In John May's book Get The Edge At Blackjack, I came across the following passage:
With a 100 per cent front loader, i.e., a dealer who exposes the value of every card , the maximum possible edge is the 10 percent obtainable from hole card play.
I was always under the impression the maximum edge was higher, around 13%. John, where did you get that number from?
See Beat the Dealer, page 88. This was the standard perceived advantage for hole card knowledge for quite some time. J Morgan, Cacarulo, and Don Schlesinger recently had an in-depth discussion on Don's Domain which provided extensive proofs that the advantage is very slightly over 13%.
he got it from where most of the information in GTEABJ came from --
He stole it.
Steal from one is plagerism. Steal from many is research!
In John May's defense, in real world hole card play, there are some plays that you simply wouldn't make, because they would be too obvious. Hitting anything over 17 is probably a bad idea. You get a lot of +EV from splitting 10's against dealer stiffs, but this might be risky too. I don't know whether this would reduce 13% to 10%, but it doesn't seem too far out of line.
Why not 9% -- you probably make a mistake every now and then.
How about 8% -- got to throw in a cover play, you know.
How about 7% -- need to sit out a hand or two while you cash in chips.
Sure it's not 6%? -- might have took the wife along and have to feed her slot machine habit.
I wasn't attacking. I was just saying that the 9.9% or so has been sort of an industry term, and is now being found to be more like 13%.
I assumed Mr May calculated this number on his own. Isn't it common practice for authors to credit other authors when they use their findings? Wouldn't it be called plagerism if they don't? Why won't Mr May discuss this? Titaniumman, you seem to be a respected poster around here, what gives? Thanks.
from J Morgan. I hope he does not mind. This is the first and last parts of an opening paragraph of a post of his on Don's Domain:
For forty years, authors have used the figure 9.9% as the edge with optimal hole-card play in a single-deck Strip game...
...Ken Uston cited the number and strategies in Million Dollar Blackjack. Numerous other authors, including Arnold Snyder (Blackbelt in Blackjack) and Bryce Carlson (Blackjack for Blood), have cited the 9.9% number, and it gets tossed around the Internet on a monthly basis.
As I said, it appears to have been an industry standard value, which is now under re-consideration. My personal opinion, would be not to make a big deal of the origin, but to concentrate on what is now considered to be correct and why.
...this because I will just get a load of abuse from LVCHM (and his various aliases) and SOTSOG who both bear personal grudges and have little interest in discussing the actual issue. If you want a response you can mail me at the above address.
If you read Uston's Million Dollars BJ, he quoted the theoritical limit to be 9.9% (From Griifin?) and his team's practical limit is something like 5% (due to the obvious not hitting 17 vs 10, etc ...)
Even that I still think the practical limit to be a bet lower due to the fact that the public is nowadays playing closer to basic strategy, so if you stand 12 against 10 and you are sitting on the 3rd base, the ploppies will kill you.
...to be a very straight forward question about a hard number you present as fact. Why would you not be willing to provide the calculations or proof of your number, or point out the error in other's calculations of their 13% number in contrast to your number?
You argument of fearing flames would be valid if the poster was requesting only your opinion on a matter, but it is not valid for a request of hard, black & white numbers as in this case. Either you can prove your number or you can't, and there is no need to hide the calculations. Doing so only inhibits the advancement of the game for all. More is to be learned by comparing notes, so to speak.
Barring you presenting proof of your number, I believe it would be a very hard sell to most here that your number is correct and the 13% number agreed to by well known BJ mathematicians like Don & Cacarulo is incorrect.
Barring you presenting proof of your number, I believe it would be a very hard sell to most here that your number is correct and the 13% number agreed to by well known BJ mathematicians like Don & Cacarulo is incorrect.
Don had nothing to do with it and is hardly a "well known mathematician". In fact, please point me in the direction of a 300+ page book of "playing the pros way", where Don even mentions holecard play.
stalker
...to be a very straight forward question about a hard number you present as fact. Why would you not be willing to provide the calculations or proof of your number, or point out the error in other's calculations of their 13% number in contrast to your number?
