingly. Now, you bet either the count or the
next step in the progression whichever is higher.
I make some modifications to basic strategy when playing this way.
If the count says I should be betting less than the current bet, the
current bet being higher because of the progression, and I get a
double down I either do not double down or I double down for less,
but in no case do I double down so that I have more than the bet the
count would call for after the double down. As an example, say the
true count is 3 and I am using a 10 dollar unit and the current bet,
because of the progression, is $45 and I get a double down hand, the
most I will do is double down for less for $15 because the total bet
called for by the count if I had been betting the count and doubled
down accordingly would be $60.
**(((bong))) Really bad logic here SD
I make similar modifications for splitting decisions. Depending on
the cards to be split I may not split at all if the current bet is
way higher than the bet called for by the count.
**(((BONG!!))) It would appear that your psuedo-progression cover is severly flawed if it regulary causes you to bet "way higher than the bet called for by the count"
I don't see how anyone could keep up with your true count betting
pattern if they were watching the progression most of the time so I
think this is excellent cover. The real question is how much does
this cover cost?
**Possibly mucho!
**A twist on your spuedo progression can be borrowed from Carlson's BJBlood - he advocates a neg-progression during neg-counts (for cover) which nonetheless equate to the correct AVERAGE neg-count betsize.
**If you are playing handheld games in the south you may be able to glean some additional tricks from these previous posts -
http://www.cardcounter.com/main.pl?read=299 (Archive copy)
(Dead link: http://www.cardcounter.com/main.pl?read=147)
**zg