Other old-timers may be familiar with the original, black, pleather-bound edition of Professional Blackjack. The index numbers in this version differ from those in the newer, green edition. Specifically, all negative numbers were increased by 1 in the new version. Stanford states that this was done because of different assumptions in how players round the true count.
My question is this: what IS this different assumption? In other words, how does each edition assume players are rounding numbers?
I realize that win rates would not be affected appreciably, regardless of which indices are used, so my question is more from curiosity than practicality. However, my thought is that adding 1 to all negative numbers results in a slight loss of information, because now there are two ways to have an index of 0:
1) it was 0 in the original edition.
2) it was -1 in the original edition, then became 0 in the new edition as a result of adding 1.
In the likely event that Stanford has better things to do than answer my piddling questions, informed answers from others with both books would be appreciated.
By the way, on the off chance that Stanford is reading this, my question may sound familiar. I wrote a letter (under a different alias) over a decade ago with this and other questions, all of which were answered promptly and accurately. Unfortunately, in response to your generous, thoughtful sharing of knowledge, I proceeded to lose your letter with a week or two of receiving it.
