newzoomie: High Stakes SP21

[newzoomie]

Fairly recently in Vegas I watched across the pit from a private SP21 game, roped off and with a uniformed security guard. The player was playing 2 and betting from $2 - $7K per hand with a $500 match on each. Couldn't see well enough to evaluate the game, though generally (with a couple of rare exceptions in my experience) anyone who plays the match is poor. One or two PCs were glued to the game at all times.

Later the dealer told me the player lost $65K, and that the dealer has seen the same person lose as much as $200K in a session before. I wonder if that kind of sting is enough to make it interesting for the player.

[rukus]

> Fairly recently in Vegas I watched across the pit from
> a private SP21 game, roped off and with a uniformed
> security guard. The player was playing 2 and betting
> from $2 - $7K per hand with a $500 match on each.
> Couldn't see well enough to evaluate the game, though
> generally (with a couple of rare exceptions in my
> experience) anyone who plays the match is poor. One or
> two PCs were glued to the game at all times.

> Later the dealer told me the player lost $65K, and
> that the dealer has seen the same person lose as much
> as $200K in a session before. I wonder if that kind of
> sting is enough to make it interesting for the player.

if those loss estimates are correct i doubt he was playing any technique that made the match (and the game) worthwhile, though i guess its theoretically possible. how many decks?

[AutomaticMonkey]

> if those loss estimates are correct i doubt he was
> playing any technique that made the match (and the
> game) worthwhile, though i guess its theoretically
> possible. how many decks?

It's very difficult to beat the Match, even with a vulnerable shuffle. The best I've been able to do using shuffle-based techniques is a 1% edge, which is in no way worth it given the variance.

There are other methods I've considered that would require a team at the table. Here's a way of looking for a preponderance of suits: one player counts red vs. black cards and the other player counts major vs. minor suits (that's Bridge terminology.) If my reckoning is correct, the likelihood of matching a suit should be proportional to the sum of the absolute values of the two counts.

You can expand on this by having 3 other players at the table, one counting high cards vs. middle cards, on counting middle cards vs. low cards, and the third counting high cards vs. low cards. The data from these 5 counters should fit together in a pretty simple function to give you an advantage on the MTD bet with good correlation. A 6th player can be doing a regular count for the main SP21 bet, or perhaps we're using the high vs. low counter's data for that and the 6th player is responsible for collecting the Match data from the other 5 counters and making a play/no play decision. Yeah, that would work, being the choice of groups of 4 ranks for the Match bet is arbitrary, we can call the "low" cards 3,4,5,6 and the "high" cards J,Q,K,A and the "middle" cards 2,7,8,9. In this case the low vs. high is a reasonably good count for betting and playing SP21 in itself.

OK who wants to do this with me!?!?!

[21forme]

I guess we were half way there with 3 counters at the same table, weren't we? :.)