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Thread: Modern Blackjack Book Errata

  1. #1


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    Modern Blackjack Book Errata

    Sorry if this has been posted yet, but where is it possible to notify of book errata?
    There was an old forum http://www.qfit.com/blackjackforum/ which is now closed,
    and a page http://www.qfit.com/modernblackjackbookerrata.htm .
    Is there a continuation of the old book forum in the new forum?
    Or must I e-mail to support-at-qfit.com?

  2. #2
    Random number herder Norm's Avatar
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    The errata page is still valid. If you believe there is an error, please post it.
    "I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse

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    Quote Originally Posted by Norm View Post
    The errata page is still valid. If you believe there is an error, please post it.
    OK, maybe it has already been fixed, but I refer to the print edition
    (Second Edition) from 2010, which I read last autumn.
    Since I use a ballpen to mark important stuff within the text,
    I also mark typos :-)

    Some minor things, I guess, are

    page 31, section Unusual Blackjack Games or Side Bets, Over/Under 13,
    second and third line:
    "is now fading away as it can _be_ beaten by card counters"
    (missing word "be")

    Page 37, 21st Century Blackjack, 7th item:
    "The Banker must hit soft-18 or less and hit -> stand
    on hard-18 or more"
    (replace "hit" by "stand")

    But more important is

    page 79, table at the bottom
    "Starting and Ending Counts" (for REKO):
    The row for 4 Decks says

    IRC = -13 (in contrast to page 71, which says -12)
    End = +3

    The online edition (First Edition), on page 79,
    says IRC = -12 and End = +4 (as in conventional KO count):

    www.qfit.com/book/ModernBlackjackPage79.htm

    so I assume -12 and +4 are the correct values?
    (in any case, End = IRC + 16 must hold for 4 decks,
    which is true in both cases).

  4. #4
    Random number herder Norm's Avatar
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    Thanks for the corrections. I changed the first two typos. Oddly, the third is corect in all my copies of 1st and 2nd edition.
    "I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse

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    Member chemyst's Avatar
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    Do the page numbers in the printed version
    match the page numbers in the online version?

    I have the combined Vol 1/Vol 2 printed version.

    Chemyst

  6. #6
    Random number herder Norm's Avatar
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    No, the second edition has more pages.
    "I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse

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    Hi Norm,

    so -12 and +4 are the correct values, I assume?
    (I have mailed you scans of page 71 and 79 so you can see
    for yourself that this error seems to have wandered into some
    but not all of the print editions. This is really strange).

    I checked Volume One of my print edition and found a few more typos,
    but not that many:

    p. 179, Bryce Carlson, table "Specifics", row "Compromise Indexes":
    here the table says for the Basic Omega II "No" and for Advanced
    Omega II "Yes". I think it must be vice versa, because the text says
    "The Basic version has only two index values for simplicity".

    P. 186, Side Bet Counts, last line:
    "These side bets -> counts will tell you when it is advantageous to make the side bet"
    (replace "bets" by counts")

    p. 225/233/236, bottom, below the Split DAS tables:
    "For no DAS, do not split 2,2 or 3,3 vs. 2 or 3,
    do not any split 4s or 9,9 vs. 7"

    swap "any" and "split" -> "do not split any..."

    p. 291, bottom, James Grosjean literature reference,
    last two lines:

    "... mindset presented that most -> almost any game can be beaten..."
    (replace "most" by "almost")

    That's all for Volume I :-)

    Besides, I have a question to pages 158/159, which present the very first numbers
    I have seen in literature on the frequency of number of decks, which is very
    insightful, many thanks! But I wondered why there are no numbers for
    New Jersey (Atlantic City) on this page, where 8-deckers seem to be
    prevalent. Do you have any numbers for this area? And, are "A.C." numbers
    contained in the "US" column or not?
    Last edited by PinkChip; 05-06-2012 at 06:36 AM.

  8. #8
    Random number herder Norm's Avatar
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    Thanks. I corrected the first three.

    In the fourth, I prefer "most any." Most any is an informal variation of most all and goes back to the Old English mæst ealle.

    The charts on 158/159 include AC within US.
    "I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse

  9. #9


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    Quote Originally Posted by Norm View Post
    Thanks. I corrected the first three.

    In the fourth, I prefer "most any." Most any is an informal variation of most all and goes back to the Old English mæst ealle.

    The charts on 158/159 include AC within US.
    OK, thanks!

