According to Professional BJ, a game with 83% penetration, s17, no DAS, no RSA, no surrender, $10-$100 bet spread with the Hi-Lo count, basic strategy only(no deviation index), provides a win rate of $12 per hour.
I always see people say card counting has a very thin edge, if you make one mistake, you lost your advantage over the house. I wonder if that's true, or just an encouraging talk to make APs practice harder?
Is making mistakes that horrible, or just moderately hurt the profit?
The answer is no. Understand there is variance between the proper decision and actual result. Blackjack is a game of decisions. The right decision does not necessarily win. However, to be a long term winner, the vast majority of decisions need to be correct.Originally Posted by San Jose Bella
It really depends. The edge is small, to be sure, which is why we have endless debates about what count ekes out the most money.
The better discussion is the cost of errors, and the cost of cover.
Inverting the running count, not converting the TC correctly, or just messing up the count costs a lot.
Missing a playing decision, maybe not so much. Some people intentionally make the wrong decision, because the cost is small, and it provides good cover. Each playing decision has a different cost, so you can't say they are the same.
Interesting question. CVData has a feature to allow for random betting and playing errors. So I ran a couple of CVData sims -
First, I started with the same game you noted in the OP, except I used Hi-Lo with the "sweet 16 " indexes, because the settings would not allow me to use no indexes. It came out with a win rate of $14.37, which makes sense relative to your $12 win rate due to use of indexes in my sim (approx. 20% benefit due to the use of the sweet 16 indexes).
Next, I ran the sim and allowed for 5 betting errors per hour (5 errors per 100 rounds), but no playing errors. The win rate dropped to $12.93 (10% decrease).
I then ran the sim and allowed for 5 playing errors per hour, but no betting errors. The win rate dropped to $7.47 (48% decrease).
Finally, I ran the sim with both 5 betting errors and 5 playing errors per hour. The win rate dropped to $5.93 (58% decrease).
So, I would conclude that a few isolated betting and playing errors here and there won't totally negate your advantage. But it's interesting to note that playing errors have the potential to be much more costly (i.e., 5 times more costly) than betting errors. Hear that Zee?
How about make counting errors? Take +1 as 0, or take -2 as -1.So, I would conclude that a few isolated betting and playing errors here and there won't totally negate your advantage. But it's interesting to note that playing errors have the potential to be much more costly (i.e., 5 times more costly) than betting errors. Hear that Zee?
This is the kind of error we're most likely to make, when it happened in real life, we won't detect it and would keep counting forward. How fatal is it?
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I have to make an educated guess at the answer, and I invite others to chime in -
I would think that making small errors around an index play have a very minor effect on win rate because it's been proven that index grouping vs. use of exact indexes has no measurable effect on EV. I think the playing errors that are programmed into CVData are more serious. The guide for CVData explains playing errors as follows: "player errors consist of not hitting, splitting, doubling or surrendering when called for by the current strategy".
The typical playing decision mistakes costs very little per occurrence. Many cost just pennies in EV. It depends on the mistake made. I assume you are talking about counting mistakes since you aren't using indices. Counting mistakes cost depends on how big the mistake and how deep the section of the pack you play through with bad information. At one deck left you are off 1 TC for each RC you are off. If you use the approximation of .5% increase in EV per TC, that makes 0.005/TC off times the difference in the bets made as the per round cost of the mistake. With a lot of cards left small mistakes aren't likely to have you off much for the TC. But if you had a $60 out instead of $75 and are off by 1 TC the cost for that round is $15*0.005 = $0.075. If you flipped the sign at some point on your RC and are off by 5 on the TC and have $75 rather than $10 the cost in EV that round is $65*0.025 = $1.625. I think I messed that logic up a little but you get the idea. I am sure most love to correct me so I will leave it to them to point out how I screwed the pouch on that one.
Notwithstanding screwing the pouch vs. the pooch, the salient point is an error in RC being off just by one, becomes more and more costly the further into a deep dealt shoe you go. So, for example, actual RC 3 at mid shoe off by one makes some difference, but that difference at the 5th deck in, may be the difference between a big bet and a much bigger bet, or fir that matter, a fair sized overbet..
Depends on the mistake. Doubling your hard 20 with a max bet will likely ruin your advantage. Hitting a 12 v 4 at +1 wont. Each decision has an expected return. If the sum of the difference between the return of the mistakes and the return of the correct play is greater than your edge then you will lose in the long run.
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