Long run for playing strategy ?

I have been running sims for some time and something has been bothering me:

Playing strategy variations (such as hitting 16 against 10 or not) seems to have very little effect on the return in the first 100 million hands compared to the standard deviation of returns.

In other words, you could play everyday for 25 years, and you would not notice the difference between playing BS and playing with, say, Illustrious 18 (I am not talking about Insurance which has a significant effect).

You would need to play several centuries before playing strategy variations start to have a significant effect on your returns.

Anybody noticed this ? Am I wrong ?

you mention. The index number for 16v10 is 0 which means it almost doesn't make any difference eV wise whether you hit or stand. 12v4 is a similarly borderline play.

Try running your sim while always splitting 10's versus dealer 4,5, and 6 up and see the difference in eV emerge immediately.

the 16v10 play makes DS's I18 because the deviation is called for when we, on average, have greater than min bet out. The I-18 is weighted to account for the frequency the play happens and the amount of money wagered. In this case, 16v10 in positive counts happens often enough with a big enough average bet to make it a top 18 play.

I have found that not only do strategy variations have little affect
on my win percentage, but also changing my bet size doesn't seem to
help. Using a negative progression seems to be the only thing that I
can depend on. Incidently, there is the great casino in Oregon on the
Warm Springs Indian Reservation. I can't remember the name of the
Casino but I think the area is called Kahneetah. It is well worth the
trip if you like getting paid 2 to 1 on blackjacks five hour every
morning M-F. I won tooo much and got kicked out.

then you should always use Basic Strategy ? (unless you intend to play for several centuries).

Finally a reference made to negative progressions in blackjack. I use exactly that method in conjunction with card counting. The major difference is that I don't base my wagers or plays on the count per se; front counting being paramount. I just hate those book double downs and splits when I have big bets out only to watch the dealer draw out to a miraculous 5-card 21. They seem to come in bunches and when they do, all my hard earned profit that took me eons to accumulate vaporizes in a few quick strokes. That's probably the prime reason most blackjack pundits abandon the game in search of more rewarding pursuits. But I could be wrong, of course.
I don't mind admitting that this style of betting has saved me from iminent financial disaster more times than I can recall. And it's encouraging to know there are others out there who have discovered this tactical ploy and are using it to good effect.
As the responsible gambling authors exhort; "...it's not how much you can win that counts, it's how much you can lose."

Also, are you sure that it is M-F? Their web site is a bit confusing on when the casino is open.

16 vs 10 is virtually a toss up. That is why casinos use the play to spot counters (you stand on 16 in any plus count you hit in any negative count).

Consider 16 versus 7 instead where not hitting has a profound and immediate effect on your expected win. This effect shows up rather quickly. More importantly for basic strategy is the combined effect of all plays verus wild ass guessing or other systems. The power of basic strategy comes from using all of it. It is easy to challenge basic strategy's usefulness in the short term by looking at a few borderline plays.

I was asking about Playing Strategy variations and you keep referring to Basic Strategy plays. Maybe I should learn Plain English, I don't seem to be able to make myself understood (revereman's answer was also irrelevant, but to be fair it was funny). Never mind.

If you spread big then there will be almost no difference between always standing on 16v10 or using the proper index. If you spread big and always hit you would see a big difference vs always standing. Standing is counter basic strategy. Hitting is NEB basic.

Now remember when I say "big difference" that the total difference for all play variations is not what some people consider a big difference.

It is very easy to post sim results. Why don't you copy and paste the actual sim reports so that people can see the software you used and what the settings were?

I am not using a commercial software, I have made my own program (C/C++), and I am running millions of hands. The results are not easy to display.

What I noticed is that

(1) convergence is extremely slow. Running 10,000,000 hands is not enough to find the hourly return of strategy with less than 5% error.

(2) after 10,000,000 hands there is no significant difference between always standing on 16v10 or using the proper index (meaning that the difference being << 5% it is not noticeable).

So why would anyone use the proper index when it makes no perceivable differences in 100 years ?? Just use BS.

If one is to do one or the other. By setting the sim to always stand you are making the correct play on the big bets, which should be several times the size of the small bets. It is not surprising you see very little difference as you are generally making the correct play.

If your sim is not counting and is only flat betting then it should make little difference also.

Basic strategy for a non-counter is to hit. This is bad for counters in positive counts. We are using a spread and have much more money in action in positive counts. At shoe games the spread can be 1:16 or better. If we always hit, rather than always standing or using the proper index it would cost us a measurable amount of money when counting and employing a bet spread.

I suppose 16v10 was a bad example since BS is different from a correct counter strategy which would be Always Stand.

Anyway I wonder why supposedly simple methods like KO give index numbers for playing variations when it makes no difference in the end.

Insurance, 16v10, and 15v10. After that the value gained from strategy departures drops considerably. A good argument for risk averse strategy. Only use the variations that make a measurable difference in ev.

One thing is, however, that after you become experienced you will not be memorizing indeces. You will be so used to the numbers from the constant discussions of how to play every hand that you will know them pretty well. As long as you have the big 3 correct, you could change all the others randomly up or down one and you'd see almost no change. Exact numbers are very unimportant. But if you understand the play you will always be in the ball park.

When publishing they should give all the exact correct numbers. They should not make a judgement call for you as to what is important, what you should learn, and what you should not bother with. We can all look at the numbers and decide for ourselves whether we want to learn 20 numbers, 30, etc. I only use about 30 numbers.

Insurance
hard 12 v 2,3,4,5,6.
hard 13 v 2,3,4
hard 14 v 2,10
hard 15 v 10
hard 16 v 9,10
11 v 9,10,Ace
10 v 9, Ace
9 v 2,3,7
8 v 4,5,6
A2&A3 v 4
A7 v 2,Ace
A8 v 4,5,6
A9 v 4,5,6
TT v 4,5,6 (about 2 or 3 times per year)
99 v 7
44 v 4,5,6

Okay, I guess that's 42 numbers. But some of these are approximations and I didn't set out to have this many. Most expererienced players have many more than this, like doubling 8 v 3, or A5 v 2, splitting 33 v 8, etc, most of them worthless. But if you know them, especially the hit/stand on stiffs, you might as well use them. Why not? The rare worthless doubles and splits you can do without to decrease variance.