Sweet 16 Question

[Three]

Everyone is different. I work on it all at once focusing on one step at a time. The first focus is basic strategy. Then when you have that down counting. After that indices. I find after a long enough time working on 1 thing my productivity goes down so at that point in the drilling I would work on something different until my brain is ready to go back to the primary task at full productivity. Now you mentioned working on two things at once seemed to be counterproductive but you were trying to play the game without having all the pieces down cold. You learn everything independently first and then try to use them together. Try learning counting by counting down a deck of cards 1 at a time then when that is pretty easy do it in groups of two cards and three cards etc. At a table you will be using card cancellation to accelerate your processing. You might look down and see 5 non-neutral cards. 2 high and 2 low cards cancel out leaving 1 card to count so instead of counting 5 cards you cancelled 4 and counted 1.

[Skull]

Hey Night_Rider!

First of all I want to tell you that I am a beginner like you, only with a little more time of study. I must confess you were getting on my nerves, that's why the little joke back there. I don't like seeing a grown man in such a defensive mode, that's all. Sorry for that.

Now, I see that you are back to reason, so I would like to give you my two cents... from beginner to beginner.

Although you could learn counting cards in ANY order you'd like, I do think there is a clear natural progression to it. See if you can follow my reasoning:

1 - You got to know what the game is first. The Internet alone is enough to teach you a lot about the game. You probably know how to play already, but there are many different rules that affect your advantage, so it is nice to understand all of them, so that you can choose your game accordingly. I find it very useful to watch videos at Youtube. This one shows the dealer's modus operandi, which I find useful for a number of reasons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmM3CjMPuz8;

2 - Once you understand your options while playing the game, it is natural to ask yourself "Should I hit or stay?", "Should I double or split?", etc... so, in order to find those answers, you got to study Basic Strategy. You could either learn a compromise strategy or, specially if you know what game you will be playing most of the time, you could learn the specific strategy corresponding to your game. In a different thread, SeriousPlayer pointed us to a link which shows exactly your loss by playing different games with the wrong strategy http://www.blackjackincolor.com/penetration13.htm;

3 - You are going to be doing a lot of things at the same time while playing, so I would suggest you memorize close to flawlessly Basic Strategy first, but that's just me, a beginner like you who is telling you that, so take it with a grain of salt. Once you do that, you may begin actually counting cards. The first thing is to decide on the count (I guess you chose Hi-Lo, me too). Then you memorize the card tags of your count. That's a quirky thing this one, because you gotta learn the card tags in a way that you look at a 9 or an 8 and you don't even see it! You ignore it because its tag is ZERO! You look at a 2 or 3 and you got to see +1! That's crazy! What is even more crazy is that you got to see it as a 3 as well because you need to know your hand totals. That is not easy or automatic. And that's another reason you should learn BS by heart first - you will get used to look at an 8,7 hand and see a 15. It takes time. I can't do it with all the hands yet and I've been at it since the beginning of the year! OK, maybe I am slow, but you get my point. So, learn the card values first!

4 - Now you count them! You master the running count! You flip through a deck of cards and you keep a running count, meaning you sum each consecutive card tag to your previous total. In Hi-Lo you will end a deck in the same way you begun - a ZERO count. When I say master, I mean MASTER! And I tell you I am far from it still. I can count down a deck in 15 seconds, but that has little to do with when I am counting cards while playing the dealer, making perfect BS decisions, talking to my wife with the TV on, estimating decks remaining and making true count calculations. Note that I haven't even included index play deviations yet! Master the running count! Both fast and slow. I practice counting with CV app for Android while running at a treadmill. I only increase speed (running speed) if I count down 6 decks with a given deal speed. When I can't run faster, I increase deal speed. Sometimes I keep the running speed constant and increase the deal speed progressively. I err much more when deal speed is slow than when it is fast. Your mind is allowed to think other things and you forget the count. So, master the RC!