I can't point out any errors in the calculations of others, should they in fact exist, till the work is released into the public domain. I am not a member of Don's Domain, nor am I likely to apply, nor indeed would any such application be accepted.
The only published text quoting the 13% figure. Grosjean himself is extremely tenative about the figure, since it contradicts Thorp and Braun (read it). If the source is unsure of his figure I am obviously not going to use it.
Note: I am not under any obligations to recalculate every figure in blackjack literature. How many theorists do you think recalculate ordinary basic strategy, or test the effectiveness of the hi-lo system? Numerous studies already exist confirming these strategies effectiveness. Reinventing the wheel is not on my agenda. Plenty of original research exists in my books if that is what you are after.
Either you can prove your number or you can't, and there is no need to hide the calculations.
Do you know how difficult it is to "explain" how to calculate basic strategy? It is a chicken and the egg process whereby you calculate the frequencies of initial hands based on an optimal strategy whose creation depends on those frequencies. This ignores legitimate questions such as the cc effect, rule changes and different procedures, none of which are standardized (though studies by others may use a specific model). It is not even easy to define what basic hole-card strategy is (try it). Schlesinger, Jacobs and myself had a major disagreement on this topic only a few months back.
For the record, I did some preliminary research on basic strategy calculation and decided that, because I disagreed with some of the underlying principles used in its calculation, that this was not a profitable avenue of research. Even though when replicating Thorp and Braun's methodology I didn't get the same results (not the same as Grosjean's incidentally) I just wasn't interested in presenting an alternative figure because that muck up the accepted heuristic on which the rest of blackjack strategy is based.
Barring you presenting proof of your number, I believe it would be a very hard sell to most here that your number is correct and the 13% number agreed to by well known BJ mathematicians like Don & Cacarulo is incorrect.
Well known as those mathematicians may be, they are not as well known as Thorp and Braun. In addition, as skilled mathematically as Don may be, he cannot program a computer, as he has admitted on a number of occassions, and this requires a computer, unless Don has spent ten man years on the subject with a calculator. That leaves Cacarulo, who is very intelligent, but I can't accept that he has "proved" the 13% figure without some idea of the underlying assumptions, in the absence of any actual data. You don't expect me to change my opinion on this matter in the absence of the actual source material do you, surely? That would just be going on blind faith.
Anyway, with absolute certainty this thread will end up with a bunch of cheap jibes from SOTSOG & LVCHM and his various schizoprenic personality offshoots, with no productive content whatsoever.
The only published text quoting the 13% figure is Beyond Counting.
"Please point me in the direction of a 300+ page book of "playing the pros way", where Don even mentions holecard play."
The Gentleman from The South can only be referring to a recent thread in Don's Domain, whereby J Morgan asked for confirmation of the 13.06% figure he has as the edge for single-deck HC play.
Specific rules were used as a bench mark.
Let me point you in the right direction. (Don't forget your password.)
oh, now i get it, because don is the host of a site that a message is posted on, he obviously desreves credit for the finding. you guys are a laugh riot.
"Don is the host of a site that a message is posted on, he obviously deserves credit for the finding. You guys are a laugh riot. "
The Gentleman from The South posted words that indeed can be misconstrued by the ill tempered reader, but I'm sure no "credit for finding" was intended. Cacarulo run a sim that essentially verified J Morgan's number. The finding was not disputed by the website's Blackjack theoreticians, including Don Schlesinger.
Here's what Suth'n Gent wrote : " [The] 13% number [has been] agreed to by well known BJ mathematicians like Don & Cacarulo." -- "Agreed to", see? Not "found".
Nonetheless, such inexactitude is a capital sin in academia. But. Do find it in your heart to forgive him, Stalker! After all. He has your child. (Exit, stage left.)
