golden calculations?

Disregarding the complexity of the system, is there one which gives the highest EV to the player and if followed, will result in very confident winnings, however insane they may be? Systems that can only be accomplished by computer?

This is a common question asked by new players. Learning a super-duper count system won't guarantee you a profit or fantastic winnings. You won't even notice the difference between it and a simple count system such as high-low over any short period.

Counting every card rank separately with betting and playing according to the exact deck composition is clearly the dream system.

Francis Salmon

It would require a 10 dimensional array to hold the playing decisions. This "array" would contain

decisions = (4*C) * C ^ 9

C = number of cards of any single rank in the shoe. 4 for SD, 8 for DD, etc.

For SD, one would then need to remember 16 * 4 ^ 9 = 4,194,304 unique decisions. For a 6 deck shoe, this becomes 253,613,523,861,504 indices to remember. :)

I don't believe I could do that myself... :)

In your array you haven't even included the betting decisions but there is a far simpler way of doing it.
All you need to remember is the number of cards remaining for each rank. The rest is merely a matter of calculation.Before each round you calculate your advantage and if it's positive you bet Kelly, otherwise minimum. For each playing decision,you make a new calculation based on the running count of each rank.That's easy,at least for a computer!:-)

Francis Salmon

> Counting every card rank separately with betting and playing
> according to the exact deck composition is clearly the dream system.

That reminds be of Snyder's Folly (link below).

-Sonny-

10 ranks gives the numbers I gave. you have an array that looks like this:

decision[2s][3s][4s][5s][6s][7s][8s][9s][10s][As]

you could make each element of that array a 0 (bet min) or a 1 (bet max) to simplify, although for a computer I would actually compute the real advantage and use that rather than 0/1.

I'm not sure how I would calculate the advantage rather than storing the entire array as above, because something tells me the EoR for each card is not a linear value, but varies depending on the other cards already removed from all other ranks... Now whether that is significant or not, I don't know. I've run (and written) sim programs many times, but I have never tried to sim to compute the EoR as above since I would have no idea how to actually use that in a casino without my friendly laptop on the table beside me. :)

But even with that, Rain Man went a bit over the top, because he was apparently predicting what card would come next, which perfect EoR could not begin to do...

Actually there is such, more or less, an Ultimate Count can be found in the classic (and very inexpensive - almost nothing at all on half.com) "The Theory of Blackjack" by Petert A. Griffin page 46 of the 6th edition - with card values (tags) from +169 to - 180 ! The betting correlation is above .99 and the Playing efficiency is .703 Interesting, as I use Hi-Opt II with a p.e. of .671 Hi-Lo has a p.e. of .510

There is no excuse for not purchasing a used copy of "The Theory of Blackjack"

Go to half.com What are you waiting for?

On page #45 of T O B 6th ed. There are 2 counts with perfect 1.00 Betting Correlations.

I imagine that they are probably (actually) about .996 .

I find it hard to believe that the 180 count does not have a B.C. approaching 1.00 !

In any case, in my posting, I was noting the highest posssible Strategic Efficiency NOT Betting Correlation

With an appropriate CA-program,a computer who knows the remaining cards of each ranks can easily and quickly calculate the exact edge at any point in the shoe.The same method can be applied for determining the correct play in specific situations.
I think computers are much more efficient in calculating rather than storing and retrieving data.

Francis Salmon

There is a great wealth of various systems in that book as well as all the tools you need to create your own system.

There are two 180 level counts, one of them is ace neutral, and the other actually has a positive value for the ace. They were both designed to get the maximum possible PE without regards for anything else.

It is absolutely impossible to get a BC near 1.00 without counting the ace as a negative. But like you said, there are several counts in that book that have a BC near 1.00 and this book is an absolute must-have for anyone who wants to gain more than a superficial understanding of the game.

TAO