Quote Originally Posted by Econ View Post
Consider a blackjack game offering these conditions : 8D H17 DAS 3:2 ; No surrender ; No RSA ; 4 hand splits ; Insurance 2:1 ; Penetration 75 to 80 % depending on dealer. VERY LOW HEAT & Wonging tolerated.

These rules are decent at most if not very bad! But, i've found out that the payout of the Lucky Ladies side bet is making it beatable easily with a HI-LO count. Here is the Payout :

PAYOUT TABLE FOR LUCKY LADIES SIDE BETS* Player’s first two cards Payout
Pair – Queen of hearts (and the house has a blackjack) 1,000 to 1
Pair – Queen of hearts 200 to 1
Pair – 10s, jacks, queens or kings of the same suit 25 to 1
Total of 20 of the same suit 10 to 1
Total of 20 4 to 1


The information below are based on https://www.blackjackapprenticeship....cky-Ladies.pdf

Using only HI-LO, a TC+4 is indicating an advantage to the player (EV 1.1%) and basically every additionnal TC is giving adding 4 percentage point to the EV.

With a Queen of hearts side count, you can detect even more precisely some situations with a significant advantage.

It is estimated that in a 8D game, you'll play that side bet around 5% of the time, which is pretty good in my opinion!

Here are my questions :

Do you think that exploiting this side bet is worth it ? If so, to what extent ? Is it compensating the bad rules ? What additionnal EV can I expect ?

Bonus : If I use CAC2 instead of HI-LO while adding the side bet play to my game, do you think this game can become very interesting ?

Thanks for your answers!
The rules are rather mediocre, but if that's what you have, the only way to make it playable is through strict wonging, especially if it's "tolerated".
On the other hand, with CAC2, you'd be approximately 10% better off than with Hi-Lo in terms of SCORE.
I haven't conducted any LL analysis with CAC2, although I do have an index that works. It's always a good idea to use it when the occasion arises.
You would need to analyze the game with CVData using that index, but for that, you'd have to discuss it with Norman :-)
Archvaldor made a very valid comment regarding variance; never rely solely on EV.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Cac