How long to think about basic strategy decision

Hi,

I'm a newbie and not the fastest player yet.  How much time can I take to make a basic strategy decision before other players start to get annoyed at me?

Thanks all, and stay healthy!

-Wolf

First of all, you should not play for real in a casino unless your basic strategy decisions are instant and 100% correct. If you have to think about it, you will make some mistakes.

Having said that, there are sometimes good reasons to play slowly and you can "think" for a few seconds without too much blow back. More than 10 or 15 seconds and people will get annoyed or even worse, try to help you.

I slightly disagree with Gronbog.  I had a lot of fun playing blackjack before I knew the existence of basic strategy.  It’s a gambling in the first place and players should not worry about their strategy mistakes.  Most decisions are pretty obvious, and only a tiny portion of these decisions are hard, but they contribute to a tiny tiny portion of your gambling outcome. 
 

For example, the hand player 16vs10 is hard, but that contributes nothing compared to their win or loss.

Now that you've been banned from Norm's forum for three months, are you going to plague us here, too? For your first contribution, you decide to tell someone that it's fine to make BS mistakes and he should just throw away his money and enjoy himself? What's wrong with you?

Do you EVER think before you post?

Aside to Wolf Lupo: Don't listen to anything that aceside posts.

Don

I post for fun. For some reason, I feel you are in charge of both forum sites.  I will keep a low key to post here.

Let's put it this way: It's possible to be banned from this site, also, and I would have a lot of influence in making that happen. So, please don't disseminate false or misleading information "for fun."

Don

If most decisions are pretty obvious, why do you see so many players make simple mistakes?

Don't engage him. The conversations go nowhere.

Don

Well. Let me put it this way. Basic strategy only gives you a sense of intelligence, but in no way a better gambler. You were often annoyed by that stupid guy next to you who made countless strategy mistakes but still left the table as a real winner. Let me show you why with the math below:

If a stupid player stands on all hard 13, 14, 15, and 16 in his hand, these mistakes cost him only 0.8% disadvantage.

If another stupid player hits on all hard 13, 14, 15, and 16 in his hand, these mistakes cost him only 0.3% disadvantage.

These amounts are tiny, so it’s still a gambling.  Why not have some fun first?

If those numbers were correct, which they aren't  because you made fhem up out of thin air, those amounts (0.3% and 0.8%) are actually huge compared to the house advantage of a typical shoe game (in the range of 0.4% to 0.5%).

So not only did you invent the numbers, you reached the wrong conclusion.

Folks, aceside has been doing this for a while on another forum and finally got banned for it. Don't fall for it.

Let me revise. My numbers were calculated based on 2-card hard hands only, excluding any 7-7 and 8-8 pair hands.  Let me calculate these two numbers more accurately by including any-number-card hard teens.  

If a stupid player stands on all hard hands, 13, 14, 15, and 16, these mistakes cost him only 1% disadvantage.

If another stupid player hits on all hard hands, 13, 14, 15, and 16, these mistakes cost him only 0.4% disadvantage.

Therefore, a stupid player plays the game at a house edge of 1.4% at most.  Still, not very bad at this gambling.  

Those who know you also know that you didn't calculate anything. There is no reason why you would have specifically excluded 7-7 and 8-8. You make up numbers using language which suggests that you know what you are talking about, but you don't. The only reason I continue to engage you here is that others can still learn something from calling you out on your nonsense.

Once again, even if your numbers were correct, your player would lose at a rate of 1.4% with is about 3 times faster than the typical rate of 0.4% to 0.5% for a typical shoe game. This hardly qualifies as "not very bad".

I don’t have the appropriate softwares to calculate these exact values, but the discussion needs to go on, and this is why I asked you for confirmation.  Norm didn't like those discussions because he probably wanted to make his forum into a service site for his CV products. 
 

Let me explain a little more. In blackjack, pair hands and soft hands are so rare and precious that they deserve special treatments. However, the strategy skills for handling them are easily grasped by a novice player with instinct. Basically I am saying, even if you haven’t heard of basic strategy, you still should be able to win at blackjack. 

If we're going to give advice to lose/spend money.

Then my take would be that new players that have aspirations on counting or any other serious advantage gambling should actually play in a casino pretty early on to get acclimated to the casino environment.

Maybe you find out it isn't for you, maybe you thought practicing in a zero stress environment would prepare you but you just can't handle the stress with the distractions and when it's real money on the table.  It's way better to find that out early, or to find out it's going to be a struggle for you early than later on.

Bring a basic strategy card.  Play the nearest $10 real blackjack tables you can.  Learn the first few deviations and wong out of negative counts and you're barely spending money.

--

Otherwise, unless you're comfortable spending money on that, then you want to be perfect before you walk in the door.

I totally agree with you.  It took me a year to learn basic strategy and another year to understand it. Even though I am skilled, I still make a lot of strategy mistakes almost every session. 

"It took me a year to learn basic strategy."

That explains an awful lot!

Don

That explains nothing.  You are a well-known researcher and you know this part. Basic strategy is made for Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSM), in my opinion. Advanced strategies for shoe games are scarce, but controversial too. I was winning in blackjack before learning basic strategy but lost money after using it.

BS is NOT made for CSMs. And, your opinion doesn't matter. If you're not counting, then BS doesn't change as you deal down into a deck or shoe. That's not an opinion; it's a fact!

Advanced strategies are controversial, too? What does that even mean? First of all, BS ISN'T controversial (only in your mind). Second, what else is controversial? Or, do you just like to hear yourself talk (of course, the answer to that is yes).

Your last statement implies that you believe that, playing stupidly, you did better than playing intelligently. I'd say standard deviation had to do with that, not proper application of BS.

Don

I would think you should go back to whatever was winning for you. I'm not being sarcastic, I see people do some different things or not do basic strategy and come out ok, for that time anyway. They just have to know when to leave. When toward the end of the shoe if we knew what was left in the shoe in what order then some other decisions than basic strategy may work better. Problem is we have no idea what is exactly left in a shoe or in what order so basic strategy is the best overall in the long run. But counting strategy indices are a departure from basic strategy.

Which non-counting advanced strategies for shoe games do you imagine to be effective?

There are some composition decisions you can make in sd/dd.

But I'd love to hear your advanced shoe strategies that aren't just card counting lol