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Thread: Standard Deviation and Win Rate for SP21/Pontoon?

  1. #1


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    Standard Deviation and Win Rate for SP21/Pontoon?

    Hi all.

    So I've just been touching up on the late Katarina Walker's [i]"The Pro's Guide to Spanish 21 and Australian Pontoon", specifically about Standard Deviation (SD) and Win Rate (WR). She lists the SD of Pontoon (as that's the SP21 variant played here in Aus) as 1.14 per hand, or 114 per 100 hands. I understand this is high due to the added volatility of using a Spanish deck (no face 10s). But the WR is where I'm a little confused; how much higher is the WR than traditional BJ given ordinary rules? I understand that using BJ calculators to determine RoR for Pontoon will be somewhat skewed, as Pontoon naturally has double-down rescue, instant payout for pontoon and player 21s and bonus payouts and all that. But just for a ballpark figure of risk with a 1000 unit bankroll using 114 SD per 100 hands with "standard" BJ WR, I get nearly a 75% RoR? This seems way too high to be correct. I'd assume that a 15-20% RoR would be approximately correct, as the volatility of the game equates to more deviation on either side of the curve? But what kind of WR would be used to achieve this result?

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    Your numbers are off because you're off by a factor of 10 with the SD! If the per-hand SD is 1.14, then the SD for 100 hands is not 100*1.14 = 114; it's sqrt(100)*1.14 = 10*1.14 = 11.4.

    Don

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    Quote Originally Posted by DSchles View Post
    Your numbers are off because you're off by a factor of 10 with the SD! If the per-hand SD is 1.14, then the SD for 100 hands is not 100*1.14 = 114; it's sqrt(100)*1.14 = 10*1.14 = 11.4.

    Don
    Oh damn my bad. Thanks Don. It's late here.

    Do you happen to know what the win rate of SP21 generally tends to be? It's much trickier to calculate when there's so many different variables in these variants to account for.

  4. #4


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    Quote Originally Posted by Three View Post
    It all depends on what system you are using. I know very few that use Katrina's system so getting info on her system would be tough. It is quite antiquated forSP21 today. I could site some stats but they wouldn't be applicable if you are using Kat's system.
    I use a slightly modified version of what I know to be the "Secret Monkey Count". The only differences being that 5 and 9 are tagged as +2 and -1 respectively, thus remaining balanced.

    Any help would be much appreciated.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Three View Post
    " ... antiquated forSP21"
    +1 [understatement]

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