If you knew the outcome of every hand, would that alone give you a positive edge? What would the edge be if you made the best possible decision in all scenarios?
Try to rephrase the question to ask what you actually mean.Originally Posted by ChromeCake
That's a legitimate question. Assume you mean if you had perfect knowledge of every card played and made the best decision accordingly. Of course, it would depend on number of decks and rules. This would be the equivalent of playing with a concealed computer, which, once upon a time, was possible. I'm not sure what the edge would be flat betting a shoe game, but I am sure that it wouldn't be very great at all.
Don
Follow-up to the above: go here. https://www.blackjackinfo.com/commun...r-games.55693/
And, it would appear that flat betting might not give you any edge at all, which doesn't surprise me.
Don
No, it's a hypothetical question. The house edge is said to be 0.5 percent if a player is using basic strategy. When using basic strategy, sometimes you can make a "good" call but still lose. These loses come in two different forms, preventable, and non-preventable.
For example, choosing to stand on a hard 17 is generally a good idea. However, it is possible hitting again could win you a hand you would have otherwise lost. Standing on a hard 17 results in a win more often then hitting, therefore the basic strategy is to stand. But sometimes following the basic strategy will lose you the hand.
So again, my question is, if you could know in every situation whether it was the best call to hit or stand, including when neither will win the hand, would that give you a positive edge against the house. Of course the edge is going to go up, but how much does it go up? Obviously it's not possible to win every hand, regardless of what you know about the cards, but how much of an edge do you gain if you could know?
To phrase the question another way, what edge does a perfect player have over the house. In this context a perfect player is one who always makes the winning decision, not necessarily the "right" decision.
And yet another way, because of the rules of Blackjack there is an implicit maximum achievable edge built into the game. What is that maximum edge? What is the ceiling?
Edit: Also, in this scenario I am assuming no bet spreading.
Edit2: It actually seems worthwhile to consider both.
This is relevant. Thank you.
Last edited by ChromeCake; 08-15-2020 at 07:43 PM.
Thank you. Yes, this is exactly what I mean. I've been messing around in excel trying to come up with something. In the thread you linked I see there's software out there that does everything already. Have people not had much success with those online?
I think this is not exactly what you meant. Knowing in each situation what to do in order to win the hand (if possible) does not only require perfect knowledge of the played cards but also perfect knowledge of the remaining cards, i.e. next card information.
For example, if you have the Hard 17 mentioned above, and the dealer has Hard 20 and the next card is a Four, then you must hit to win the hand, but even with perfect knowledge of the number of already played and thus remaining cards of each rank, you will most likely not know the rank of the very next card and decide to stand due to this imperfect information, "avoidably" losing the hand. Knowing the positions of every card rank in the shoe is a much stronger information than just knowing the amount (frequency) of every card rank, as perfect card counting would provide.
Last edited by PinkChip; 08-15-2020 at 08:29 PM.
I don't think the OP means anything about hole carding or knowledge of the upcoming card. But, he can speak for himself. I think he means, using a computer, what is the maximum edge attainable for online play. And, that has been determined by Eric to not even be positive expectation for the typical shoe game. It's unlikely the OP means, "What's the edge if you have X-Ray vision?"!
Don
See Griffin, page 230, for the shoe game. I'm reasonably sure that if you add all the gains from perfect play, they won't come to more than about 0.3%, which is less than the starting house edge for the shoe game.
Your mention of PE is for using a point count, which I don't think is being discussed here.
Don
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