5 - A true count is obtained (in most cases) by dividing the running count by your estimation of decks remaining to be played. So what do you think it is more natural to learn: The end-result first? The denominator? The numerator? Sorry, but for me it is really natural to first learn the numerator (the RC) then the denominator (decks remaining) and then the end-result, the True Count (TC). So, now you would be aiming to learn deck estimation. I am still at this phase, but of course, there is an overlapping in our learning curve, so I am indeed making true count calculations already. And sometimes I even still get the RC wrong. But I believe it is the right time to learn deck estimation only when you are pretty good at the RC. You can use CVBJ to practice this, but a friend of mine sent me 10 actual casino-used decks and there is nothing like it. I made a discard tray and painted a scale in its border to assist me in my estimation. For me, it is MUCH better than any software. But, of course, software can drill you much faster and tell you if you are correct or not, so use software too by all means!

6 - Then comes the Math part. Or does it? In theory, you need to divide the RC by your estimate of decks remaining to get the TC, but in practice, by using different rounding techniques and, depending on your bet ramp, you make very feel calculations on average per shoe. And they are not real calculations most of the time, it is more like using a look up table. There is a lot with respect to true counting and I am still learning it just like you, so I won't extend myself anymore. There are a few nice threads on deck estimation and TC calculation in this forum you could look at. My main concern here is to give you my humble opinion on the order you should structure your studies.

7 - Then, and only then, you will be able to know how much you should bet, because the amount you bet should be proportional to your advantage, thus, your TC. There are plenty of good sources for you to define your bet ramp, but nothing like CVCX and CVData in my opinion. Then it will be (hopefully) natural for you to dive into money management because an optimal bet ramp is only optimal when it considers your financial situation (your BJ bankroll, your risk preferences, your objectives, etc...). Again, CV will be of wonderful help to you, but you should read other sources as well (there is a fantastic chapter on Risk of Ruin in BJA3, but almost every good BJ book explain at least the basics).

8 - Well, now that you area able to estimate with some precision the TC and know how to bet accordingly, AND ONLY NOW, is when I sincerely think it makes sense to learn indices. Please, do as you feel better about it, let's not go back to this old argument, OK? But I just want to try to show you, from a beginner perspective, that you already have A LOT to worry about up to this point and the truth is that what you have been learning up to now gives you the majority of your advantage, especially in shoe games. So that's why most of who participated in this thread were a little surprised by you not counting yet, since your OP was about inconsistencies among different sources of indices!! Of course, you could always flat bet a double deck game and only apply indices and you could gain a slight advantage, but you would be forfeiting the majority of your profit potential. So now is the time I humbly believe you should be aiming to learn indices. I have never dedicated myself to them, but just by playing around with CV and making bet ramp simulations, I naturally memorized almost all the Sweet 16 and Fab 4, so, again, I would advise you to focus on the betting aspect of the game first, because then it will be much more natural to apply index deviations.

9 - Then comes camouflage, casino comportment, etc... things I am no one to tell you about, but that I know makes an important part of card counting (and this post is becoming HUGE!!).


Well, Night_Train, I hope I have not bored you to death by this long e-mail. I just wanted to give you a beginner's perspective on things. And, I must confess, if people like Tthree, Don, and many other veterans that posted in this thread, stop what they are doing and do their best to help a TOTAL beginner stranger like you and me... I believe I am obliged to do so as well, even if just for the reason of saving their time when explaining the very basics.

I make Metronome's words my own; WELCOME ABOARD! (you won't regret it)

Best cards!

Skull.

[Exoter175]

Well, to me it does not matter in what order the material is learned as long as it IS learned. But, I am not so rigid that I can't make changes in what I am doing. I TRY to have an open mind.

So when learning to count cards is it better to learn the whole process in one chunk or is it better to break it down into parts... should I concentrate on mastering running count first, then learn to estimate remaining decks and then incorporate the calculation for true count? I hope this make sense.

