Is 6D S17DAS, 4/6 penetration game not playeable?

I normally only play best game of 2D in LV, but a friend asked us to join them at a local casino that only offer 6D so I thought I would to play some wonging just for fun. I read that 4/6 pen is not playable but I figured Wonging with a spread of 20 would over come the disadvatange game, am I wrong?
Right after I got to the casino, the UBZ rc for the first shoe that I encountered went to +6 after one round so I entered the shoe playing two hand of max bet. The count stayed over +6 the entire shoe to justified 2 hands of $50 and I lost practically every round. According to BJRM, Wonging with 2 hands spread of 10, SD/100 should be $431 but after 1 shoe with less than 18 hands, I was down by $450. Had the dealer got BJ with his Ace at RC of 10 I would be down by $650. I did not expected to get wipe out this fast and only bring 120 units to play. Is this what we would call 2SD or 3SD?

This is common in shoes, the count goes high early, you max out for the rest of the shoe, and hold on to your seat. It is just the moment you've been waiting for. Of course, anything can happen, and you need a few hundred of these "max" shoes before the SD settles down compared to the EV.

As to 4|6, no it is not playable. Not in the long run. Even 4.5 is marginal.

If you are wonging, spread is not that important, what is important is getting your max out there. If you enter a shoe at +2 TC, then a 4-1 spread is just about as good as a 12-1, or a 20-1. Really, it is not much different (thanks to Don Schlesinger for this discovery).

--Mayor

because as counters we make most of our money when two things occur;
1. We have our max bet out and
2. There is an astronomically high true count (above +8 high low)

In many shallow pen shoes we will still get the chance to throw out a max bet (most place it at +4 hilo) but the count seldom gets much higher. As a result we get very wild swings and very high variance because we have our max bet out with only a mild advantage. Worse yet, standard optimal bet ramps are accelerated even further in shallow pen to get more money on the table which makes variance even worse.

With deep pen we get not only more big bet opportunities (obviously) but those chances include many many more monster true counts in which our edge is very large and variance (as a percentage of ev) is much less. That is why that extra 1/2 deck of pen can make such a gigantic difference...(and why good pen outweighs most other factors).

i heartily agree with the sentiment, but not the specifics

> because as counters we make most of our money when two things occur;
> 1. We have our max bet out and
> 2. There is an astronomically high true count (above +8 high low)

point 2 looks like an overstatement. for example, in a 6D S17 DAS game w/ 1.0 cut off and a 1-10 spread, i'll make about 2.73 units per 100 hands. but if i throw away all counts over +7 (hi-lo TC), i'll still make 2.02 units. even with this excellent penetration, only about 1.25% of all hands and 5.5% of all wagers happen above +7 true

wilfo

35% of your money on 1.25% of hands or 5.5% of your wagers...doesn't sound like an overstatement to me!