Originally Posted by
DSchles
First, where you wrote "greater than or equal to -1," above, you meant "less than or equal to -1." Next, although you're entitled to ask any question you like, the question isn't really very important. What your effective spread is doesn't really matter; what matters is how much you can win per hour, given a certain bankroll and the table limits.
In fact, your average minimum bet, under your scenario, is not the simple arithmetic average ($5) of $10 and zero, because the frequencies of the two bets are not the same. You would make the $10 minimum bet about 73% of the time, for a typical 4.5/6 game. 27% of the time, you would be betting higher. If you sit out true counts of -1 and below, they occur 27.7% of the time, so your average minimum bet drops, but to $6.22, not $5. Average spread, if that had any real importance, or significance, which it doesn't, might be around 1-16.
What does matter is how much sitting out negative counts can increase your hourly win. If you simply put a zero everywhere that you would have put a $10 bet, except at TC = 0, you save the losses on those bets, and your hourly win increases about 35%. But, you can do better, betting optimally for that scheme. Although you can't increase your top bet, sitting out the bad counts allows you to bet more at the positive counts, where the top bet isn't yet reached. And, it might allow you to make that top bet ($100) sooner. So, you win even more.
Bottom line: in my opinion, the concept is important, but you asked the wrong question.
Don
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