Kind of amusing Wonging Story

Count was kind of poor at a 6d shoe but I had just made my restroom run so I stuck around. Wasn't ready to call it a night and I was way up.
Spotted a guy back-counting the past couple of hands and he just had to jump in right then and there. From the guy's perspective, the running count on the two hands would have been around +6 or so plus no aces had come out in all those little cards.
What he didn't know was that the running count for the whole shoe was around -10 and that virtually all the aces had come out already.
I looked across the table at him and was tempted to say,"Hey Wonger. right now really isn't such a great time to jump in if you catch my drift." But alas, I let him play.
And right on cue, here come the small cards. He doubles his 6-5 against dealers 5...He draws an 8 for total of 19....dealer has 6 in the hole and draws 7 for 18. So the guy lets it all ride. He thinks the running count is even better...but actually it is still negative. The guy gets a pair of 2's against dealer's 5. Digs into his pocket for more chips for the split. Gets a bunch of cards on each 2 (2, 3, 2, 8, something like that) and finishes around 18 on each. Dealer busts and that's the end of the shoe so he leaves. He walks away happily $400 or so richer, patting himself on the back praising the virtues of "short-wonging". He didn't see a single 10 or A in what he thought was an okay positive count and was actually overbetting a pretty negative shoe but sometimes you get lucky.

if he was "patting himself on the back praising the virtues of 'short-wonging'" because he won $400 or so in two hands, he's got problems.

This kind of short-term thinking is most certainly a folly.

AWS

... that the counter, even though wrong in his count, may still conclude that thanks to his abilities to jump in (because of CC) at the right time that made the $400! Probably, he won't even think that chance had anything to do with it. Different strokes...

This is one area that I find quite interesting. Different players, different levels of "knowledge" and "experience", but all feel "confident" that they won BECAUSE of what they KNEW and DID! However, it ain't necessarily so. How could one happening be explained is so many different ways by so many players?

I've been playing hi-lo for a couple of years, making a little bit of money at it (reds 1-4 on sd), but I ran into a fellow counter on my last trip to LV who suggested I moved to ubcII. I'm curious to know what others think.

I play Hi-Lo factoring several other parameters. My preference goes to simpler systems (I follow the KISS principle).

However, if you're comfortable with what your experienced results- then it could be suitable for you. That is until you find out otherwise.

I consider too much sophistication not warranted in bj as no matter how sophisticated one may be, it still is a game of chance. My play is based on strategies for short-term profits- kinda hit and run. To me playing bj is more of an art than science. Others may disagree and that's ok with me as long as the bottom line results are the basis of comparison. I play bj for entertainment + profits (so far) and my goal is to win every session of play or lose little and move. A 50% profit (on BR) is an important dividing line and above that line, I let MM take care of my exit- sort of an open ended forward but exit on first fall back. But, that line is a shifting line forward with successive % of profits. I won't play long hours unless the results impose it on me- and they will. Good luck to you.

Amusing analogies and observations.
I don't know if he was a good counter or not because he was only there for two hands. And he was such a quick hit and run wonger which I thought was kind of obvious but the pit didn't seem to notice a thing. Get in and get out to avoid detection I suppose.
Of course, if they had they probably would have been happy to let him short-wong in situation like that where he sees a positive count whereas the cards seen since the beginning of the shoe dictate a negative count.
If it wouldn't have blown my cover I really was tempted to warn him that the cards weren't really as good as he thought they were. But it worked out well for him.
He stood back there and saw all the low cards + no aces over 2 hands. I'm sure he's wonged right into a blackjack in several similar situations as that.
Lets say you see 30-40 cards come out of 6d shoe with no aces. The odds of getting a blackjack have to go from 1 in 21 to around 1 in 17 or 18 or so. I can quickly do the math at 32 cards and figure that the odds of your first card being an ace have gone from 1 in 13 to 1 in 11.67. (24/312=1/13 comapred with 24/280=6/70= 1 in 11 2/3)

Not that I'm in your class... but your post reflects my (limited) knowledge on Blackjack.

"I don't think this incident makes the wonger look foolish any more than, say, a counter who estimates a 0.8% edge for two separate rounds when s/he really has a 10% edge on one round and a -10% disadvantage on the other. Such "errors" occur because the counter is relying on limited information - eg, that the TC is +2 and his/her SBA sims have shown that 0.8% is the average edge for TCs of +2! In the long run, the TC will reveal enough information for the player to win."

VERY strong argument!

"We are all using information that is limited. The best we can do is to maximise our expectation based on the information we have."

And if that information shows a true count of + 10, doesn't that mean that is "possible" for the "rest of the shoe" (That will be seen) to be ALL small cards? Is it simply a probabilities thing?

