Insurance side bet mind boggler

It's something maybe you can try once or twice in a casino that you probably won't go back to for a while or something. As for the player, try to draw his attention away from what is hand value is (since it doesn't matter), act like you're just there to have fun and you want to do something crazy. You know, "against" the BS "rules".

you're not really insuring anything. It's a side bet,pure and simple,and has nothing to do with your hand.Having said that,it can be a good bet if you are counting.

jarrett40

When he said "you can not over-insure and profit by your loss" he is talking about "normal insurance". You can insure your home for a million dollars, but if it is a mobile home, they will pay to repair or replace it if it burns down, but you will _not_ get that one million.

Insurance is a good deal for counters. TC reaches +5 and insurance is "break even" if I recall correctly. Above +5 it is actually another advantage for the "advantage player" to take advantage of (three advantages in one sentence...) (make that four). :)

8% is not the number I have heard. 2-2.5% has been mentioned several times. a TC of +5 overcomes that edge and anything over +5 makes insurance an advantage play.

Yep. My error. Ever try to tell someone where to find a letter on the keyboard, but even though you can type at 100+ wpm, you find it hard to tell 'im where that "c" is???

I'm so used to the "insurance" decision that I really don't think about it. Obviously I should think about it a bit before telling someone what to do about it. :)

So, in my humble opinion it's the logistical side. Dealers seem to have a hard enough time with insurance because they don't see it in action a lot. If you can insure for more, how do you figure the max? Every bet has a max, and with people wagering differently,  that max would likely vary. It just seems like more trouble than it's worth. They make enough money with insurance as it is.

Why do you bump up this 20 year old post?

Let me still say something about this. The Insurance side bet probably was introduced for the purpose of being used in single deck Blackjack games, in which Insurance was a good bet for skilled players occasionally. 

However, these single deck games have disappeared over these many years, so Insurance has become a sucker bet mostly. Time changes, so do blackjack games. Insurance  bet is obsolete now. The good thing is, a lot of new side bets have been introduced into Blackjack nowadays. 

Insurance is either the first or second most valuable index play for a card counter, depending on the rules and your bet spread, regardless of the number of decks with the other being 16 vs T. To say it is obsolete is ridiculous.

Let the numbers speak for themselves. We consider this situation of two players playing against the same dealer. Each player is dealt two cards face up and the dealer is showing an Ace upcard.  There are no ten-valued cards among these five cards.

For a single-deck game, the house edge of insurance is

-(16x2 - 31) / 47 = -2.13%. 
 

For an 8-deck game, the house edge of insurance is

-(16x8x2 - 283) / 411 = 6.57%. 
 

This calculation shows that players could easily beat the insurance bet without any card counting for single deck games, but this is going to be extremely hard for multiple deck games, even for advantage players.  The starting house edge is just too large to overcome. 

Yes, let the numbers speak for themselves.

Using Hi-Lo with 2, 6 or 8 decks, Insurance has positive expectation at TC >= +3. For single decks the index is +2. The improvement in EV is so rapid that, as I said, Insurance is either the first or second most valuable index, depending on the rules, conditions and bet spread.

https://www.amazon.ca/Hi-Lo-Card-Counting-System-Complete/dp/1944877622

https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/shop/products/the-hi-lo-card-counting-system-a-visual-guide-to-index-play-set-of-9/

We discussed this in another thread earlier right here. The insurance index increases with the dealing depth in a shoe.

For a double deck game, the Hi-Lo indices are +2, 2.4, +4, and 5.33 when the dealing deck depths are 0.5, 0.75, 1, and 1.25, respectively. 
 

For an eight deck game, what are these indices when the dealing deck depths are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively? 

For a double deck game, the Hi-Lo indices are +2, 2.4, +4, and 5.33 when the dealing deck depths are 0.5, 0.75, 1, and 1.25, respectively. 

I can't begin to imagine where you would get such an idea. It's obviously not remotely true.

Don

I feel that the range of variation probably is too large for the above Hi-Lo insurance index numbers. This is why I brought up this again. It was discussed in this thread “DEPTH BASED KO INSURANCE INDICES FOR DOUBLE DECK?” I derived out these numbers from Cacarulo’s running count numbers, but feel that more accuracy of his numbers is probably needed. 

You mentioned K-O numbers, which are RC values. Hi-Lo exhibits no such variation whatsoever. Don't mix apples and oranges. One concept has nothing to do with the other.

Don

Here is an example from my Visual Guide to Index Play which shows just how quickly the EV of insurance increases with the Hi-Lo true count. This is for 6 decks and was generated with penetration of 4.5/6. So Aceside is completely wrong when he speculates that the Hi-Lo Insurance index increases with penetration and that Insurance is unbeatable in shoe games.

At the strike point of +3 you have a reasonable advantage of 0.57%. But look what happens. At +4 and +5 your advantage surges to 2.73% and 5.06% respectively. As you can see, the increase is linear, so for every increase in true count you gain more than 2% in EV. This is why Insurance is one of the top two most valuable index plays.

On the flip side, look at the damage you're doing if you take insurance below the index. At +2 you're losing almost 2% and at 0 it's -6.22%! Anyone considering insuring "good" hands near but below the index as a cover play should think twice!

The complete set of graphs for every play and for a wide variety of games can be purchased for download individually or in bundles at

https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/shop/products/the-hi-lo-card-counting-system-a-visual-guide-to-index-play-set-of-9/

I will study this part soon, but I speculate that if you do the same research on a 5.5/6 penetration game, your results will be different. Of course, your insurance index will be different too. Just do not fix on this one game of 4.5/6 penetration. 

No, to your first premise, and no to your second, as well. But, yes, it is true that Gronbog's chart does not directly address your concerns.

We're talking at cross-purposes here, and you're even changing your own hypothesis from your previous one. Let me explain:

1. You originally speculated that, for Hi-Lo, a true-counted system, at different levels of penetration, we ought to be using different indices for the insurance decision, as if there were a sort of "floating" insurance index, which changes as penetration changes. That is simply not true.

2. Above, you submit a different hypothesis, namely, if a 5.5/6 game is played, instead of a 4.5/6 one, the single value for taking insurance will be different from the single value of a 4.5/6 game. That also is not true, but try to understand that it is a different assumption. When you devise an index for a game with x penetration, that is the single value that maximizes EV for the play across the entire spectrum of all penetrations. We do NOT devise "floating indices" for all different penetrations of the same game! Imagine playing a 6/8 game for which you know 100 indices. You would propose learning 1,300 indices, corresponding to the 13 penetration levels??? Fortunately, it doesn't matter what you propose, because they don't change, in any event.

3. Finally, I already explained to you that the principle you're espousing DOES exist for K-O, a RC system, and is one of the reasons I don't much care for unbalanced counts. There, since the RC increases by 4 per deck, for the imbalance, it stands to reason that indices must change as penetration progresses. That we nonetheless often just propose a single index number for each play, regardless of pen, attests to the inaccuracy of using K-O indices in such a fashion.

Clear?

Don

Thank you so much for explaining this to me. Mostly, I agree with you. However, regarding the concept of a “floating” Hi-Lo index for insurance, I would like to derive it out at another time. I will use a different counting system (non-tens as a tag +4 and tens as a tag -9) to show how much the index changes with penetration. 

Knock yourself out!

Don