advice on spread

i play min bet of 2 hands for 10dollars. using hi lo at TC 2 my bet is 100 x 2. at TC 3 it is 160 X 2. TC 4 is 160 X 3. TC 5 is 160 X 4. TC 6 is 160 X 5. am i betting correctly?

Why waste time answering a fairy tale?

I don't like that 3rd, 4th, and 5th hand. Why are you doing this? Have you bumped into table limits? If you have all these spots available to spread hands then you must be playing heads up. You are eating more cards than you need to. 5@160? I'd prefer 2@$400. You'll get several more rounds in each high count segment by not eating up the cards so fast.

You didn't specify the number of decks, rules, or penetration. At most games the optimal point for the max comes before +6, but it does vary by game. In most shoe games the optimal point for the max (in a constrained spread) is about +4.

Also, unless you are playing against rather poor rules I would make the first bet increase at +1, rather than waiting until +2.

It is nice they are letting you spread so big. Unless you are in a rather rare area most readers will react as TG does to your post.

thks for advice TG. yes i have reach the max bet on per box which is 160dollars. that's why i have to expand my bets sideways. rules are 6 decks, double any 2 cards, early surrender, double after split. lets say i am allowed to spread that much due to certain reasons. am i betting correctly? should i max at TC 4? what would your advice be? thanks

an $800 max, I'd spread 2@$25 to 2@$400, with the max@ just over +4TC.
Perhaps the true in black on each of two hands. If cover is any concern at all you should throw in some black off the top bets occasionally. Spreading across the entire table is not a good strategy except when you know it will be the last round of the shoe. The only other reason to do it is to get around table limits.

i was told 160 X 5 hands is the same as 500 for 1 box. the table limit for per box is 160. should i reduce my bet at TC 2? and should i double my bets at every TC?

After gambling at casinos all over the country for over 10 years,I've yet to see a $160 table limit per round. However, I'm sure online blackjack has some unothrodox rules and limits of sorts.

Are you converting from a foreign currency to get the $160 figure for table max? As TG notes, most table maxes are nice round numbers. However, I am thinking that you may be playing somewhere that has a 1,000 LC (local currency) table max and the conversion rate is 6.25 LC to 1 USD, for example.

At most games the optimal point for the max comes before +6, but it does vary by game.

This is a new one on me! Optimal by what standard? To the best of my knowledge, unless table limits get in the way, there is no optimum max. In other words, the higher you set your max, the better your win rate should come out, when betting optimally according to BJRM et al, while keeping the same units, BR, and ROR. This has always been my assumption.

ETF

then what you're doing is not bad. I guess you are in Canada since you say "box", and have a very odd table max. I would still make some bet increase at +1. When you have a sufficient bankroll that you are constrained by table limits then using an optimal ramp benifits you only in minimizing the long run index. In this situation I would not use an optimal ramp but rather bet each count based on what my bankroll allows for my risk criterion. That is, suppose there were no table max and you were permitted to bet anything you want. What would you be betting at each true count if that were the case? That's what I would bet here up to the point where you bump into the table limit. I was once playing bj machines with a $200 max. If I had the machine all to myself, which had five positions, I would just figure what I wanted to bet at each TC and would bet that total action using as few positions as possible to achieve it, up to $1000.

At most games the optimal point for the max comes before +6, but it does vary by game.

ET Fan: This is a new one on me! Optimal by what standard?

Not new at all, at least five years old and probably older. See Yamashita's Kelly Generalization, which Thorp even mentions in his Montreal Kelly paper.

As you say, there is no optimal max. But there is an optimal point for THE max in a defined constrained spread. In a shoe game with poor pen it is generally at +3 to +4. In a more favorable game it is often +5 to +6.

Example: Let's say we define a constrained play all spread as 1:20. Let's use a poor game such as hi-lo, 4/6, S17,DAS. The optimal ramp would be:1,5,11,17,20. (5 unit bet @+1 w/20 unit bet@+4)

Now let's improve the penetration to 5/6 for the same game. The optimal ramp is now:1,3,7,11,15,20. We now don't reach the max until +5.

Now let's cut just a half deck off of six. The optimal ramp is:1,2,5,8,11,14,18,20. We don't reach the max until the TC is +7.

This method minimizes N0 in all cases, and maximizes growth to a defined ROR when not constrained by table limits. When we are constrained by table limits then one can decide whether to accept a lower DI game in exchange for higher hourly expectation. This would mean not using the optimal N0 ramp but rather betting each count at the max that our risk criterion allows.

