Planning my next step

[ChampangePloppy]

So I've been doing the red chip grind for a bit and I'm trying to improve.

So heres my delima:

My original plan was to just play shoe games and I've used red 7 and now Hi Lo. I live in LV and noticed a lot of the games are moving to DD for some reason. I've made several trips downtown (more red chip games) and noticed a lot of shoe games are hardly playable but I've found one or two decent ones.

I know Hi lo isnt the best for DD so I was thinking about practicing zen, but also realized Hi opt II is probably better. How does the the system ratings work exactly?

Theres the BC, PE, and IC. How do we weigh it to see which one is best for my situation? It seems wrong to jus avg the 3 catagories but just curious on how its done so I can make an objective decision.

For example hi lo has a BC of .97 and IC of .76 while zen has .96 and .85.

Since BC is more important in shoe games does hi lo perform better than zen in shoe games assuming equal number of indicies and playing accuracy?

Looking at the different systems my hunch is that zen is probably the best if I am planning on playing some shoe and DD. Hi opt II if i specialize in DD, not sure if hi lo outperforms those in shoes since its level 1.

I'm also aware that DD are "counter traps" which is why I intially planned to not play them but it almost seems un avoidable at this point. Should I continue to stay away from them anyway and just keep hitting the shoes?

Would appreciate if you guys could help a young BJ horse to the water. Thank you!

[Fire Walker]

So I've been doing the red chip grind for a bit and I'm trying to improve.

So heres my delima:

My original plan was to just play shoe games and I've used red 7 and now Hi Lo. I live in LV and noticed a lot of the games are moving to DD for some reason. I've made several trips downtown (more red chip games) and noticed a lot of shoe games are hardly playable but I've found one or two decent ones.

I know Hi lo isnt the best for DD so I was thinking about practicing zen, but also realized Hi opt II is probably better. How does the the system ratings work exactly?

Theres the BC, PE, and IC. How do we weigh it to see which one is best for my situation? It seems wrong to jus avg the 3 catagories but just curious on how its done so I can make an objective decision.

For example hi lo has a BC of .97 and IC of .76 while zen has .96 and .85.

Since BC is more important in shoe games does hi lo perform better than zen in shoe games assuming equal number of indicies and playing accuracy?

Looking at the different systems my hunch is that zen is probably the best if I am planning on playing some shoe and DD. Hi opt II if i specialize in DD, not sure if hi lo outperforms those in shoes since its level 1.

I'm also aware that DD are "counter traps" which is why I intially planned to not play them but it almost seems un avoidable at this point. Should I continue to stay away from them anyway and just keep hitting the shoes?

Would appreciate if you guys could help a young BJ horse to the water. Thank you!

I suggest you PM ZenMaster_Flash. He successfully employed Zen for more than a decade as a pro, and then switched to HOII, with side counts that he still uses today. He has ALL the answers you seek. Good Luck.

[Meistro123]

just use hi lo w/ ace side count for double deck it's fine

[RS]

I originally switched from HiLo to Zen because I was playing shoes & double deck. Zen offers a strong count AND ease of use. Later on I was solely playing DD games and no shoe games, and since I didn't play much BJ in general (mostly play machines), I considered switching to HOII w/ ASC. After a good while of practice, I determined the increased strength in HOII w/ ASC was more difficult than it was worth (the value being how much better it is than Zen, which was marginal). Switching to HOII also meant it'd be even more difficult to play shoe games in the future, which I knew I still wanted to play in the future (just not at the current time), and decided to scratch the whole HOII thing and revert back to Zen.

I actually found Zen to be easier than HiLo (to me). I found HOII w/ ASC to be much more difficult than I had imagined.

Zen is much more simple than HOII w/ ASC, it's essentially the same thing as HiLo, meaning you only have to worry about RC and TC....don't need to keep a side count, make RC or TC adjustments due to positive or negative excess of remaining aces, etc.


If you play shoes and DD, I'd recommend Zen over any of the other level 2+ counts.

[Bigdaddy]

I play about 75% DD games and 25% shoe games. I started w/ KO. Then to strengthen KO, I learned to true count it ("TKO"). TKO is a killer count for a shoe game (counting that 7 is important). Even the 2 and 3-level counts could only result in a very slight improvement for the shoe game.

The problem is that a single level count is not very powerful in a DD game. So I learned HO2 w/ ASC for my DD play. This will get you about 20% more out of the DD game. I have no problem switching back and forth between counts. I was surprised at how easy it was.

All that being said, if I had to do it over, I would have chosen Zen. It's the best of both worlds and quite effective for both shoe and DD.

[ChampangePloppy]

1.) Buy CV Data
2.) Select the indices you plan to employ 100%.
3.) Determine your bet spread within your and casino tolerance.
4.) Run a SIM for Hi Lo, Felt, Zen, and Wong Halves.
All with the same index selection and bet spreads.
5.) Compare SCORE to your ability to count and willingness to learn. Some adjustment may need to be done to keep large bet percentages close to the same for comparison purposes.

Thanks moses, I guess theres no going around getting CVData, I just wasn't sure if I was ready to go all hardcore but I guess I am. I have ProfessionalBJ, BBiBJ, BJA (recently got), and the Casino verite drills and games app for iPhone and was trying to make it with that. With CV data I can answer those little nagging "curious thoughts" on my own.

