A new feature in CVCX Version 5 provides the ability to calculate optimal depth-based betting ramps. I have included an excerpt from the CVCX manual to explain what this means. I plan to put together an extended article at a later time.

Optimal Depth-Based Betting


It is well-documented that unbalanced strategies like KO tend to over-bet late in the shoe and miss betting opportunities early in the shoe. While overall results of unbalanced strategies are good, they can be better. Daniel Dravot?s new book, The Color of Blackjack, details the problem and provides a solution involving the use of different betting ramps at different depths. There have also been posts on this subject on various Blackjack forums. Basically, the idea is to raise your bets at lower counts early in the shoe and delay the increase in bets near the end of the shoe. This captures much of the power of true counting without the extra work. And true-counting an unbalanced strategy is not easy.

A problem with this approach has been the development of optimal betting ramps. Optimal betting calculators, like that in CVCX, tell you what to bet at each count. But with depth-based betting, the counts where you raise your bets change according to depth. The CVCX Depth-Based Betting feature solves this problem providing an extra boost in results.

To set up a sim for depth-based betting, click the Depth-Bets button on the Sim Page. You will see the following screen:



Here we define where we wish to increase our bets. Not what the bets are ? just when we will increase. In the sample table, we see counts of -12 through +4. We see the first deck in the shoe in the bottom row, second deck in the shoe above that, etc. Betting levels are set to 0 through 6. That is we have seven betting levels with 0 as the minimum bet. We see that in the first deck, we increase our bet at -11, increase again at -7, etc. In the second deck, we wait until a count of -8 to increase our bet. Should we ever see a round start in the sixth deck, we would wait until a count of +2. This sample table is similar to the table in The Color of Blackjack, but slightly simpler. You can set the table up according to your own desires. (CVData users can examine results in sections of the shoe to fine-tune this table. But the extra gain from fine-tuning is minimal.)

You must fill in separate tables for each number of decks for which you will run sims. Click on Enable Depth Betting to activate the tables. Set up the rest of the sim settings and run the sims.

Results

Normally CVCX will display the optimal bets for each count. But in this case, it will display the optimal bets for each betting level. Below is a sample output of just the betting table on the Viewer screen:



Note that we do not have counts in the left column, but betting levels indicated by B0 through B6. For B1, we see 25 in the Chips column. So, we bet $25 wherever we see a 1 in the previous table. That is, we bet $25 at a count of -11 in the first deck, -8 in the second deck, etc.

Once you have run the sims, all CVCX Viewer functions will work with this feature. You can change the spread, penetration, bankroll, risk, etc and the optimal bets will be instantly recalculated and all results and widgets will be updated. You can also manually fine-tune the betting levels using the Custom Bets column at the right, and all results will be recalculated .

Use the Count Range spinners at the top to set the range of counts for each number of decks and use Load and Save if you wish to keep a library of different tables.