Card counting strategy

[yesiamred]

Hi guys,
I'm currently practicing KO preferred but I was wondering if there is any other counting system (a more difficult one) that has a higher playing efficiency than KO but at the same time there is no need for true count calculation.
Many thanks.

Hi, I switched to UBZ2 eight months ago after using hi-lo for eight years. At first I was slow with the level two count, let alone counting down a deck in under 30 seconds. It took me longer than I wanted and almost gave up but my stubbornness and the fact I don’t easily give up and hate to lose. Continued daily practice has made UBZ2 system a very successful system for me. Thanks to a couple of forum members for introducing the system to me and guiding me when I continued to stumble. It is now second nature to me and absolutely love the system.

I just returned from a successful Vegas trip and planning another trip right now for September. You have to pick a system that is right for you! Good luck.
Red

[ZeeBabar]

I think all this is unnecessary. When we are new and do not experience winning quite like we expect to, most newbies think of switching counts. A lot think that by switching to a higher level count that they would win more.

I have read so many books that I forget where I read it (BZj3?) but Betting Efficiency is far more important than Playing Efficiency and with that in mind, I would recommend looking at your bet spreads, your willingness to bet big in higher counts.

in my case, a simple count like Hi-Lo works much better. You cannot get hung up on how accurate you are in TC calculations. More important is to get over paranoia of heat at red chip level, a reluctance to place a $100 bet when playing at $10 games, waiting too long for high TC's when a TC of +2 means you can indeed place a higher bet, overcoming the sense of loss when that $100 bet at TC 4, results in splitting opportunities and you end up losing $200+ in one hand after you have been sitting for 2 hours waiting for that high count.

i think you should search yourself, your BR, your nerve and confidence and build on that instead of looking at counts.

[Fabian90]

I think all this is unnecessary. When we are new and do not experience winning quite like we expect to, most newbies think of switching counts. A lot think that by switching to a higher level count that they would win more.

I have read so many books that I forget where I read it (BZj3?) but Betting Efficiency is far more important than Playing Efficiency and with that in mind, I would recommend looking at your bet spreads, your willingness to bet big in higher counts.

in my case, a simple count like Hi-Lo works much better. You cannot get hung up on how accurate you are in TC calculations. More important is to get over paranoia of heat at red chip level, a reluctance to place a $100 bet when playing at $10 games, waiting too long for high TC's when a TC of +2 means you can indeed place a higher bet, overcoming the sense of loss when that $100 bet at TC 4, results in splitting opportunities and you end up losing $200+ in one hand after you have been sitting for 2 hours waiting for that high count.

i think you should search yourself, your BR, your nerve and confidence and build on that instead of looking at counts.

Thanks for the advice. The problem with Hi-Lo is that I struggled a lot with TC conversions. I also barely made any mistakes with the running count, for that reason I switched to unbalanced. Personally I've found KO to be extremely simple and just want to check if I can handle a level 2 count. My question is about Betting Correlation. I understand the Effect of removal part of it but how does BC relate to EV and RoR? I already know that KO has a BC 1% greater than UBZII but what does this mean? Does this mean that by using KO my Win rate/hour increases and RoR will pretty much stay the same?

[seriousplayer]

Cv can't handle betting spreads for such high running counts (may be able to make it work by adjusting irc), I doubled indices like you said, I'll tell you what tthe IBA was for flat bet H17 das,rsa 6d, 52/312 pen, heads up
adjusted KO or whatever you want to call it = -0.527
KO full = -0.479

I haven't done a thorough simulation myself yet for the count. Are you sure that CVDATA is not able to handle bet spreading for the high RC? I will need to check with Norm about this. It seem like you have an habit for running simulation for H17 games only and not S17.

[Dog Hand]

Does the author of the book who came up with UBZ2 have the index plays listed in his book for the various games and rules for Blackjack? What is the title of the book?<snip>

Blitzkrieg,

The book by "George C." is titled "UnBalanced Zen 2"... actually, on Amazon his name is listed as "Geo C.". At any rate, it's available in Kindle format at Amazon.

Dog Hand

[muckz]

I haven't done a thorough simulation myself yet for the count. Are you sure that CVDATA is not able to handle bet spreading for the high RC? I will need to check with Norm about this. It seem like you have an habit for running simulation for H17 games only and not S17.

I run for H17 because it is a common rule where I play, there should be no difference in comparability. It is just what I use because I am used to it. I ran index gen sim and some of the values were too high for the generator to handle and just put basic strategy. Results seem to be accurate, there is still possibility of them being wrong.

[seriousplayer]

I run for H17 because it is a common rule where I play, there should be no difference in comparability. It is just what I use because I am used to it. I ran index gen sim and some of the values were too high for the generator to handle and just put basic strategy. Results seem to be accurate, there is still possibility of them being wrong.

I assume you ran index simulation for 6 deck, H17, DAS, RSA and not for single and double deck games. A year ago I try to simulate indices for KO by selecting every indices for 6 deck games. The simulators just put most plays as basic strategy plays and not because the values were too high. Is it probably because they don't have an indices for that play. It shouldn't matter because the index generator will generate the indices based on a negative IRC for the count and not set the IRC = 0. Unless if there is a setting in CVDATA that lets you set IRC = 0 for unbalance counts for index generation.

