Bet Strategy

What are some of your all's betting strategies thats not a progression, for double deck and 6 deck games unit wise?
Like when you sit down at a table and your a counter using basic strategy how do you place your bets depending on the count?
Ive read alot about how people say progression betting is bad but I want to know is, what are the right betting principles some examples of how you bet personally.
Also what are some peoples opinions on using progression in conjunction with the TC. Example being:
start out with betting 1 unit if rc is under +3 and start out betting 2 units if rc is +3 or more, then jump a unit after each win like 1-2-3-5 and after you win your 3rd unit only bet 5 units if TC is +1 or more and stay there untill you lose or count drops to 0 or less.

For double deck (using the hi-lo count), I bet the TC in units. BUT, with the typical pen of 50% - 55% you get these days, this won't do much more than let you win veerrry slowly.

For 6D, IMHO, counting is a waste of time and effort. It's almost inevitable you will see any slowly and painfully acquired winnings wiped out by a run of losses with the max bet out. When I do play this game, strictly for small stakes and for recreation only, I use the count only for playing decisions, but bet a modest progression, and use VERY strict money management techniques. So far, I've had very good luck doing this, and have never had a losing trip since I adopted these tactics back in '97.

First of all, playing progressions, even with an advantage, results only in increasing your variance, thereby increasing 1) your risk of ruin and 2) the number of hands you have to play to be reasonable assured of being ahead. The number 1 mistake made by beginning counters is to over bet their bankroll.

Please ignore the post by OldCoot reguarding six deck games. These games are beatable, and, if played correctly, are better than most handheld games. However, you must be disciplined. If you abide the following rules, you will do well (in the long run).

- Play games with good conditions. At minimum, you want/need a game with 1) 4.5/6 penetration, 2) double after split, and 3) late surrender. Stand on soft 17 would be nice as well, but not absolutely required, especially if they have better than 4.5/6 penetration.

- Learn to backcount. This means counting down the deck without playing. You need to learn to not look obvious while doing this. Enter the game when the true count is 1 or greater.

- Leave on negative counts (any running count < 0). I cannot stress this enough. Playing through negative counts will have adverse affects on both your expected value and variance.

- Use a 1 to 4 betting spread using the following betting ramp: TC=0,1,2: 1, TC=3: 2, TC=4:3, TC=5: 4. If you are really daring, bet 5 at TC=6. This spread will give you a decent return with low variance. Also, with such a shallow spread, you won't need much cover.

Excellent advice.

However, I wonder about your bet spread.
I don't believe 6D can be beat spreading 1 to 4.

Of course you can. This has been the big lie that scares newbie counters from playing shoes. The key here is to avoid hands with negative expectation.

Hmmmm, interesting... 6 decks can be beaten with 1 to 4 spread only in positive shoes.

Well, my understanding is you need a 1-12 unit spread to beat 6 decks. And this would be playing in negative counts. Right?

> Hmmmm, interesting... 6 decks can be beaten with 1 to 4 spread only in positive shoes.

6 decks can (with reasonable rules/pen) be beaten by flat-betting only in positive counts. Such is the power of wonging. Technically, we are using an infinite spread because the ratio of our maximum to minimum bets is infinite.

> Well, my understanding is you need a 1-12 unit spread to beat 6 decks. And this would be playing in negative counts. Right?

1-12 is often advised for 6 decks play-all. This is for good rules, a decent bankroll and a lot of patience. Not only can you make more money wonging, but you can make it faster, in poorer games and with less of a roll.

the more ruthless your wonging needs to be. There is a happy medium where you use a fairly big spread and an exit point at some negative true count. Eventually your spread can be so big as to be virtual wonging. (For example..spreading $5-$1000 is really the same as wonging with a top bet of $1000.)

Because of casino conditions (limited numbers of open tables, crowding, or no-mid-shoe entry, for example) pure traditional wonging may not be a realistic approach. Such games force a wider spread and wong-outs at predetermined points.

These days, do you find yourself -more -Wonging in a traditional sense [back count, wong in, wong out] or playing as you described in the post above?

My book, Bootlegger's 100 Proof Blackjack, will be full of detailed charts that show how a 1-4 spread can beat the shoes. Now if I can just get the publisher to get the damn thing out on the bookshelves.

Has anyone run the numbers and come up with an expected return per hand on this strategy of play over the long run? I know return per hour is difficult to figure out, because the number of hands that you play over any given hour will vary greatly with this strategy, but what can a counter expect to earn spreading say $10-$40 using the strategy Panama Rick proposed?

