Social engineering

Felix Rue-de-Guerre

Well-Known Member
I just came across a dealer who would sometimes cringe in a glaringly obvious way when she checked her hole card (if it was a ten), when a ten was her upcard. I also noticed that she would tend to do this when most of the players had bust hands(12-16), and were kindly vocal about their bad hands. It happened the first time very early in her shift. The next couple of times I kept a mental note that she had a ten in the hole and was %100 accurate. I left when the count tanked. Maybe I shouldn't have. I'm sure the proper processing of this kind of information is WAY more useful than counting alone.

In the case of a player-empathetic dealer like this, it may have been best to act disappointed about my hand and try to wring the "tell" out of her. But that wasn't where my head was at. I'm still no expert, I was concentrating on other things. This is only the second time in a few years that I've noticed an obvious "tell". I'm sure dealers like this don't typically last very long. For as often as this happens is it worth worrying about persuing as a point of advantage play? Is anyone else very conscientious of this stuff? I don't see very many posts on this topic. That is, Matters that are not clearly calculated, but are dependent on subjective confidence levels.

Consider a given player playing Hi-Lo I18 in shoe games. If he became good enough to accurately predict the hole card one in one hundred times without making any mistakes, how would this compare in value to learning more indecies or switching to a higher level count? What if he could predict one in fifty? One in twenty?

A while ago, the Mayor recommeded I buy the book "Beyond Counting" by James Grosjean. At the time, I figured a book with this title would be beyond the scope of what was my current level of study, so I didn't immediately take his advice. I needed to just get good at counting... I will order it soon. I imagine there are books on poker and body language that would be useful too. But, it would be interesting to hear how other players handle such situations. Stories are most welcome.

-Felix
 

Adam N. Subtractum

Well-Known Member
unfortunately...

Tells from a dealer checking under an Ace are virtually worthless. Steve Forte is the hands down top authority on the subject and his book is certainly the ultimate source for what you speak of. In the meantime, you can check out his article at the Bish's site, found in the Library.

ANS
 

The Mayor

Well-Known Member
If you have absolute knowledge of all the hole cards, and no heat whatsoever so that you can hit your 18 against the dealer's 20, then you get about a 13% edge. In practice, if you play a modified basic strategy that is "reasonable" you will get around a 10% edge. If you know 1/100 of the hole cards, this gives you a 1/100 * (10%) = .1% edge which is not any good at all. Decent hole-carders start at about 30-40% exposure. Note, you do NOT use counting or indices to vary your bet or play, just hole-card strategy. this has you flat betting significantly less than your max bet, since you will be making a small fortune regardless.

This is good stuff, not to be underestimated for its power.

--Mayor
 

Felix Rue-de-Guerre

Well-Known Member
Re: oops...

Thanks for the title, I will add it to my reading list.

But this is only one dealer in one casino. Also, I believe this is an extreme and relatively rare case. I guess I'd like to examine the potential gains of these things in general. There is subjectivity here, I know. These things require interpretation. Reading a dealers gestures is a talent that some may have a hard time developing at all. However, some may become very proficient at it.

Look at it this way: Strategy variation makes about 90 percent of EV in a shoe game. Indecies make up the rest. I play Hi-Lo i18. Would it be more valuable to learn a boatload of indecies and gain an extra 10 percent of 10 percent of efficiency, or to have some useful knowledge about the hole card one in every 50(or whatever)hands?

-Felix
 

Adam N. Subtractum

Well-Known Member
slight disagreement...

"If you know 1/100 of the hole cards, this gives you a 1/100 * (10%) = .1% edge which is not any good at all."

If you look at it that way, and assume the typical 1% advantage attained by the cardcounter, this would be a 10% increase (to 1.1%). I think 10% is quite significant, and all you would have to do is memorize a basic strategy to attain it, given this scenario (knowing 1/100 of the hole cards).

ANS
 

The Mayor

Well-Known Member
agreement

I was doing a linear interpolation on a straight holecarder, which is a bit silly, but got some sort of point across (the point being that a 1/100 hole card is not that important -- decent rules and pen are much more important).

--Mayor
 

Adam N. Subtractum

Well-Known Member
some figures (indices)...

According to Wong's figures from PBJ, a Hi-Lo player utilizing indices in the -1 to +6 range will achieve about a 13% higher ROI by stepping up to the full matrix, given his benchmark 5/6 conditions. It seems he doesn't seem to perceive this though as he downplays it to "only $1 per hour less than the win rates for the benchmark" for using only the 30-something indices. If you look at it that way, there's only about a 6.6% increase from using the full matrix, but factoring risk into the equation we see that the gain is indeed significant.

ANS
 

Cadillac

Member
I'm a new player. One thing I believe I read in Blackjack for Blood was that when the dealer checks under a ten, if there is a hesitation and double-take, and then no blackjack, the hole card is likely to be a 4 b/c it looks like an ace in the mirror. In the short time i've been playing I have seen this happen several times.
 
Top