Night_Rider

In all honesty, in the training segment I posted, and very similar to Skulls', TC will be a very, very quick learn if you have decent eyesight. This is also why I like playing to the dealers' right, as I can reverse decks remaining by the decks played right in front of me if I didn't have 20/20 vision, on top of that, since I have 20/20 vision, I can also see the shoe which gives me a better aide as many shoes have a little "cover" going over them that keeps many of the cards hidden. so I use the two (discard and visible shoe) to make as accurate a guestimation as possible for the TC, and from there its super simple. All in all, it shouldn't take you more than 1 session, at worst 2 sessions to have TC down like second nature as long as your RC is correct. I emphasize RC here especially, as with Tthree and others will say, you should always practice, practice, practice your deck countdowns. Whether it be on the treadmill, on break from work, right before you go to bed or wake up, wherever you can fit it in. I've got an APP on my phone, a deck of cards in my desk, and a deck of cards in the card. I even have 6 decks at my mothers house with chips for when I visit her and want to drill.

Beyond that, I think if you look at the learning curve escalation as a whole, you'll find there's a pretty natural progression to each step, not necessarily linear, but pretty close until you get towards indices.

Everyone is different. I work on it all at once focusing on one step at a time. The first focus is basic strategy. Then when you have that down counting. After that indices. I find after a long enough time working on 1 thing my productivity goes down so at that point in the drilling I would work on something different until my brain is ready to go back to the primary task at full productivity. Now you mentioned working on two things at once seemed to be counterproductive but you were trying to play the game without having all the pieces down cold. You learn everything independently first and then try to use them together. Try learning counting by counting down a deck of cards 1 at a time then when that is pretty easy do it in groups of two cards and three cards etc. At a table you will be using card cancellation to accelerate your processing. You might look down and see 5 non-neutral cards. 2 high and 2 low cards cancel out leaving 1 card to count so instead of counting 5 cards you cancelled 4 and counted 1.

And this is where my progression is currently with counting. Hand counting on my couch with a deck I'm at around 27 seconds at a "steady" pace, could probably go a little faster if I was in "challenge" mode, on the computer I'm a little faster with it. But now, instead of each card as its own, I start seeing hands and/or (loosely) longer additions. I don't see J,3,K,5,7,8,A,9,6,4,K,K,Q,10, I see Neutral, Neutral, Neutral, -1, +2, -2, -2, or -3 for the total of hands dealt. Sometimes, depending on the speed of the dealer, I'll switch to "carrying" on more of a loose long addition if they are faster, and use a larger "cancellation" count, instead of by hand or by card, so I'd see -1, +2, -4 for a total of, again, -3.

The tricky part is that I didn't intend to "see" the cards this way, I imagined to maintain card, card, card, and it just naturally evolved in my mind into hand, hand, hand, and then to group, group, group. So if you find yourself doing this out of nowhere, make a note of it and practice for it. Once you can count all three ways, you'll be able to zero in your accuracy when the speed varies.

I find my training steps are very similar to Skulls, so I approve there, since the three of us are beginners and Skull and I have found similar paths, I'd probably recommend to you to do something similar in terms of memory retention and overall practice.

However, I cannot emphasize enough that you need to get out there on the tables and play through the motions of the game while learning these steps, and emphasize on top of that, that you probably shouldn't apply things to your hands on practice that you don't have a handle on. As with another members' buddy on this forum who lost his ass one night, he might not have been ready for a bet spread which should, IMO, fall pretty close in the process with learning indices.

[Night_Rider]

Exoter175 and others: In your post, Exoter175, you mentioned you had 6 decks at your mother's house... so when practicing for multiple deck you are using more than one deck to practice with?

As far as how I 'see' the cards I am already seeing 'hands' and cancellations. Also, for the most part, adding up hands does not seem to be a problem for me until the hand has three or more cards. Which I will practice for. But, because I worked with numbers for so many years the two card hands, like 8-4, 9-3, and 7-5, convert to 12 in my head second nature. My eyes see the 7-5 and my brain sees 12. The hands with three or more cards takes a split second or so longer. Again, this is something I will be working on.

Thanks
Night_Rider

[Exoter175]

Exoter175 and others: In your post, Exoter175, you mentioned you had 6 decks at your mother's house... so when practicing for multiple deck you are using more than one deck to practice with?

