The Question



Question is, do we need to recalculate the TC before every decision.

The Sims



I ran a pile of sims this morning to take a look. There are four types of sims looking at four different levels of TC calculation effort as follow:

    [*]Before every bet[*]Before taking Insurance[*]Before the first playing decision[*]Before every close playing decision[/list]

    I also ran two sets of these sims as follows:

      [*]Double deck, H17, DOA using AOII, full indexes, Ace side count, 4:1 spread[*]Six deck, S17, DAS, LS using Hi-Lo Illustrious 18 & Fab 4, 8:1 spread[/list]

      For each sim, the following penetrations were simmed:

        [*]Double deck: all penetrations from 26 to 52 cards cut off[*]Six deck: all penetrations from 26 to 104 cards cut off[/list]

        The Results



        The below links display two charts. Each chart plots penetration versus SCORE for the four different levels of TC calculation effort. At six deck, there is no gain at all from recalculating the TC after the first decision. That is, get your first two cards and hit or split and there is no need to count the drawn cards before making further decisions. In the double deck games there was some gain. Overall, the gain from recalculation was higher in six decks than I expected, despite the fact that only 22 indexes were used. I would also expect the spread to make a difference and have the data for all spreads.

          [*]Double deck Chart[*]Six deck Chart[/list]

          Sim details



          All sims were 400 million rounds, four players, quarter deck resolution, no cover, no errors. Optimal betting ramps were calculated for every penetration.