Best counting strategy for 6-8 deck games?

[Three]

Three, what the hell are you talking about. Halves is not an ace compromise count. Both the ten and ace are counted as minus 1 in the halves count. You must have the halves count confused with some other count like maybe Zen.
https://www.qfit.com/cardcounting/Wong-Halves/

Thanks. That is the second time I have confused Zen and Halves in recent weeks.

[jimmybond007]

Stick with hilo if playing mostly shoes. If you want to learn a stronger count then consider zen. Forget side counts.

[Three]

There is value in knowing the side counted cards are at expectation. Most people don't seem to understand that.

[BoSox]

There is value in knowing the side counted cards are at expectation. Most people don't seem to understand that.

We know, we know it is all about taming variance.

[Koz84]

I moved to FELT years ago.

It's free to learn here: https://www.qfit.com/book/ModernBlackjackPage85.htm

[Three]

We know, we know it is all about taming variance.

No. It is about making accurate decisions and tightening the decision bell curve around the average it is based on. If all these outliers are included in the bell curve that have the side counted cards out of whack the accuracy of the decision suffers. This causes you to bet less to have the same RoR which costs EV just from bet sizing on every bet you make in addition to the lost accuracy for the decision at hand. If those outliers, when the side count is out of whack, are removed from the decision bell curve you have a much more accurate decision, which results in even higher bets to keep the same RoR. So you get plus EV on every bet you make plus EV gain on the affected decisions. Pretty basic concept really. The wider your bell curves are around your decision (the less accurate your decision is), the less you must bet at the same TC to maintain the same RoR. Do what you can to tighten up your decision bell curves and you get gain from both decision accuracy and betting more aggressively with the same RoR. Hiopt2 performs so well because its bell curves are very tight around the decisions it makes. That allows it to bet more with the same RoR.

About 3/4 of the potential gain is from increased bet sizes for the same TC and 1/4 is from the more accurate decisions themselves. Too many APs only look at the gain from the decision and don't include the betting gain that goes along with it. A former member simmed the gain for a particular issue and got a gain of less than 5% but in Don's book the gain was 15-20% because Don knows that part of what changes is your bet size which produces more gain than the more accurate decisions do themselves. Gain doesn't disappear if you don't take it as increased bet size. The gain simply shows up in other statistics rather than increased EV. Deciding not to take the gain as increased EV can help reduce volatility but you don't have to target volatility. You can make more EV by betting more in every advantage situation. The gain is there no matter where you decide to take it.

So knowing the side counted cards are at expectation allows you to bet more on every advantage bet. That produces extra EV on every advantage round.

[CountinCanadian]

Also, i see you’re from Canada. What part? I’m in the Toronto area.

North of the 49th parallel