Hit enter too soon. See answer in next post.Originally Posted by aceside
See attached PDF which should answer your questions above. HL has a BE of 91.8%, HL w ASC and SMC, which are equivalent, have BE of 96.3% and HL + 5mAc has BE of 97.5%.
I like SMC you mentioned for betting and it is also balanced. The disadvantages are that it is a level 2 count and the PE is impacted and you need to learn new indices for the SMC. Using HL w 5mAc you keep the HL and no new indices need to learned the the HL playing efficiency is also unchanged since you are using HL for all playing decisions. You are using 5mAc only for betting.
My friend is working on a website for me to published several blackjack books and a Spanish 21 book which contains much more details than I have given here along with various side counts. When completed I will put the link up for those who may be interested. For Spanish 21 I use HL + (1/2)*(455m8AAc) for betting which has a Spanish 21 S17 betting efficiency of 98.8%. I also use my TCRC (Table of Critical Running Counts) for these counts since these counts have an unbalanced of four per deck.
Gronbog did sims on my KO with AA89mTc and 5m7c for blackjack and his sim results showed that this system significantly outperformed HO2 w ASC for standard blackjack and also when surrender is offered. This and other side counts will be included in my books.
HL w 5mAc v HL w ASC.pdf
Last edited by bjanalyst; 03-15-2021 at 10:51 PM.
There is no joke on me since I NEVER recommended the Secret Monkey Count (SMC).Jokes on you, I can't learn them because I still don't have them!
I recommended HL with 5mAc for Spanish 21 S17.
Aceside gave me the SMC tag values for which I take no responsibility for. So if there is any joke it is on Aceside and not on me.
I highlighted the deficiency of using SMC. Although it helps with BE, for playing strategy you would need to learn new indices for SMC and according to Cohiba the PE of SMC, even if you knew the indices which you do not, is less than the PE of HL. So first you would need to get the SMC indices, secondly you would then need to memorize new indices and thirdly by counting the Ace as -2 in SMC you pollute the HL playing efficiency, that is, PE SMC is less than PE HL.
My suggestion is HL w 5mAc and you use Kat's HL for all playing decisions and (HL + 5mAc) only for betting. There are no new indices to learn and you have Kat's HL indices already. You just keep 5mAc and use (HL + 5mAc) for betting the same way you were using HL for betting.
Last edited by bjanalyst; 03-16-2021 at 05:35 AM.
Yeah I heard you when you said that the first time, just making a joke.
Real talk though, I have a strong preference to not do a side count until I get more reps, so I'm practicing SMC with the top 18 or so indices of KW +4. I understand I'm paying an EV cost to do this relative to your method, but if it was good enough for 2009 Monkey I figure it's probably good enough for me.
Still, if any of my KW +4 indices could be improved, it would be good to know.
You are using top 18 Kat HL indices with the SMC? I do not know that SMC indices. Maybe Cohiba knows them. But the SMC indices are probably different that HL indices and according to Cohiba PE of SMC is less than PE of Kat's HL but the increase in SMC BE more than makes up for the decrease in SMC PE.
I never said you could not do well with SMC. What I said is that HL + 5mAc uses HL for playing strategy and HL PE > SMC PE. Also HL + 5mAc BE > SMC BE. Therefore HL w 5mAc is a more powerful system and there is no need to learn new indices for strategy changes as you can just use Kat's HL indices.
So let's wait to see the results of Cohiba's sims of HL w 5mAc as compared to SMC and stand alone Kat HL.
But you are still using Kat's HL indices for SMC, correct?
Not a good idea as SMC probably has different indices and if you are using incorrect indices you will probably reduce EV.
For example, my initial GUESS is that using SMC with positive true counts the HL standing indices would need to be increased since with more Aces with positive SMC there is less chance of the dealer breaking. If you are using HL standing indices for SMC you may be standing too soon and Griffin wrote that if you depart from basic strategy too soon you lose more than you would if you just used basic strategy with no strategy changes.
This is in addition to counting Ace as -2 in SMC which pollutes Kat's HL indices and decreases HL PE even if you knew the correct SMC indices which also results in decreased EV.
If you must use SMC you need the correct SMC indices.
See if Cohiba has the correct SMC indices.
Also keeping 5mAc with HL is really very easy. You are making keeping the 5mAc out to be more difficult to keep than it really is.
Do not try to update both HL and 5mAc simultaneously. First keep HL as you normally would. Then scan the cards on the table and calculate 5mAseen and then add 5mAseen to 5mAc from previous round to get updated 5mAc. And then continue to update both HL and 5mAc as players complete their hands with cards being played one at a time. You are keeping only two integers in your head and both HL and 5mAc are level one counts with 5mAc counting only two ranks so they are both very easy to keep. If you need to you can use chips to keep 5mAc as I described in other posts where I used chips for side counts I used with KO.
Last edited by bjanalyst; 03-16-2021 at 11:22 AM.
I really do not know exactly what happened. My computer froze and then I think maybe I hit submit twice where part of my comments were in the first posting and then more comments in the second posting so what I did was just edited the first posting and said clicked enter too quickly and said look at next post. I will strive to be more careful next time. Sorry for the mistake and two postings.
Sim results. Ok so its been a while since i did anything with CvData for Spanish so i started by setting up a number of parameters including - 1Billion hands sim, 6.5/8 pen/AC Rules/used the template feature to get the bonuses/TC was determined by dividing by whole decks/rounded decks and rounded counts - wanted to compare results to Kats and that is how she set it up. For all sims i used the same number of indices was about 35-40, i dont memorize extremes since you rarely get there and in negative territory dont hang around and fire bets into junk and if i were its a small bet anyhow. Bet size was 10- 200. So i ran the following sims:
1) loaded Kats hi/lo strategy with flat betting to make sure that i was in the ballpark (a missing check mark anywhere in the setup can cause problems) and used this sim as control case to confirm that my results were consistent with published data - all checked out.
2) ran a kat hi/lo sim with a 1-20 bet spread where 1 unit on all negative expectation counts (-3) and ramped up 1-2-5-12-20 once i entered positive ev territory at every increase in true count. The sim showed a win rate of $19.72/hour and a SCORE of 17.82. (btw this compares well to results in Kat's book and was a confidence booster shall we say).
3) ran the above sim (same everything) but added the 5mcAsc and the results improved to $28.59/hour with a SCORE of 22.05. I expected an increase but not this much.
4) loaded up the SMC - used Kat's published hi/lo indices and added 4 to each index. The win rate was the best at 30.53/hour with a SCORE of 18.10.
So in summary all the above worked well. If you can handle a side count and/or a level two count then SMC and the 5mAsc are worth it depending on what you are doing. The SMC indices i used are probably not perfect but are clearly good enough and with a decent bet ramp do well.
So based on my sim win rate for SMC > 5mAsc > Kat's hi/lo
If you focus on score then the 5mAsc better than the SMC which was marginally better than Kat's hi/lo.
Give you an idea and my advice is to be informed by the above but not overly fixate on it. More important to play well and be allowed to play and spread when called for. I will stick with SMC for now - an added bonus is i am always interested in tracking this game (no luck so far as everything i have seen has been ASMs) and cant imagine tracking with a side count.
Hope this helps, comments? questions?
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