By the way, thanks to Panama Rick. I am a new counter, and your advice/strategy has been great. Playing this way offers lower variance, higher returns, and less need for cover than traditional 1-12 spreads. Sounds like a better plan in every aspect. Thanks again for sharing such good advice.

Schlesinger has a number of sim results in the 2nd edition of Blackjack Attack for wonging out styles of play, and my book has a bunch of them desribing a wong-out strategy that would allow the player to begin a new shoe and only wong-out at counts below zero, which for sims basically means anything down to -1. You might be surprised at how effective this sort of strategy can be. Of course, the conditions for what I call "semi-wonging" have to be right, but those conditions are not rare.

Has anyone run the numbers and come up with an expected return per hand on this strategy of play over the long run? I know return per hour is difficult to figure out, because the number of hands that you play over any given hour will vary greatly with this strategy, but what can a counter expect to earn spreading say $10-$40 using the strategy Panama Rick proposed?

As Bootlegger mentioned, Blackjack Attack has numerous sims. Unfortunately, these sims do not simulate what happens during backcounting. If you wong-in at +1 and leave at < 0, you will be playing a fewer percentage hands at TC=0 than if you came at the top of the shoe. Not only that, but your EV at TC=0 will be higher because the average TC before flooring will be higher.

I looked at the demo for CVCX, but I as far as I can tell, it suffers from the same problem. I do not know if BJRM has this problem, but I suspect so, since the author wrote the sims for Blackjack Attack.

I have a full version of Sage Blackjack, which I setup to wong in at >= +1 and wong out at <0. Using this with a 1-5 spread as I described in previous post: TC=0,1,2: 10, TC=3: 20, TC=4: 30, TC=5: 40, TC=6+: 50. The Sage program has two minor flaws which prevent it from getting a 100% accurate result: 1) I can't assign a hit/stand deviation to a hand for which surrender is the two-card strategy or if a surrender index (e.g. if I set 16v10 to surrender, I can't set the index to stand at >= 0), and 2) I can't force a reshuffle once I've wonged-out from a shoe. I would also like to be to specify when I would abandon backcounting a shoe because the count has dropped.

The result was a 1.51% advantage. I used the true count statistics generated to calculate the SCORE, which as I remember, was well over 50.

A couple of observations: 1) The percentage of hands played at TC=0 was less than at TC=1. 2) The advantage when TC=0 was positive!

When I get a chance, I'll write a sim that incorporates all the features I'm looking for.

By the way, thanks to Panama Rick. I am a new counter, and your advice/strategy has been great. Playing this way offers lower variance, higher returns, and less need for cover than traditional 1-12 spreads. Sounds like a better plan in every aspect. Thanks again for sharing such good advice.

Your welcome.

Your score is ridiculously way out of line. My ballpark figure is a spread of only 1-4 ($10-$40 wong out at -1) will generate a whopping $8 an hour in the real world. This is being generous.

But that would be flat betting in all positve true counts of Plus 1 or higher pending on rules.

> But that would be flat betting in all positve true counts of Plus 1 or higher pending on rules.

Actually, you could eke out a positive expectation by flat-betting in all positive running counts, but this is by no means an optimal approach.

BJRM can figure out the optimal wong-in count for your bet spread and rules. For flat-betting, it's typically +2 or +3. You usually need a 1-4 or 1-6 spread before the optimal wong-in count drops to +1. You can still get a positive expectation by wonging-in before the optimal point, but you won't win as fast.

In order to figure out a wonging strategy that suits you, you should consider:

• How much of the time are you prepared to stand around back-counting?


• How many tables are usually available to you simultaneously (make sure you are allowed to enter mid-shoe)?


• What is the maximum bet you feel comfortable laying down is (remembering you may have to put out 8.5 times this amount with splits, doubles and insurance)?

Agree 100%

ETF

I'm not sure what you mean when you say BJA doesn't sim backcounting. Every table in Chapter 10 (except for 1d) gives "equal time" to backcounting. In fairness, Don Schlesinger was one of the early advocates of backcounting.

BJRM handles Wonging beautifully. The one thing you can't do is set your Wong out point differently from your Wong in point (as per your strategy). But you just set all bets below your Wong in/out point to zero. No biggie. Even setting Wong in/out to TC=-2 has a *lovely* impact on "score."

You might want to ask Norm about CVCX over on AP. If it doesn't do everything you could ever hope-desire-dream, I'd be surprised. ;-)

Enjoy your posts as always.

ETF