    Today I went through Volume II, to finish the task,
    and here are the typos and questions I found:

    p. 367, Additional Table:
    do you have also tables for four decks?
    (I know that 4-deckers are rare nowadays,
    but for completeness, it would be nice)

    p. 372, second paragraph:
    "Pairs a not good hands overall except for
    pairs of aces and tens and to a lesser extent nines".
    I would replace "nines" by "fives", because a pair of
    fives has a much better expectaion than a pair of nines, see diagram
    http://www.qfit.com/book/z22Chart.gif ,
    and you omitted the fives in this paragraph.

    p. 385, Cumulative count distribution, first paragraph:
    "the percentage of the time that the count will be at least that count will be plotted"
    Replace "at least" by its contrary "at most", because the cumulative
    diagram sums up all counts lower or equal to the specific count
    (as does the cumulative histrogram of the Gaussian normal distribution).

    p. 392, True count vs. win/lose/push rates
    "However, it only increases to about 44% at TC +18". But diagram
    http://www.qfit.com/book/z50Chart.gif
    says the win rate for such high counts is 46% or 47%.
    Besides, the captions of the two charts on page 392
    are swapped - the upper one is titled z53Chart.gif
    and the lower one is titled z50Chart.gif, but it is vice versa.

    p. 436, Errors that favor the dealer:
    "Push Winning Hands - Winning hands will lose -> push 0.2% of the time"

    p. 454, third paragraph, fourth line:
    "At the far left -> right, about 25% of the rounds..."

    p. 573, Stepladder:
    "Cards are grabbed from the other original pile and the new pile,
    riffled and placed on top of the new file -> pile."

    p. 575, second paragraph, last sentence:
    "However, in general cards we still see..."
    Remove "cards"

    p. 577, line 5:
    "... to create an -> a far more accurate estimate..."

    p. 587, 588, 589, 592, text box at the bottom:
    "Simple one pass rifle -> riffle & restack"

    p. 593, first paragraph, last line:
    "... shuffle tracking and ace Sequencing -> ace sequencing"
    (either upper case or lower case for both parts of the noun)

    p. 597, second paragraph of Rainman's article:
    "unbalanced counting systems refer to this is -> as a pivot point"

    p. 615, Signals for Abnormal Variation:
    "7 out of 8 consecutive values to one side of center 7"
    Change "center 7" to "center", the "7" makes no sense here

    p. 650, third paragraph:
    "133 places in the sim engine, it have would otherwise"
    -> "it would have"

    p. 651, first paragraph:
    "we simply increase one of the index arrays to reach the second strategy"
    From my personal programming experience, I would say
    "increase one of the array indices" is correct.

    p. 658, Development Environment:
    I guess "development mode" means "debug mode",
    because you seem to describe how the debugger
    of your IDE steps through your program code?


    Last but not least, I think there is a logical error
    on p. 599, Rainman's article, second-to-last paragraph.
    It deals with the key count of the KO count:

    "... it starts to appear when the running count is equal
    to or slightly greater than halfway to the pivot point.
    For instance, the key count for a 4-deck game is +8."

    Firstly, the key count is not half-way but at two thirds
    between IRC and pivot point. Example: 6-deck shoe,
    IRC = -20, key count = -4, pivot point = +4 or
    IRC = 0, key count = 16, pivot point = 24, if you start at zero.

    And secondly, the key count for the 4-deck shoe, if you start at IRC = 0, is not +8 but +11 (eleven)
    (again at 2/3 of the difference of 16 between IRC = 0 and pivot point = 16).
    See Vancura and Fuchs, p. 171, Appendix VII, "The KO for 4 Decks".

    So the subsequent NRC calculation must be false, too.
    Probably you must change "Hi-Lo running count of -8" to "-11",
    and the NRS converted Hi-Lo true count is then not "+2" anymore, I guess.
    But I did not fully understand that rather complex calculations in Rainman's article.
    Last edited by PinkChip; 05-06-2012 at 03:03 PM.

  10. #10
    Random number herder Norm's Avatar
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    Many thanks. You certainly have an eagle eye.
    "I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse

  11. #11


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    Well, I am quite thorough at proof-reading, but would have forgotten all the details if I had not the habit to mark all these things immediately when reading the book for the first time, so finding them after half a year is quite easy. But some people could call this working style pedantic, or, in our field, maybe "penetrating" would be more accurate :-)

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