I suggest you PM ZenMaster_Flash. He successfully employed Zen for more than a decade as a pro, and then switched to HOII, with side counts that he still uses today. He has ALL the answers you seek. Good Luck.

Haha thank you. I can hear the slight sarcasm, although I'm new here I've been around enough to kind of get the humor of your post.

just use hi lo w/ ace side count for double deck it's fine

Hmm I didn't even know I could do that. If I give up on learning zen I will likely do that.

I originally switched from HiLo to Zen because I was playing shoes & double deck. Zen offers a strong count AND ease of use. Later on I was solely playing DD games and no shoe games, and since I didn't play much BJ in general (mostly play machines), I considered switching to HOII w/ ASC. After a good while of practice, I determined the increased strength in HOII w/ ASC was more difficult than it was worth (the value being how much better it is than Zen, which was marginal). Switching to HOII also meant it'd be even more difficult to play shoe games in the future, which I knew I still wanted to play in the future (just not at the current time), and decided to scratch the whole HOII thing and revert back to Zen.

I actually found Zen to be easier than HiLo (to me). I found HOII w/ ASC to be much more difficult than I had imagined.

Zen is much more simple than HOII w/ ASC, it's essentially the same thing as HiLo, meaning you only have to worry about RC and TC....don't need to keep a side count, make RC or TC adjustments due to positive or negative excess of remaining aces, etc.


If you play shoes and DD, I'd recommend Zen over any of the other level 2+ counts.

I play about 75% DD games and 25% shoe games. I started w/ KO. Then to strengthen KO, I learned to true count it ("TKO"). TKO is a killer count for a shoe game (counting that 7 is important). Even the 2 and 3-level counts could only result in a very slight improvement for the shoe game.

The problem is that a single level count is not very powerful in a DD game. So I learned HO2 w/ ASC for my DD play. This will get you about 20% more out of the DD game. I have no problem switching back and forth between counts. I was surprised at how easy it was.

All that being said, if I had to do it over, I would have chosen Zen. It's the best of both worlds and quite effective for both shoe and DD.

I see, thank you for your personal experiences with the zen count. I'm going to give learning zen a go, so I guess I better get in the lab. Would you consider BBiBJ sufficient for reference material? I had a short stint with red 7 from that book and when I asked about some numbers, members from the forum suggested that the betting ramps were out dated which I intuitively suspected even though I had no experience with betting ramps yet. The zen section made more sense due to the use of %s rather than what seemed like arbitrary numbers in the red 7 section. Or did you guys learn it some other way such as from cv data or something?

[Fire Walker]

" Originally Posted by Fire WalkerI suggest you PM ZenMaster_Flash. He successfully employed Zen for more than a decade as a pro, and then switched to HOII, with side counts that he still uses today. He has ALL the answers you seek. Good Luck.

"Haha thank you. I can hear the slight sarcasm, although I'm new here I've been around enough to kind of get the humor of your post."


Sarcasm? ZERO. If you had any idea how much ZMF made playing 21 in his career...

[ChampangePloppy]

Hey every girlfriend has to pass the friend test right? Lol

Ahh I see. No I definitely don't doubt ZMF's ability or results. Just from what I've seen theres been lots of people having interesting disscussions I'll say with him. And since you emphasized the word ALL like you did it seemed over the top and I read it as sarcasm. My mistake.

[Fire Walker]

Hey every girlfriend has to pass the friend test right? Lol

Ahh I see. No I definitely don't doubt ZMF's ability or results. Just from what I've seen theres been lots of people having interesting disscussions I'll say with him. And since you emphasized the word ALL like you did it seemed over the top and I read it as sarcasm. My mistake.

I get it. There is a lot of TALK on the forums and it's hard to figure out which end is up at first. That said, I can vouch for ZMF 100%. He has been playing professionally for 20+ years. He helped me develop my AP skills exponentially. We have played together as a mini-team in multiple cities. He is the Real Deal.

[Freightman]

Moses
Good things should accrue well before an approximate 1000 hours.

[ZeeBabar]

"There are a couple of other guys that weren't too shabby. Don S, like him or not, "is" In the Hall of Fame. He "has" written not one but three volumes of books that would tell you everything you could possibly want to know about "today's" game(s). But what you "need" to know is his he switched from HiLo to RPC after one year and has stuck with it for decades thereafter."

I wonder what Don S has to say about this since his decision is being used to put down HiLo. How significant is it? If your EV is $50 per hour playing with HiLo, can you expect your EV to be $100 or $75?

[RS]

If I remember correctly, it was Don who said something like, "I use RPC because that's what I learned back in the day, too ingrained into me to switch. If I could play any count for today's game, it'd be HiLo." or something along those lines. Perhaps it wasn't Don who wrote that (my apologies if he didn't), but I remember someone Don-like posting something similar to that.

[ZeeBabar]

To be clear I was speaking about double deck as that was the OPs primary inquiry. But it would be interesting to hear both Don and Norm's point of view in a "go back in time" scenario.

Zee, it seems to me I remember hearing Don talk about reduced variance with RPC over HiLO. That alone would be worth a simple step.

Moses, to you it may be a simple step but for an old guy who has HiLo into his brain, attempting to learn another language/count is not simple.