I'm working on my shoe game skills and am curious as to what kind of arithmetic shortcuts people here use for calculating the true count. I need to speed up my thinking before I hit real shoe games.
I use quarter deck estimations. Say I'd need to divide 16 by 2.75, what kind of shortcut could I use?
If you are dividing by halves, you could double both numbers then divide. For example, if the RC is 9 and there are 4.5 decks remaining, you could simply double both numbers and divide (9/4.5 X 2/2 = 18/9 = 2). In your example, it's easiest to round both numbers up. This will make the count close enough. For example, 16/2.75 = 5.8, 17/3 = 5.6. You would probably round down to a TC of +5 to make up for the house advantage, but you may want to round up to 6 in some circumstances as this is not always accurate.Originally Posted by hitthat16
I generally just "know" what it is, but if I had to post a pattern of which my brain would use to sort it out, it would look something like this. 16/3=5.xx , if my bet spread accounted for anything at 5-6 or greater for an adjustment, rather than 4 as an adjustment in bet spread, then I'd factor it down to a more "exact" rounded decimal of 5.8 and play accordingly. But again, this is all done almost instantly due to practice and our natural ability to handle division with fractions and decimals very well. In a case like this, the most important part in your mind may not be whether or not the decimal truly matters, but what your betting strategy suggests you do. In theory, if your betting strategy caps your top bet out at TC4+, then assuming you never lose the count or the deck fraction, you would want to opt for the easy method of 16/3=5+ and just automatically apply your strategy without having to "think harder" to get the specific number.
In my case, I do have an inclusion for "super max" bet at TC6+, as well as a spread adjustment for TC5 so here I'd default to the TC5 for the sake of argument, though I'm sure Don, Tthree, and others would suggest that I bet some kind of average between the two as my true advantage in that situation is both rare, and rather close to the super max position.
Whole numbers are easier for me to multiply and divide, so I'd convert it to an improper fraction first. 2.75 = 11/4. To divide by 11/4, you multiply by 4/11. 16 * 4 / 11 = 64/11 = just under 6. Also, if you are playing shoe games, there is no need for quarter deck estimation, especially that far from the end of the shoe. Switching to half or even whole deck estimates will simplify the arithmetic a lot.
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