Hello All:

After several years hiatus from BJ, I’ve recently fully retired and am ready to pick BJ back up. However, instead of the Hi Lo count system, I’ve decided to switch and learn / practice / hone my skills with Michael Shackleford’s simplified Ace Five count system BUT with a couple of changes…. use true count instead of the simple running count AND use the 2 most impactful indexes. This change from Hi Lo w/ indexes will reduce cerebral efforts while playing. (I know that my long term $ /hr will be negative, but as long as it’s minimum I’m OK with that.) Also, to not sweat the heat, I intend my max spread to be 4:1. I’ve quickly perused and believe most local casinos still have 3:2 blackjack, H17 DAS (but not all have RSA).

Running 4b iterations on Norm’s CVCX simulator, using True Count Ace-Five counting (should I coin this TCAF?), and simple basic strategy only (no indexes) my “cost” to play is $4.19 / hr. But, if I include a single index of 16v10 hit TC<0 (i.e. instead of always hitting 16v10, only hit when the TC is negative), my “cost” reduces substantially (comparatively speaking) to $3.54 / hr. When I remove the 16v10 index from the simulation, and replace it with a single 9v3 DD >= 0 index, my cost changes from the simple basic strategy of $4.19 /hr to $4.03 /hr. I think that this is great… it then stands to reason that if I include BOTH indexes (16v10 hit<0 and 9v3 DD >= 0) then my cost to play should be lower than $3.54 / hr (which was the single index 16v10 benchmark). HOWEVER, a 4b iterations CVCX simulation reveals when I do this my cost to play is in fact $3.61 / hr, which is a HIGHER cost to play than the single 16v10 index.

So my question is this: Why do both indexes combined result in a higher cost to play than a single index? This seems counter-intuitive to me.

Regards,
SteinMeister