Dog Hand: Don's Experiment (from below and WAY to the right!)

[Dog Hand]

[Magician]

> How about considering the cases where the wonger never
> enters the game? In these rounds, an argument can be
> made that more high cards would appear since it is
> the appearance of high cards that keeps the wonger out
> of the game. The posted sims indicate that this occurs
> about 70% of the time for a wong-in TC of +1.

If there are only two players and one of them (the wonger) receives more than the normal share of high cards (because he only plays in positive counts), then the other must receive less than the normal share.

[MGP]

As I mentioned in my last post, we don't know what the new global average count is for the BS player. If we guestimate it by looking at the overall EV at various counts and then match that up to the overall EV experienced by the player when the Wonger is present, then we should have a good idea as to what the new global count is and that in turn could be used as a reference for the strategy changes. Just a thought anyways.

> Well, I certainly didn't expect such a theoretical
> question to generate so many posts, or so much
> controversy.

> I think Dog Hand's sim methodology is sound, although
> I'd like to see a lot more than a 250 million rounds
> when we're analysing just a few types of hands. The
> problem with this approach is you need to guess the
> answer first and then check to see if you're right. We
> don't all have Don's decades of experience at
> blackjack.

> I thought I'd outline a combined
> simulation/combinatorial analysis approach that should
> give you the optimum strategy for a given situation
> without having to guess it first.

> Simulate a basic strategist (player A) and a wonger
> (player B) for your chosen set of conditions, keeping
> track of all the cards that are dealt to B. Removing
> the cards that B uses, calculate the optimal strategy
> based on the "shorted" deck that A is
> playing. Run the simulation again with A using the
> new strategy and again keep track of all the cards
> dealt to B. Removing those cards, calculate the
> optimal strategy again. If it has changed, go back to
> the previous step. When the iteration stops, you
> should have the optimal basic strategy for the
> conditions. Now, I don't have any software that could
> do this. Does anyone think they can?

[Cacarulo]

> For Altered B.S., TBA = -0.540%, IBA = -0.610%
> For normal B.S., TBA = -0.520%, IBA = -0.589%

Well, that's exactly what I got: The player should not change his normal BS. Check out my posted experiments and compare your IBAs against mine.

Thanks for the sims.

Sincerely,
Cac

[HALVESX2]

if the sims have shown that hitting A2 vs 5, and 12 vs 4 does out perform normal BS.
why would the EV of the ABS player be worse than the NBS?
if the 2 plays were doing better, by using them instead of NBS it should never reduce the EV.
when calculating the EV was 13 vs 2 and 12 vs 6 converted back to normal BS?
shouldnt the EV of the ABS player be almost the same as the NBS player?
actually the ABS player should has a marginally better EV than the NBS.

[nerd]

> Good work. But, I understand that, for 13 v .2 and 12
> v. 6, where the index is -1 and not 0, they may not
> work.

According to Wong's "Professional Blackjack," the index for those two plays is 0?

[Dog Hand]

[HALVESX2]

now wonder the EV of the ABS player would come out worse than the NBS player.
as your previous sim has shown that the effect of the wonger is not great enough to alter 13 vs 2 and 12 vs 6.
since these two plays r actually worse than NBS
and their chance of occurrence is much greater than A2 vs 5.
so even with the gains on A2 vs 5, its not enough to cover for the misplay on 13 vs 2 and 12 vs 16.
dog hand if you can try once which just alters A2 vs 5, 12 vs 4 and hitting 15 vs 10 instead of surrendering.
lets see how the ABS player's EV compares with the NBS player.

[Magician]

> As I mentioned in my last post, we don't know what the
> new global average count is for the BS player. If we
> guestimate it by looking at the overall EV at various
> counts and then match that up to the overall EV
> experienced by the player when the Wonger is present,
> then we should have a good idea as to what the new
> global count is and that in turn could be used as a
> reference for the strategy changes. Just a thought
> anyways.

That would be easier and I think it would get you pretty close to the answer. But considering that BS is not the same as TC=0 strategy, I'm not sure it would give an exact answer.