PE v. BC

[ZenKinG]

Uston APC KING OF ALL

[Boz]

HIOPT II doesn't count the 9. It is king of most sims that I have seen with the ace side count that is used with it. BRH, Halves and AO2 come in a very close second. Perhaps I am not understanding what you are trying to say. If you mean HIOPT II, AO2, Halves and Brh all are in the same boat via Uston SS. Incidentally I agree with you about the nines but Halves and AO2 do count the nines. Your statements make more sense with Uston APC than Uston SS. Uston SS does have a good PE.

I was only talking about the first three, not the last two after ditto. I agree hi-opt II is strong, and I know nothing about AO2. Uston SS has a weak PE, the count I use is better for playing. Uston APC has a strong PE. I'm not sure what ur saying.
I cant see halves outperforming UstonSS any more than something negligible. I'm not familiar w/Brh-1, I assumed it had lower than a .99 BC (safe assumption yes?). It's performance must be due to a very high PE and IC. Hi-opt II beats it only w/the side-count--and thats because it has a respectable BC, coupled w/an extremely high PE and IC. And that really goes back to the original question. In multi-deck, how much BC would you give up for a gain in PE and IC--and how much gain?
Also, BC is still the most important aspect. If you don't play w/full indices, UstonSS may be a lot closer to the top. I think a lot of the information you find assumes I-18 Fab 4 only. So right there, ur giving up what, 5% of the total gain of the system? That's not gonna be an even distribution tho--ur gonna be given up a lot more in Hi-opt II than in UstonSS.

[mofungoo]

What's PE even mean? I know what it stands for, but what does a .6 mean? Higher is good, but does it mean 60% you're making the right deviation--and 40% u should use BS? If that's the case, in a shoe game, then how much BC should you give up to gain PE? If I can improve my PE by .05 and my IC by .05, should I give up .02 in BC?

Assuming K units are bet in all favorable conditions, and 1 unit is bet otherwise the gain from counting is approximately:

[8(K-1)*BC+5(K+1)*PE]/1000 in units per hand. These figures are from The Theory of Blackjack, p.48, and are for single deck games. In those games BC and PE are about equally important for a 1-4 spread according to this formula. As more decks are added BC increases in importance and PE diminishes in importance.

[mofungoo]

PE stands for playing efficiency. It is determined by the counts performance on a specific set of hand matchups. I am not 100% sure but I think PE is the gain over basic strategy on these hands.

And you are 100% correct in stating that PE is the gain over basic strategy.

[mofungoo]

So have we decided what PE tells us in relation to BS? If my PE is less than .5, does that mean using basic strategy all the time is better? One could interpret it to mean: when the count indicates you should deviate from BS, less than 50% of the time that is true...so the closer to .5, the less valuable are indices. A .48 BC seems like it would perform worse than flat-betting w/perfect strategy, since you'd only be correctly identifying good situations 48% of the time, thus losing more money than you would by flat-betting. Or like someone said above, would BS be a 0 and does a PE of .5 mean it performs 50% better than BS?

PE is gain over basic strategy, so in that sense basic strategy defines the baseline. But basic strategy is certainly not worthless - it gives you about a 5% gain compared to playing dealer strategy. PE approximates relative improvement over basic strategy.

[brh]

HIOPT II doesn't count the 9. It is king of most sims that I have seen with the ace side count that is used with it. BRH, Halves and AO2 come in a very close second. Perhaps I am not understanding what you are trying to say. If you mean HIOPT II, AO2, Halves and Brh all are in the same boat via Uston SS. Incidentally I agree with you about the nines but Halves and AO2 do count the nines. Your statements make more sense with Uston APC than Uston SS. Uston SS does have a good PE.

That's actually what I meant - AOII counts the 9 and does worse than Hi-Opt-II. Uston SS does not have a good IC - in true count mode brh-I wins each time. And believe me, it took me a few weeks pouring over my sim data to actually convince myself how a count with such a 'poor' BC 98.8% kept beating Halves and SS.

I will bet anyone who does a fair sim will get the same result.

Brh.

[Boz]

PE is gain over basic strategy, so in that sense basic strategy defines the baseline. But basic strategy is certainly not worthless - it gives you about a 5% gain compared to playing dealer strategy. PE approximates relative improvement over basic strategy.

so .5 is 50% gain over BS? .5 does NOT equal BS? 0 = BS?

[mofungoo]

PE is a relative term that describes how efficient a count is compared to basic strategy. To get actual gain you need to run the numbers through the formula.

A player using dealer strategy is playing at about 5% disadvantage. Playing basic strategy that player is nearly even with the house to about -0.5% or so depending on deck number, rules, etc. That's a lot of gain and explains why basic strategy is so important.

A player in a single deck game playing even with the house and flat betting will gain about .7% using Hilo, and about .85% using HiOpt2, data from Braun's Winning Blackjack with penetration @ 75%.

Gain with multiple decks is less, depending on the number of decks, rules, and penetration.

[moo321]

I'm not understanding how PE and BC don't perfectly correlate to actual performance in a sim...

[mofungoo]

Probably because they are calculated estimates and are subject to statistical errors. There are probably standard deviations that should be considered along with these estimates? Both of the simulators I use give the standard error for the numbers they report, so error stacking may come into play.

[mofungoo]

The excitement stops there! Where can you find single deck games with 75% penetration nowadays? The exact gain from PE depends on the game you play. Its effect has been way overblown for modern games especially for shoe games!

"A player in a single deck game playing even with the house and flat betting will gain about .7% using Hilo, and about .85% using HiOpt2, data from Braun's Winning Blackjack with penetration @ 75%.

Gain with multiple decks is less, depending on the number of decks, rules, and penetration."

Isn't that exactly what I said? As far as deeply dealt single deck games, I played in such a game last week. Good games are out there.