The point of this post is just to ruminate on how much players knowingly deviating from basic strategy costs them. Is it meaningful, slight, or a rounding error?

One of my favorite regulars comes to the table with a strategy card. Of course he doesn't need it at my table, and he actually does make a mistake occasionally. Many other players "sort of" know basic strategy, but there are a few plays they tend to try to outguess basic strategy. For example, 99 vs. 8. It doesn't seem super-intuitive to split, because a dealer 8 is a pretty good card for the dealer and when you split and don't get a 10, you've degraded your hand. So they stand. Splitting 8's against an Ace seems super-scary; who wants to put more money on the table against an Ace?

But these are extremely costly errors. Hitting 88 vs. A costs about 0.15; standing 99 vs. 8 costs 0.12. These compare to 0.068 for standing on 16 vs. 7.

Maybe one of these days I'll expend the energy to create a spreadsheet with all the relevant combinations, frequencies, and net cost. 88 vs. A comes up 0.000444 of the time, so if that is the ONLY error you ever make, you will give up .0000666, or about 7 thousandth's of a percent. So the house edge goes from .0060000 to .0060666. Of course, the players who will try to outguess basic strategy won't make only one error, they'll make many. And all you have to do is put a nickel on Lucky Ladies once an hour and you've just given away more than even a big deviation will cost.

But it does suggest that blackjack is an easy game. Learn basic strategy (easy), and use it without thinking. Maybe if you have a vibe about the number of high/low cards (obviously this entire post assumes non-counters) you could decide to stand on 16 vs. 10. But don't try to guess.

__________________________

On another topic, I had another (I think) counter tonight. So it all starts in a weird way. I made a mistake in a payout and there was a bit of a fuss (it was a push but I had taken the chips into the rack, nobody was sure how much, he had doubled, so we had to call the eye in the sky), and as this is dragging on he says "Now I lost the count." Hmm, let's not call that a confession, but certainly enough to make my antennae stick up. He had bought in for $1K but was playing at or near the table minimum of $15; most players don't buy in for 65x their bet, so it feels like he wanted to have the cheques for a big bet if the count got really high. He occasionally put up a nickel on Lucky Ladies when his main bet rose. With all our side bets, I usually don't have the mental bandwidth to monitor a players bets and especially not to count, but no one was playing side bets and I could look and see, for example, the count on the current hand is +3 and his bet goes up, or -2 and his bet goes down. Surely enough to let the boss know. He left at one point, leaving his chips, and I called my floor and whispered that I might have a counter, and he told the pit manager. Now it gets interesting. We are trained to deal to about 80% penetration, but when I shuffled I cut the shoe down to 60%. I went on break, and when I came back his chips were gone. I asked if he had left, and the players told me that he came back, played a couple of hands, and left. I wonder if he didn't see where I put the cut card and decide to get out while the getting was good. Maybe they'd remember him when they came back and maybe they wouldn't, but why take the chance? I have no doubt that no other dealer in the joint could flag a counter, and I'm qutting in two days, so maybe he'll come back and be able to ply his (our?) trade.

We are really not encouraged to use initiative, but I think everyone understand that I'm smarter than the average bear and that just like a player shouldn't try to outguess the strategy card, they shouldn't try to outguess me on counters.

Only two more days though and then I'm outta there. Moving to Vegas next month.