The Question

Insurance can be a give-away that you are a counter. What are the costs of various Insurance Cover strategies?

The Sims

There are six types of sims varying the play of Insurance as follows::

    [*]Insure all Blackjacks (the ploppy method) [*]No Insurance[*]Do not Insure stiffs, always Insure BJ, correct index otherwise (heavy cover)[*]Increase the index for stiffs to +8, always Insure BJ (light cover)[*]Correct Index (normal counter)[*]Insurance Side Count (max)[/list]

    I also ran two sets of these sims as follows:

      [*]Single deck, S17 using Zen Ill18, 3:1 spread[*]Six deck, S17 using Zen Ill18, 10:1 spread[/list]

      For each set, the following penetrations were simmed:

        [*] Single deck: all penetrations from 26 to 39 cards cut off[*]Six deck: all penetrations from 26 to 104 cards cut off[/list]

        The Results

        Note: The normal Insurance indexes for Zen are +4 for single deck and +5 for six decks. Increasing the indexes to +8 for stiffs roughly halves these Insurance bets. The links below display two charts for single and six decks. These are area charts. The SCOREs are plotted for each penetration. Insuring a BJ only (the ploppy strategy) is used as a base. Successively better strategies are added to the charts with different colors indicating the improvement gained from each strategy. The narrow pink area is the difference between using the correct index and the simmed light cover. These charts indicate that some Insurance cover is acceptable. (Apologies for the colors - some resolution is lost in posting.)

          [*] Single deck chart[*]Six deck chart[/list]

          Sim details

          All sims were 1,000 million rounds, one player, quarter deck resolution, original Zen Illustrious 18, no errors. Optimal betting ramps were calculated for every penetration.