I was recently playing with a max bet out and caught a pair of 8's vs 10. I know illustrious 18 and fab 4. The proper decision was to split but I couldn't do it. I was playing heads up and figured I would rather surrender the hand and save the big cards. Any opinions as to how costly this decision was? THX
proper decision was to split? Says who? You made the right decision by surrendering, if you can surrender, always surrender two 8s vs a 10, the only time you wouldnt surrender would be at a time where you wouldnt really want to be playing anyway, such as around -1 or -2 and therefore you would split.. splitting 8s vs a 10 is not a +EV move, its just that you lose LESS by splitting, which makes surrendering the optimal move.. good job on surrendering, even if you thought you were wrong
Last edited by ZenKinG; 04-18-2013 at 12:43 AM.
At any ramped bet you should surrender. I never split 88vT. It is cheap cover. My risk averse index chart simply says "no" where the index would be for splitting. It is a risk averse cheap cover play. I just surrender it. If not available I stand. My surrender index is +2 and My unit bet goes out at +3. Lower than that I have my min bet out. This play really cuts your variance in a BAD situation. Those are the types of situations you want to cut variance in.
8,8 is not treated the same as stiff 16. The process should be, depending on your index numbers (I'll refer to ours here):
Option 1: Surrender if the TC is 1+ (if Sr is available)
Option 2: If Surrender is not available, it's a Stand at a TC of 5+
Option 3: If Surrender is not available, and the TC is not 5+, then the correct play is to Split.
"There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."
I assume max bet you had out was due to the count being high. So the proper thing to do is surrender vs. a ten. Remember it's not that you will win when you split or surrender 8,8 it's just that you lose less. A 16 is so bad that against a 10 you will lose about 55% of the time, on the average. (Also this is whether you hit or stand. According to Wong if you stay with a 16 you'll lose 55% of the time but if you hit you lose 54.5% of the time. So you are hitting just to lose less.) So when you split an 8,8 even if you get two eighteens, which have net losses of 20% each it's still better than holding on to the sixteen. Anyways you did the right thing by surrendering since it's assumed that the count was so high.
I had this play a few months ago but surrender was not offered. If i remember correctly my KO Tc was around +7 or +8. I didnt have this index play because its not included for kO or REKO-F, but i thought i remembered the hi-lo index to stand and not split was around +8 or +9. I took longer to decide what to do and finally decided to just go with basic strategy since i wasnt sure and had no index. Of course i got another 8 to split and ended up losing 3 max bets, maybe 4 cant remember if i doubled on one of the 8s. It bothered me for awhile after because i really didnt want to split.
Thats part of the reason i have thought about switching to hi-lo or FELT/RPC. Cause its hard to add so many indices for an unbalanced count. Right now i use about 45 indices with KO. But atleast for right now im sticking with KO. I just looked at a few other counts and they didnt have the published index for this play either so i presume this play of standing instead of splitting isnt that important. But i HATE that play!!!!! I dont care how small a gain it is!!! It doesnt come up that often at all but when it does i know it will bother me lol.
How should i deal with this play using KO? Of course surrender first if allowed. But if not allowed can i just stand or is it better to just use basic stategy.( I want to stand even at TC +3 lol but i dont). I have seen maybe +8 for hi-lo,NT21 uses +5(because risk averse maybe?). FELT-F doesnt include this index.
I dont like to do things like that now with a smaller bankroll. Making plays like that to cut variance i dont do because i dont know enough to make decisions like that yet. I feel like where does it end, it might add up before i know it and ill be hurting myself if i start making enough of these plays. Same with cover plays. Atleast for right now, dont know what i will do in the future. Or maybe i have this backwards and i should be more risk averse with smaller bankroll?
I think i will just use +5 KO TC as the index to stand and not split if not allowed to surrender.
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