I got the impression you thought there was an optimal max, which I think is a common misunderstanding. You wrote: "At most games the optimal point for the max comes before +6, but it does vary by game." I'd say it varies mostly spread by spread! Then you wrote: "In most shoe games the optimal point for the max (in a constrained spread) is about +4." How you can say that without specing a spread? "in a constrained spread" reads like "in any constrained spread."

I think it's important for people to realize you should set your spread as high as possible. The real constraints are heat and psychology.

A max of $100 at a $2 table doesn't raise as many eyebrows as a max of $1000 at a $25 table. I've been getting away with a 40-1 spread for a long time at nickel tables. Max kicks in at +10. ;-) (Stop laughing.)

ETF

The Harris paper makes clear what is required: the interior Ev equals the exterior Ev. Even if you never bet at a negative expectation, the restraint of the interior Ev equalling the exterior Ev remains and even if you do not impose the restraint yourself, the nature of the game imposes a restraint. One simply does not get above, say +7, enough to say one really gets there. Certainly a ramp could be calculated for topping out at +10 (and there is only about a rise of expectation of .1 per count in that area so there is a topoff of frequency and expectation for counts in that area, meaning finding a higher count will not add very much Ev, even for a massive spread) but as a practical matter the ramp would not top out at +10 because you might not get there in a career. I could say my spread was 100 to one but I never bet more than 20 because I never got any higher.

and, yes, it is part of a cover strategy. Once you decide what size spread you think will fly then there is, indeed, and optimal way to configure that spread. This is what the optimal spread theory that has been discussed the last several years is all about. Optimal point for the max automatically suggests that we are talking about a constrained spread as otherwise there is no max. As soon as you define a max, there is an optimal count for it.

thnaks a lot for info DD. yes m playing in foreign currency which is around 160USD max per box. assuming heat is no problem for me even playing up to 7 boxes. what would your advise be for me to play at every TC level. min bet is 10usd.

currently i spread my bets cause of limit on per box. if i am not mistaken my spread of 160 X 5boxes at TC 6 is about same as 500 X 1 box. that is rougly 50 times. i need advise on how do i multiple my spread at every TC level.

the reason we can wait longer at better games to put out our max bet using the same spread ratio is that at better games you can use slightly larger unit sizes...so that a 20 unit bet at a horrible game might be $200 (in $10 units) and a 20 unit max bet in a great game might be $400 ($20 units) At a TC of +4 which will be a max bet in a horrible game you'd be putting out 20 units and in a fantastic game you might be putting out only 10 units (but close to the same amount of money as the 20 unit bet in a horrible game.

The defining critera is risk. You have a higher eV to Variance ratio in a great game, hence less risk and hence a bigger unit size and a higher TC to make your max bet.

what your bankroll is or what your level of risk tolerance is. Also, you may not realize the power of playing multiple hands in negative counts. With spreads as large as yours you do not gain anything by cutting back to one hand in neutral & negative counts. You are better off playing multiple spots so that you can go through the shoe as quickly as possible. If you can afford it, I would spread from table minimum to table max on all available spots. How quickly you ramp up your bets depends on your bankroll. If you have a big enough bank that the entire game is small change to you then I'd max at +2, with a bet of about half the max @ +1, with table minimum below that.

For best pen the 2nd to last round is the one to pay attention to. If you think you are near the cut card play few enough hands so that you get another round dealt.

pla define horrible and fantastic game? how would i know when is a game horrible or fantastic? sometimes i get cut at 4/6 and sometimes at 4.5/6. but i still play the same spread according to my TC. Is TC 2 at 4 deck remaining has less advantage than TC 2 at 2 decks remaining?

or with a tool such as bjrm. There are different factors that come into play that cause the different ramps. Obviously, if you have a game with weak pen and you wait until +7 to make the max, you will never make a max bet. You need a faster ramp. But this still doesn't allow you to be more of your money at a lower count. Optimal spread theory gives you an optimal number of units into which you should divide your bank. The better game will have a bigger base unit. So the 12 unit bet you make at +7 is a much bigger bet than the 12 unit bet you make @ +4 in the inferior game. The worse game has a higher risk of ruin so you will therefore break your same money into more units that are smaller in size. A good single deck game will require far fewer units for the same risk of ruin, so you therefore will have a much bigger base unit with the same number of dollars. YOu may have only a 1:4 spread at SD but be getting more dollars in action that at a 6D game where you spread 1:12.

When you are not being constrained by the table max, meaning that you would never like to bet more than they allow, then you will achieve the highest possible win rate for any given risk of ruin by using the optimal betting ramp.