WripVan: For Norm, Insurance Cover, Another Candidate

[WripVan]

The results of your simulations for various approaches to insurance cover are very enlightening. I like the "light cover" approach. Here's another candidate.

Simply take insurance whenever the amount of your bet is equal to or larger than the amount that corresponds to the true count at which insurance should be taken.

For example, with the Zen count and a 6 deck game, insurance should be taken at true counts of 5 and above. If your "target" bet for a true count of 5 is, say, 3 units, you would take insurance whenever your bet was 3 units or more.

After all, this is how insurance, in the traditional sense, is supposed to be used. Retain the more frequent, less costly risks, and buy insurance to cover the less frequent, but more costly risks.

Of course, the constraints imposed by normal cover betting will cause some losses when this approach is used. Sometimes the count will reach the level at which we should take insurance, but, due to parlaying lag, our bet may not have reached the target amount, so we would not take insurance. Similarly, the count can deteriorate, but we may not have managed to scale our bet back yet. So, to maintain cover with respect to our insurance betting, we would take insurance even though it is a negative expectation bet. Can you determine how these losses would compare with the losses you have quantified for the approaches you tested?

[Don Schlesinger]

> Can you determine how these losses
> would compare with the losses you have
> quantified for the approaches you tested?

They would be altogether negligible, I'm quite sure.

Don

[Norm Wattenberger]

Of course it depends on how stiff the cover is. Also number of players should matter as cover is more expensive the more players there are. And with more players, you will be throwing away the information from the other players' cards. I ran four sims, six deck, 4.5/6, Zen, Ill18 & Fab 4, S17, DAS, LS with the following bets:

+2 2 units
+3 4
+4 6
+5 8
+6 10

No raise after loss, no decrease after win, no change after push, no changes more than double or half, reset to one unit on shuffle.

Heads-up: SCOREs of 18.1 and 17.1 for normal Insurance and Insure on bets of 8 & 10 only.

Seven players: SCOREs of 6.6 and 5.4 for normal Insurance and Insure on bets of 8 & 10 only.

[WripVan]

Thank you for looking into this, Norm. Another outstanding analysis on your part!!

> Of course it depends on how stiff the cover
> is. Also number of players should matter as
> cover is more expensive the more players
> there are. And with more players, you will
> be throwing away the information from the
> other players' cards. I ran four sims, six
> deck, 4.5/6, Zen, Ill18 & Fab 4, S17,
> DAS, LS with the following bets:

> +2 2 units
> +3 4
> +4 6
> +5 8
> +6 10

> No raise after loss, no decrease after win,
> no change after push, no changes more than
> double or half, reset to one unit on
> shuffle.

> Heads-up: SCOREs of 18.1 and 17.1 for normal
> Insurance and Insure on bets of 8 & 10
> only.

> Seven players: SCOREs of 6.6 and 5.4 for
> normal Insurance and Insure on bets of 8
> & 10 only.