Thx, Bushido.
Very interesting. I made it thru almost the entire 29 pages. Needless to say, too much verbal jousting. Too much getting off point.
I'm all for thinking outside the box and improving play. I have several thoughts, but I'll list a few:
1) They keep discussing this 678 box. I can see where 12/13/14 are played better w/ this information. But I can't reasonably think this adjustment has a huge impact on bottom line. The adjustments normally come w/ a MIN base bet out. So, there's a Wtd Avg consideration. The gain can't be more than a small %, and the weight is = 1.0 units. The adjustment sounds great, but we know that for hands w/ MIN bets, the dealer bust % lowers as well.
2) Ignoring the 678 box for a second, I do think the most theoretically correct adjustment mentioned was the independent 10-count, w/ a tracking of # cards remaining. If you can do this accurately, this effectively becomes an Insurance count. The Ten/Total ratio starts at 4/13. When this gets to 1/3, you have a +EV insurance bet.
Most counts will use a proxy Insurance bet. Most are not tracking specifically the Ten/Total (or Ten/Non-Ten) ratio. Opposed to Item 1, proper Insurance bets come w/ bigger bets out, 6 to 8 units, etc. All the sims (and Actual trip results) show that a +/- trip profit are correlated highly to Insurance bet results.
If you have 100 Ins bets on a trip, your E(X) may be 35.0. Could hit 25 and leak #. Could hit 45 and clean up on this side bet. They didn't say it, but that would be the key side bet for me. I just can't rationalize a huge gain from this 678 box.