Quote Originally Posted by aceside View Post
It seems something is not right. For a 6-deck shoe, EV should be -17.6%. At TC +4, EV should be slight negative, I believe. For an 8-deck shoe, EV should be slightly positive.

If we use ASC, the critical TC should drop one when aces per deck drop one. Can you double check?
Look how quickly the EV changes with the count. Yes, Shackleford's analysis shows a -17.6 EV off the top for this pay table. The sim I show above at TC 0 shows -18.0%. Don't you recognize those as the same? TC = zero isn't a single point off the top of the deck, rather it is a whole bunch of simulated situations over a range of TC from -0.5 to +0.5. The EV changes by 6% for each 1 TC, and the small difference you pointed out is only 0.4%. The sim above would show an EV of -17.6 above at a TC of +0.07. What is the TC off the top with a single low card as the burn card? TC +0.17. So the difference you are focused on is a fraction of the difference of a single card.

Then look at TC +4. It's close to the break even point. Simulations depend on the simulated conditions, which I noted. If I changed things at all, like rounding the deck estimate instead of truncating, it is going to change the exact results around a break-even point. The simple idea is that the EV changes very quickly with the count. If you make this bet at +4, you might have a negative expectation if your deck estimation is off or if you determine true count differently than the simulated results. You are better off waiting until +5 to bet this one, to be sure about it.