Without quoting the rest of this excellent post, you have at least go me thinkin'.

And if that information shows a true count of + 10, doesn't that mean that is "possible" for the "rest of the shoe" (That will be seen) to be ALL small cards? Is it simply a probabilities thing?

Yes, as long as there is a small card in the shoe there is always a chance it will be dealt next. It is just a probability thing. The guy who left the table simply had extra information because he had seen more cards. It doesn't matter that the cards came from the front of the shoe and were now in the discard tray. If you looked at the cards behind the cut card and counted the same number of high ones the count would be effectively negative. There is no way to be certain of the composition of the cards that will be dealt on the next round unless you have seen all the rest of the cards in the shoe (or tracked the shuffle very well). We just make the best assessment we can with the information we have.

I am a serious player, but certainly no expert.

Don't believe him.

Everyone knows that penetration is the most important aspect of card counting...At a certain point, if you do not see enough cards from a shoe, ones card counting skills are unable to eliminate the house andvantage and give us any profit.

With these thoughts in mind, I have always suspected the value of back counting...If it is a 6 deck shoe game and 1 deck is cut out of play and you start back counting after 2 decks have already been played, in effect, you are playing in a game where you will only see 3 decks out of 6...Nobody would tell you to play such a game.

The first submission in this thread from "sidecount" is correct...The back counting Wonger won because of luck, not skill...With the passage of time, he will Wong in correctly and incorrectly and achieve the same results as the person who sits down at a 6 deck game with 3 decks cut out of play.

HE WILL LOSE.

"HE WILL LOSE."

This is false. A wonger who only places bets when he has the advantage "WILL WIN" regardless of 3 deck pen.

Wonging is still be better than play-all because you will benefit by raising minimum bets while lowering ROR.

If you're wonging, you can still play with an advantage, no matter how poor the penetration is. The only thing that poor penetration will hurt is the frequency with which advantageous situations appear. But regardless of how infrequently you find an advantage, you will not lose in the long run if you bet zero the rest of the time.

There have been some great posts on this issue.
To add my 2cents worth with a hypothetical case;

If Joe backcounts after the shuffle for 1 round, enters the game at +1 true, plays 5 hands whilst the true count dives to -5 true, and then leaves the game, he would've played at an advantage wouldn't he?(...or she, to be politically but not practically correct). This would be the same situation no matter where in the shoe Joe enters the game, because the rest of the cards are all unseen.
The amount of cards in play have to be assumed to be of even distribution for the count (for normal counting that is). But it is only when the high cards actually come out that a counter has an advantage. If you have only played for a few hands and lots of high cards have come out, then I would think that you have played at an advantage, regardless of whether you won or lost.

The irony is that the player himself may THINK and BELIEVE that IT WAS his skill in CC and timing that made him win the $400. And, actually, that is BECAUSE of the outcome of his action!

It is common in life that we people live our lives based on perceptions and it's also expexcted the same in playing bj. But, things are not always as they appear to us in our journey of learning in life. And conditions and circumstances are not exactly the same especially in this kind of endeavor.

It is easier to live one's life based on perceptions than test one's perception in order to find out if they really are based on facts and and then draw a more enlightened conclusion. This may naturally occur in the future if one has an open and analytical mind and is dedicated to pursue one's perceptions to find the reality of the situation. It requires a reflective temperament and an effort to find out the reality behind one's perception.

However, an easy explanation based on mere perception may lead one into "bull traps"- using a term from stock market investment lexicon.

From Aldough:

If Joe backcounts after the shuffle for 1 round, enters the game at +1 true, plays 5 hands whilst the true count dives to -5 true, and then leaves the game, he would've played at an advantage wouldn't he?(

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Myself:

If you mean that "Joe" started his count with the first card that was dealt, then your information is correct...The way I understand backcounting, it means starting to count after a number of hands have already been played...The information that you derive from this procedure is not accurate.

While normal counting says that in a plus situation there will be excess high cards in the undealt portion of the deck, backcounting can not make the same statement...As in the original submission in this thread, an excess of high cards may have been played before you started to back count and the high number of small cards that brought the backcounter into the game, doesn't say that high cards are due, but rather that the small cards that he saw, were due to come out.

These same uncertainties apply to the full deck count system also...The potential for the high cards to come into play is a function of the number of cards on the wrong side of the cut card...In back counting, the cards that have been played and unseen plus the cards on the wrong side of the cut card reduce substantially, or eliminate completely, the potential for advantage play---as I see it.

Otherwise I liked your post a lot.
Take care,
@^)
Cyclops