multiple hand betting

Could someone help with this one. Wong recommends betting 50% more money when spreading to two hand. Uston says that 15% is the figure in Million Dollar Blackjack. What gives???

If you bet $75 on 1 hand. The correct kelly bet for two hands is approximately $50.

Soft17.

If you bet $100 on 1 hand, then bet $75 on 2 hands (this would be $50 more total wagered, $100 vs $150).

I think the number is something like 73% of your 1 hand bet, for wagering on 2 hands, so $75 is close enough.

I think the suggestion from Uston is being taken out of context or misunderstood, you might try re-reading it.

regaard are incorrect. Remember, he didn't have access to a powerful personal computer like we do.

Are these accurate and if not are they useful? Thanks in advance, particularly bigplayer - have always enjoyed your posts.

He once posited that with a 50K BR it was acceptable to be using a $1000 maximum bet. I think that his play was developed through what we might call 'incomplete understanding' of computational analysis. He also had no idea what he was giving up as drunken cover in terms of EV lost, or the long term consequences of not Kelly betting. Having said this, I still think he was a giant of a player.

As 'Standing on Shoulders' has stated, the correlation coefficient value is .37...or two bets of 75%, approximately. My understanding is that it is very infrequent you will have opportunity or recourse to spread beyond two hands in real casino conditions, generally speaking.

scobee

blackjack books (from 1980's and earlier) tend to underestimate risk. Much of the 1990's refinements of the blackjack game have to do with risk of ruin. The games in the 1960's, 70's and 80's were also much better games than today hence the level of risk was lower.

They're helpful if you know what it is you are looking at and how it differs from ruin figures in other publications. I'm pretty sure Uston is talking about double or bust when he presents ruin figures, when all winnings are put back into the bankroll. The Schlesinger ruin figures are for an infinite number of hands will all winnings put back in the bankroll.

A 50% increase in total action when spreading to the second hand preserves the same long term risk of ruin. In order to preserve other shorter term measures a smaller increase would be needed. A session stake that was rather small for your betting level would be see a big increase in ROR with a 50% increase in action. If you have BJ Attack and can work with the charts, or the BJRM program, then you can see the different relationships.

Scobee,

I believe the differences in the games available to Mr. Uston, and the advantages afforded to him by his skillful use of a complex count tailored to those games, renders comparisons between his bankroll recommendations then, and recommendations for modern conditions inappropriate. If you read his books in totality, you will generally find, advice and information on learning and implementing advantage play,which is still among the best available. This is after the passage of twenty five years. No small feat. In my own experience,the better single deck games I frequently play, are like an entirely different game than any shoe game. If I had the rules and penetration levels that Mr. Uston sometimes regularly encountered (in fact insisted on as a minimum standard) it would not be necessary to spread at all to achieve an advantage. Spread would be based on other important considerations.

P.S. I enjoy your writing.

Cordially,

Slim

Most of us would be in heaven if we could play with the '78 rules and conditions. I think if Uston were around, he would still be killing the casinos since he had incredible imagination and audacity. The modern day equivalents of Uston have a different outlook on playing, since risk and bankroll have been examined with powerful personal computers and highly evolved simulators....turtle, Pit Viper, DD', and bigplayer, to name a few, have shown us that even as conditions change, ways to win become transformed by better information and refinements in strategies. Team play is still viable, and even as variance will always create unpredictable short term results, there is ample evidence that success is still possible for the disciplined player putting in the hours.

But today even finding a true $50 SCORE game is difficult unless you can adapt by reducing exposure in negative counts, use multi-hand betting strategies and/or white rabbit techniques...the game requires more sophisticated tracking and evaluation. New advantageous proposals are researched and implemented all the time. I would not be surprised if more time is spent in researching games, developing workable scenarios, and traveling extensively to those special opportunities where EV is reasonably high, than in actual playing time for the dedicated...or obsessed.

It takes a trader's mentality and training to keep up with the game in the 21st century...I have no doubt that Ken would excel today as he did before. The mass dissemination of information has made it harder for a professional to play unimpeded, but I do not forsee the challenge becoming too difficult for the well-prepared and resourceful advantage player to continue to profit from the casinos. I think the future lies in an itinerant campaign that takes into consideration that many strategies may be needed to continue to play with an acceptable advantage.

