• What is the Risk-of-Ruin of my trip/session, based on my trip and/or total playing bank?
• Which is the "better" game to play, an H17 DAS 2 deck 70 card penetration game, played "all" with a 1-6 spread, or a back-counted S17 DAS LS 1-8 spread game where 4.5 decks of 6 are dealt?
• What is my probability of being ahead by, say, $2000, sometime during my next 16 hours of play?
• Exactly how much bank do I need if I am willing to tolerate a 10% risk-of-ruin? What if I change that to 5%?
• Within my spread, how much, and where, should I place bets in order to maximize the rate of my bankroll growth?
• What is the "$$ hourly win rate" that a specified game will yield?
• How would things change if I got in more "hands per hour"?
• What if I played two hands per round, instead of one?
• Is it "worth it" to learn a new, more powerful but more complicated counting system?
• I played 6 hours last weekend, and lost $5,000. How rare of an event was that?
• I seem to experience very wild $ "swings" as my blackjack play mounts up. Is that normal?
• And many, many more questions — just as interesting and revealing.

Most questions can be answered with very little text entry, simply by selecting and mouse-clicking on the program’s built-in choices.

The Main Menu screen of BJRM 2000 (shown above) gives you two options for accessing the various parts of the program. You can either click on one of the prominently displayed "buttons," or you can select a choice from the drop-down Menus in the top left corner of the screen. BJRM 2000 features/sections include:

The One Second Simulator: Select from hundreds of pre-run simulations. Manipulate bet patterns. Find your optimum bet placement within a spread. Calculate Win Rate, ROR, DI, SCORE, N0 (N-Zero) and mostly all of the important blackjack statistics.

Trip-based Statistics: Determine your Trip (or Session) Risk-of-Ruin, expectation, and the odds of reaching certain goals and milestones. Graphically view typical "ups and downs" of your bankroll, hour-by-hour and trip-by-trip, in the " Take A Random Walk" section.

Risk of Ruin Calcs: Basic "lifetime" Risk-of-Ruin statistics, based on given Win Rates, SDs and Banks. Also, solve for required $ Bank, given a target Risk-of-Ruin value. View number of hands and hours required for +1, +2, and +3 SD results.

Systems 101: A basic entry-level "course" in several popular counting systems. Learn the card tags, I18 and F4 indices, and where to go for more information.

Build One Sec Sim Files: Primarily for "Advanced" Users, this feature assists you in creating your own custom input files for use in the One Second Simulator. The data can be entered in two ways: (1) manually, based on output from simulations you have run with certain commercially available simulator programs, or (2) automatically parsed from the standard output report files of Karel Janecek’s Statistical Blackjack Analyzer program (purchased separately). If you find the pre-run simulations in the One Sec Simulator sufficient, and many of you will, you can just ignore this program feature.

Help: Access to the detailed on-line Help system for BJRM. Can be selectively printed out to serve as a User Guide. BJRM Install instructions can be found here, also.

New to this latest version of Blackjack Risk Manager are two features that I hope you will find useful and fun. First, I have created a program feature I call "Systems 101" to get you started with basic information about several of the more popular card counting systems in use today. It is a sort of introductory "course" on the raw basics of several card-counting systems, and includes a description of their card tags, their I18 and Fab4 indices, and recommendations as to books and Web sites you can consult for in-depth information.

Second, because I believe that many card counters do not really have a firm grasp on the nature of the bankroll swings they experience because of the inexorable workings of the effects of standard deviation, I have created a program screen that graphically displays typical examples of the hour-by-hour and trip-by-trip fluctuations you may very well experience. I call this part of BJRM "Take a Random Walk," in reference to the common metaphor that the bankroll growth of a card counter is like taking "a random walk," which in the short- and medium-run, can sometimes lead all over the place, but, fortunately, trends upward as the long-run is approached. I think you’ll find this feature to be a real eye-opener.

I’d like to further note that I have tried very hard to write Blackjack Risk Manager in such a way as to make a traditional, hard-copy User Guide unnecessary. In addition to this Help File, BJRM has automatic real-time "help," in that, as the mouse cursor is placed over the text and data on the screen, a small pop-up mini-window displays the descriptions and/or instructions you need to put the program through its paces.

So dig in, explore, and enjoy — Blackjack Risk Manager 2000. And may you never be surprised by the "ups and downs" of blackjack risk, again!

- John M. Auston, January 2000