As far as how I 'see' the cards I am already seeing 'hands' and cancellations. Also, for the most part, adding up hands does not seem to be a problem for me until the hand has three or more cards. Which I will practice for. But, because I worked with numbers for so many years the two card hands, like 8-4, 9-3, and 7-5, convert to 12 in my head second nature. My eyes see the 7-5 and my brain sees 12. The hands with three or more cards takes a split second or so longer. Again, this is something I will be working on.

Thanks
Night_Rider

I've got a 6 deck at her house because, like me, she's loves the casino so I"ve been teaching her a few thinks about basic strategy and whatnot, so she also helps me with my training by dealing and drilling me. The reason I have a 6 deck of there specifically is for when I want to calculate TC in a scenario I most commonly see (6D games) so that I can keep TC very accurate.

[Exoter175]

Somewhat relevant numbers from tonights' session, went 5 for 5 on insurance at TC+5, TC+5, TC+4, TC+3, TC+6. Still not even remotely touching full indices yet, but picked a couple out that I felt were advantageous and worth shuffling into my training ASAP while I work on betting ramps. Ended up 2x50 tonight, landed 10, J and Q, K at TC+5, nailed it and felt very relieved. After that insurance offering was successful, a few hands later he had it again, tossed the money out there, nailed it, and caught a couple looks from the other players. A shoe later about 1/3rd through the shoe, same thing happened, only this time the second I put it out there, almost everyone on the table did too. Was kind of funny.

[Three]

Learning indices is the easiest part of training. No excuse to put it off. 1 index netted about 5 max bets in one session. That should tell you something.

[Exoter175]

Learning indices is the easiest part of training. No excuse to put it off. 1 index netted about 5 max bets in one session. That should tell you something.

Ehhh, honestly I think BS was easier to learn but that's me. But here's a question for you, totally hypothetical. Using Insurance as an example, lets say at the beginning of the shoe TC is +3, dealer is dealt an ace but TC drops to, say, +1 after all cards are dealt. Do you still take insurance based on the TC entry or by the TC end result?

[muffdiver]

End result IS the TC.

[Exoter175]

End result IS the TC.

So regardless of the entry TC suggesting insuring against that dealers ace, I take the end of the dealt hands (+1), and pass up on insurance? Tthree care to comment? Also, does every portion of the index work the same way, IE the TC option is exercised at YOUR act and not entry count?

[Intermediate]

Ehhh, honestly I think BS was easier to learn but that's me. But here's a question for you, totally hypothetical. Using Insurance as an example, lets say at the beginning of the shoe TC is +3, dealer is dealt an ace but TC drops to, say, +1 after all cards are dealt. Do you still take insurance based on the TC entry or by the TC end result?

Use the TC end result. You always use the count based on all the information at your disposal. Say you were playing a hand held game, and some of the other players showed you their cards. You would update your running count, convert to the True Count, and then make your decision. In a face up game, definitely count the cards on the table before making the Insurance decision.

[Exoter175]

Use the TC end result. You always use the count based on all the information at your disposal. Say you were playing a hand held game, and some of the other players showed you their cards. You would update your running count, convert to the True Count, and then make your decision. In a face up game, definitely count the cards on the table before making the Insurance decision.

Well its good to know that, I had assumed it, but wanted to pose a rather "tough", IMO, scenario to see what the more experienced folks had to say, and whether there was any single point on the indices where I should deviate from that plan.

[Three]

No. Your plays are based on all available info at the time you make the play. If it is a close call just play basic strategy rather than try to fine tune your TC estimate with finer deck estimation. There isn't much +EV near the index so you aren't costing yourself much and may be saving EV. A common issue with newbies is they cost themselves a lot by trying to overuse index plays and use them when they shouldn't. Sort of a show yourself how much you learned but you are not being smart. The frequency of occurrence of .1 TC or less below the index is higher than the frequency .1 TC or less above the index for positive indices. That means erring consistently that amount below the index (using the index early) costs more than consistently using it late by the same TC offset.