Thanks for the kind words...and I hope you continue to find those single deck games you speak of. For me, it is a continuing struggle to define the multi-deck opportunities and have the available resources to eke out a profit during positive EV situations. In comparision, it is similar to the go-go stock markets of the late nineties which have come and gone. As you say, the games of yesteryear that Thorp and Uston found proliferating are now merely an archive of blackjack history. I now try to isolate opportunities to make a small percentage profit and limit my play to those games I have identified as worthy of the commitment. I doubt that Uston or Thorpe ever had to drive three hours to a casino, only to find no playable tables upon arrival. Still, the game fascinates as it always has. Even in Uston's legacy of modern Atlantic City it is possible to play with an advantage. The good news is that more casinos are opening all the time...and our tools get more sophisticated as we continue to share our strategies and brainstorm on the internet. It seems that the public's desire to gamble, especially with blackjack, will offer us opportunities to plunder for many years to come. Even if it requires stalking the multi-deck shoe.

Regards,

scobee

It is something of a philosophical point as to what "correct" indices actually are. There are a number of different ways of increasing your win rate by altering the means of calculating these figures-some, like RA-indices have been discussed in detail, others are scarcely known or understood. I believe Uston's figures were correct for his purposes.

how do you score the game you played, 6d, during the mini counters convention we attended. They are now cutting 1 to 1.25 most of the time?

That seemed like one of the better 6d around, do you think?

The formula that we use depends on the Correlation between the two hands. We do need to do sims to do that correlation. I think the computers of their day could easily have estimated this correlation; it isn't that hard. My belief is that he simply had the wrong formula. He didn't specify what formula he used, so we don't for sure.

If you read that Chapter, you will that the terms "Variance" and "Standard Deviation" are conspicuous by their absence. There are calculations in that chapter which depend on SD, and are clearly wrong. An obvious example is the table at the end that discusses the "Long Run". This does NOT depend on your percent advantage, as he ahs stated it, but on EV and SD.

I also want to differ with John May on this point. I think these statements are simply errors, and are "incorrect". Specifically, he says that you keep the same RoR on two spots by raising your bet 15%. This is just wrong. It is like saying that 2+5 = 8.

I also want to differ with John May on this point. I think these statements are simply errors, and are "incorrect". Specifically, he says that you keep the same RoR on two spots by raising your bet 15%. This is just wrong. It is like saying that 2+5 = 8.

I was talking only about Uston's indices. I've never attempted to recalculate Uston's multiple-hand ROR figures but subsequent comments from later authors pointing out the error in this passage seem plausible.

Incidentally, Uston's mercifully brief comments on dealer shuffles designed to bias the deck against players, in the cheating section of MDBJ, show some of Jerry Patterson's influence, and are to be viewed with suspicion.

the SCORE would be 45 for a play all strategy, or 65 if you would leave the table at TC of worse than -1. You would have to find a relatively quiet table to get your 100 hands per hour, and then white rabbit out of there for the negative counts to get the higher score. Now what is interesting is that you could play two hands and nearly double your EV and variance, while maintaining a 1-12 spread. The rate of return would of course depend on your unit size, which you would adjust according to your preferred risk of ruin. This is about as good as it gets for the six deck shoe....and you can use the late surrender to great advantage, as well you know.

What I would do now is to play with two hands and drop down to one 20% unit when the count gets negative, but increase my spread to something along the lines of 1-40, relatively speaking. You might remember that the 'Hoosier Hitmen' used this strategem with good results, since the focus of the pit was on the whale playing alone at the table in the corner.... ;) [or at least until one of the Hitmen decided to use a 1-100 spread and we were forced to leave quickly on that particular shift.] This would put you at table maximums, but playing two spots would increase your win rate to where it could potentially offer an expected $100 per hour while you protected two boxes for hours. There presently are no comparable games to be found in Vegas, according to Fine Tuner's refinements of the CBJN data from January. Have a good time and count your blessings.. it might help if you kept an accurate count of the cards observed, as well. I would find that 5/6 dealer and stick with him. If you find yourself winning leave a toke every so often...
Don't surrender your twelves....

BJRM evaluates this strategy as having a DI of 9.76, with a ROR of 2.28% using a BR of 20K. The cumulative SCORE would be 95, and with a SD of 4.56 (very high) the W/L % would be 1.5%. If you could consistently play this game it would take something less than 200 hours to double your bank, with a hands to NO of 10,488. Before you quit your day job and buy a beach house, you should know that your hourly variance would amount to one SD of over $1000.

Pretty good game, even if your unit is $6.

Regards,

scobee