Backcounting effectiveness for 8 decks

We have only 8 deck games or CSM games up here at our Casinos in the Toronto area (Niagara Falls, Rama, Great Blue Heron). I have been playing these places occasionally with a simple backcounting strategy for about 7 months, and am $5200 on the positive side of the ledger. This is for a total of 21 trips of typically a few hours each, betting $25-50, and (recently) playing 2 hands where possible. Total 16 wins and 5 losses. Most recently, was up $1100 in 3 hours on the floor (maybe 150 hands in total). A previous time I was +$400 in one shoe, (the only shoe I played), having 'wonged in' 1/3 of the way into the shoe. I typically get in on a true count of +1, and then simply play the rest of the shoe, flat betting, as I find it too much work to play and count at the same time. All logic tells me that my winnings are off the scale compared to what they should be.... Any comments, other than to say I am very lucky?

Regards,
Frank

I did almost the same exact thing as you:

8Decks/2.5 pen
S17
DOA
DAS

I wong in for $25 at TC +2, and jump to $50 at TC +4. I leave when TC drops to 0 or bellow.

After four trips, and roughly 50 hours of playing, I'm down quite a large sum of units...

Off the scale? I think so, at least when compared to my results.

You are not playing with an edge. You have just about a break-even game.

At a true count of 1.0, you have an edge which is close to 0, depending on the rules. Since you have not information about the rest of the Shoe, we have to estimate it at being 0 also.
When you are waiting for higher true counts before coming in, you have a slight edge. You may have had an advantage is some of the shoes you played.

Let us to try to make an estimate of your Standard Deviation. You said you made 21 trips. As a ballpark figure, let me guess that you played 100 hands each trip. (You are playing a lot more than a traditional wonger, because you are finishing all the shoes that you enter.) This is a little over 2000 hands. The Variance on one had (there is no surrender?) is about 1.3 Multiplying by 2100 we get something like 2600. Let me round this down a little to 2500, because the square root of that is 50. So this means that 1 SD is winning about 50 bets. If your bets were $50, this would be $2500 for 1 SD. If you were betting the $50 across 2 spots, your SD would be least. But it looks to me like you are up at least 2 SD.

If your edge was about .2%, and you made 2000 bets, then your EV would be 4 bets. With $50 bets, this would be about $200.
Did you tip at all?

There are couple things to do to improve your EV. Obviously, learning to count while playing is essential. (I realize that you probably take this heart as long as you are winning, but I don�t think that will last forever.) Another thing you could do is to Wong in at higher points.

Wong in when the TC is 3. Then bet more than $25, bet maybe $100. I know that you won�t find many TCs of 3, so you went be getting many bets in each trip. But they will be much better bets than the ones you are making. .

Here are details of the game we have to live with: Pen is about 6/8, no surrender, S17, DOA, DAS. While I don't actually count while playing, I do eyball the table and vary my bets ($25-$50 depending on my 'feel' for the count). I have not tipped... can you explain the reason for the question, should I tip to avoid heat? As it is, waiting for +1 TC, I find I am only playing about 1/3 of the time on the floor, and the rest of the time is finding a good shoe to get into. I might take your advice be more cautious and patient and wait for +2 TC, but to get to +3 TC of course would mean a +24 running count for the full 8 decks and +12 in the middle of the shoe, and I don't recall ever seeing anything that high that during all my backcounting.
I guess normal flux has been in my favour and maybe like you suggest I had an unknown advantage with a higher TC than I was aware of for much of my play, and all this may catch up with me eventually. Anyway, for now, I like this game!

Frank

Hi,

Try out my simulator on the internet www.sterlperl.com for backcounting your 8 deck game. The backcounting is the wong value.
Click on RUN SIMULATOR and then enter the setup parameters.

-Sterling