Card Counting Spanish 21 with AceMT vs. Card Counting Spanish 21 with Hi-Lo

Spanish 21 made its first appearance in 1990s -- long after the threat of card counting had become known to casinos. The designer team of Spanish 21, which included Julian Braun -- the legend who developed the original Hi--Lo indices --

must have intended to defeat or frustrate all card counters in order to make Spanish 21 more appealing to the fee-paying casino licensees.   

Well, well, the Spanish 21 team wasn't 100% successful, but it had succeeded in rendering most, if not all, of the known blackjack card counting systems back then completely useless. 

But as they say, when there is a will, there is a way.  Katarina Walker tweaked Hi-Lo and turned it into a Spanish 21 card counting system as well. Hi-Lo therefore became the lone survivor. Quite a feat, Katarina single-handedly changed Hi-Lo from a "Balanced System" in blackjack to an "Unbalanced System" in Spanish  21.

AceMT was another story. Back then,  AceMT was still a an unpublished private card counting system, so it couldn't possibly be on the designers' radar screen and and to be zapped.  A lucky escape?

I was thinking to correct you, but the other Spanish 21 author’s name is Katarina, not Katrina. They could be the same thing in Spanish. Maybe you intentionally put it that way because she is insignificant.  We can just call her Pocahontas. 
 

BTW, since you joined this forum, the amount of posts has grown significantly. 

Thanks to aceside for quickly pointing out the misspelling of Katarina's name.  Please accept Moraine's sincere apology to the readers of this forum and to Ms. Katarina Walker for the mistake.  (Moraine corrected the misspelling in the original posting only after being advised of the mistake.)

Moraine must also confess Katarina Walker's book is one of the very, very few books that Moraine has ever read after leaving schools. If the circumstance permits, Moraine would hope to be able to write more about his understanding (or misunderstanding?) of Katarina's book, and to benefit from being rightfully corrected.

I’d like to hear more about your understanding of Insurance Correlation (IC). In the very first post of yours to this forum, you claim that the (+4, -9) card counting system for the {non-ten, ten} cards has an IC of 100% in Blackjack. I questioned this part. By analogy, we can create a balanced card counting system for Spanish 21, (+3, -9).  Do you think the new system of (+3, -9) has an IC of 100% in Spanish 21?

In the thread "Thorp Ten-Count vs. Foret Lanyang Ten-Count", I mentioned Ten-counts' 100% IC in blackjack on the basis of the information provided by Encyclopedia of Blackjack, but you disputed. Here you actually created a different counting system for Spanish 21 by analogy, how about giving out your own answer first? 

If you don't have an answer for your own Analogous-Thorp-Ten-Count-System, I would suggest: try Foret-Lanyang's X-Count instead, which is much, much simpler than Thorp Ten-Count.

Based on my math, neither (+4, -9) has a 100% IC in Blackjack, nor (+3, -9) in Spanish 21. This is details, but I’m looking for a buddy. You are a fun guy. 

Katarina's book contains a wealth of information, including why she chose Hi-Lo for her book. This is what she said: "I chose to use the Hi-Lo system because it is the most widely used counting system for Blackjack and I want to make it easy for Blackjack counters to make the easy transition to Spanish 21."   (See p. 61 of Katarina's book.)  

Well, well,  Katarina apparently was aware that Hi-Lo wasn't really suitable, if her audiences weren't already accustomed to Hi-Lo.  

Hi-Lo's shortcomings in Spanish 21 are many.  To Moraine, the most serious is Hi-Lo's treatment of the three middle cards 7, 8 and 9.  According to Katarina's own book, in H17 Spanish 21, the EORs of cards 7, 8, and 9 are +0.04, -0.21 and -0.17, respectively. (p.52) The cumulative EORs of the three middle cards amount to  -0.34, which is almost as big as 80% of the EOR of a 10-valued card.  But Hi-Lo ignores them all.

AceMT, on the other hand, does not have that kind of erroneous EOR problem, since AceMT takes every card's EOR into account.  If you compare the cumulative EORs of the four high cards with that of the non-high cards, you will find that, with AceMT, the unaccounted for EORs per suit amount to -0.09 only.   

AFAIK, the stand-17 rule is by far the most common rule for Spanish 21 in America, and it’s also the one I’m interested. The hit-17 rule should be more prevailing in Australia. I guess Walker played mainly in Australia.

Also, I've heard that insurance pays 5:2 in Australia, not 2:1. Is this true? 

Katarina also said in her book: "Of course, I could have used a counting system customized for Spanish 21 that is balanced, meaning that the net running count per deck zero."  Without a doubt, an "unbalanced" system is more difficult than a "balanced" system in execution.  It is especially so when it comes to shoe games.  Since Spanish 21 is mostly a six or eight-deck shoe game in the North America, using Hi-Lo is cumbersome to say the least -- in addition to being inaccurate as shown in the earlier post.

When Moraine was reading Katarina's book,  Moraine often wondered and tempted to ask: 

(1) What was the "counting system customized for Spanish 21" that Katarina had in mind?

(2) Did Katarina use Hi-Lo herself when playing Spanish 21 in casinos?

Too bad for Moraine and for all those who love to card-count Spanish 21, Katarina had passed away, and no one could possibly answer the questions with certainty.

Not to speculate or to speak for Katarina on what "balanced" system "customized for Spanish 21" that Katarina might have meant, Moraine would suggest to anyone who is interested in going further along that line a Level 2 system that may be appropriately called "Hi-Lo Plus Halves" system (by adding cards 8 and 9 to the running count with a -0.5-point-value tagged on to each card). 

If fact, Moraine at one time had toyed with a system called "AceMT plus Halves" (AceMT p. 105), but thought it was unnecessary because AceMT does not have an erroneous EOR problem like Hi-Lo has in Spanish 21 and because AceMT has no such "balanced" or "unbalanced" issue to deal with at all -- neither in blackjack nor in Spanish 21.