I looked at you previous result for your simulation that you said you did using CVDATA. My question to you is that setting IRC = 0 did you use RC = +44 as a pivot point or RC = +48 as a pivot point for the system I mention? If you use RC = +48 as a pivot than it is wrong! The pivot should be at +44 and not +48. As a mention earlier you need to double the IRC. For six deck the IRC for KO is -20. Doubling -20 equals -40. So you will need to add +40 to all indices if you want to set IRC = 0. In this case +44 will equal a true count of +4.

[Blitzkrieg]

He does have most games and their indices listed, it's not needed though. You can find basically all the info you need on blackjackinfo in the open source ubz2 thread.

I couldn't find anything concrete on blackjackinfo regarding the index plays for UBZ2.

[Blitzkrieg]

Hi Blitzkrieg

I don't know the exact thread muckz is talking about but this one should answer anything you need.

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=2543

I checked the thread out but couldn't find what I was looking for.

[Blitzkrieg]

Blitzkrieg,

The book by "George C." is titled "UnBalanced Zen 2"... actually, on Amazon his name is listed as "Geo C.". At any rate, it's available in Kindle format at Amazon.

Dog Hand

Kindle is an e-book format isn't it? I was hoping there was a hard copy out there for his book.

[muckz]

It's not a book, its a pamphlet. I typed in ubz2 open source on google, the very first link was the one you want.
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=6996

[KronikBuddha]

Does the author of the book who came up with UBZ2 have the index plays listed in his book for the various games and rules for Blackjack? What is the title of the book? Were you successful in using REKO-F in the casinos, how about using the same strategy in sims?

The book is called The Unbalanced Zen2 by George C. You can get it in ebook form from Amazon, though I wouldn't recommend it. That's what I have and you can't read a lot of the index numbers in the charts. You can buy a physical copy of the book from bj21. He has a short list (basically the illustrious 18) of index plays that are generic for 2, 4 or 6 decks. And another table for single deck. And he has what he says are full indexes for a DD No DAS, H17 game and another table of full indexes for DD, DAS, S17. His numbers are a bit different than what I generated using CVData. It also looks like his index numbers in the book are not risk averse. I use risk averse indexes. I'd suggest skipping the book (pamphlet really) and just using CVData to generate index numbers and CVCX for betting ramps.

I was very successful using REKO-F in casinos. I'm not sure what you mean about using the strategy in sims. If you mean REKO, then yes, that was what I practiced with for two months before going into a casino, I just used REKO playing sims. I switched because I briefly joined a team who used the Zen count. So I spent a few weeks learning Zen and played with them for a while until it was clear that they had no idea what they were doing (giving back all their ev using a ridiculous amount of cover bets and plays). After I parted ways with that team, I could easily handle a level two count, but really liked the unbalanced count much better than balanced, so I studied unbalanced zen 2 and loved it. According to CVCX, and the local games I mainly play, ubz2 gave me anywhere from 4% to 10% higher winrate than REKO-F while also lowering my ROR. And that is using pretty much the same bet spread, because the state I'm in has very low limits for max bets so my bet spread is constrained to usually be the table min to the table max.

[Blitzkrieg]

The book is called The Unbalanced Zen2 by George C. You can get it in ebook form from Amazon, though I wouldn't recommend it. That's what I have and you can't read a lot of the index numbers in the charts. You can buy a physical copy of the book from bj21. He has a short list (basically the illustrious 18) of index plays that are generic for 2, 4 or 6 decks. And another table for single deck. And he has what he says are full indexes for a DD No DAS, H17 game and another table of full indexes for DD, DAS, S17. His numbers are a bit different than what I generated using CVData. It also looks like his index numbers in the book are not risk averse. I use risk averse indexes. I'd suggest skipping the book (pamphlet really) and just using CVData to generate index numbers and CVCX for betting ramps.

I was very successful using REKO-F in casinos. I'm not sure what you mean about using the strategy in sims. If you mean REKO, then yes, that was what I practiced with for two months before going into a casino, I just used REKO playing sims. I switched because I briefly joined a team who used the Zen count. So I spent a few weeks learning Zen and played with them for a while until it was clear that they had no idea what they were doing (giving back all their ev using a ridiculous amount of cover bets and plays). After I parted ways with that team, I could easily handle a level two count, but really liked the unbalanced count much better than balanced, so I studied unbalanced zen 2 and loved it. According to CVCX, and the local games I mainly play, ubz2 gave me anywhere from 4% to 10% higher winrate than REKO-F while also lowering my ROR. And that is using pretty much the same bet spread, because the state I'm in has very low limits for max bets so my bet spread is constrained to usually be the table min to the table max.

Thanks, I would like to check out the physical copy that BJ21 has for sale because I would like to see the original work produced by the original author/creator of the strategy, but not in e-book format. I've also had success using REKO in the casinos however I'm probably going to continue using the strategy a little longer for simplicity's sake. I started out slow on the sims until I worked out the betting but can now beat the sims much more often than not.