Comments On "Gregorian Strategy?"

I just read a book called "Gregorian Strategy for Multiple Deck Blackjack." The book provides a revised basic strategy for play against multiple deck BJ. The author claims it provides a 1% advantage to the player. He makes a couple of undocumented claims:

1. The traditional basic strategy was designed for a one-deck game; and it is not accurate for a multiple-deck game.

2. In a multiple-deck game, although the ratio of cards stays the same, your chances of pulling a particular card are reduced, and your changes of pulling a small card are greatly increased. And, as a result, you will be dealt a greater percentage of poor starting totals.

He goes on to suggest a modified basic strategy that has some very interesting changes. And, although he has no statistics to back it up, he claims that his system beats even counters over the course of a 100,000-hand test.

Have any of you heard of the "Gregorian Strategy?" And if so, any comments?

I did a little "googling" of this on the Internet. Everything I could find says that the theory is nonsense, as my instincts tell me. The author simply disregards all of the results of other studies.

Have any computer simulations of this theory been done to test it?

I don't have the link, but there was a sim run by Fred Renzy which proved his strategy to be a big time loser. This guys a joke. Learn to count cards, or you'll lose money.

MC

Actually, the author strongly asserts that all computer simulations are invalid since blackjack is played with real live cards in a brick and mortar casino; and that with real live cards, his strategy will do what he says.

So what I did was shuffle six real live decks together and pick out one of his more troubling Gregorian strategy plays, which is to hit 13 against a 5. I hit it 1000 times, then stood with it 1000 times. Hitting went 350-598-52. Standing went 409-591. Now the standard error for a sample of this size is 15 wins, so it's highly unlikely that hitting is better than standing, even with real live cards.