Remembering and/or Doing Calculatoins

Hi.

I’ve been studying and practicing counting for many months, visiting a local casino a handful of times.

I spent many hours last week putting myself to the test in Vegas and a couple of San Diego casinos.  I learned a lot with an overall acceptable loss for the week.

I really struggled with deck estimation and calculating what my bet should be.  I ended up chipping up one unit at a time with high counts.  I did OK, but I’m sure I under betted and likely would not have lost if I calculated accurately.

I just don’t have the math skills to do the needed calculations.  

Can anyone advise me on methods to learn these skills or memorize what bets should be?

As an aside for anyone who cares, my biggest lesson that has been noted here is that pen means everything.  Most profitable games where the least decks cut.

Thank you.

Do you have any books or software? The answers to all your questions can be found with Norm Wattenberger's CVCX or in my book, Blackjack Attack, third edition, chapter 10.

Don

In many cases especially during a single casino visit or many visits it can be just as likely that one will lose as one will win. Of course it depends on the game and other relevant factors.

Thanks,

Phil

Also caution that a higher bet spread can lead to higher losses as well as higher wins even with accurate calculations. There is normally more variation either way with higher bet spreads. 

Thanks,

Phil

It’s a gambling mostly. Stanford Wong said that you need to risk $400 to make a $20 profit if you are a counter. Among all hands to play, about 73% of them will end with two starting cards.

Not many have the math skills to play a perfect game in the casino especially if playing a six or eight deck game. The environment of the casino with all the noise, friendly talkative co-players, glaring pit personnel and other distractions make for a formidable enemy to the card counter. 

Keeping an accurate running count is imperative in a six or eight game while estimating the true count by whole decks not half or quarter decks can still give you an advantage without mentally wearing you down. 

Viewing the depth of decks in the discharge tray in tandem with the running count should give you a very quick respectable estimation of what the true count is.

If it was me, and it was, I would get six decks of cards and practice what each deck looked like as it was stacked into the discharge trey. Your calculations should be as quick and as accurate as possible when playing in the real environment of todays casino.

Frenchman, how true!

And if not practice, practice, and 

when tired of practicing, practice some more.

 Otherwise you fail to realize how tough playing sixt deck blackjack is

If you are making bet spread decisions based on a running count, it is very unlikely you will be a winning player unless you are only playing single deck.

True Count conversion is critical to knowing the right bet spread. Dividing the Running Count by the decks remaining is not complicated math, especially if you are doing whole deck estimations.

If you are playing 6D, and there are 2 decks worth of cards in the discard tray, you have 4 decks remaining. If you have a running count of 9, divide that by 4, you get a True Count of 2. No need to do the math to try and see its a TC of 2.25. Maybe one day but certainly not at the start. Doing what I've just described, added to a PERFECT game (perfect count, perfect basic strategy, maybe some deviations) is enough to be a winning player. 

Don't try and find a work around for needing to calculate a True Count, you cannot skip this step.

I assume you may know this but just to mention, you can use the K-O count if you don’t want to calculate true count. It uses the running count for betting and a few playing decisions, no need for true count conversion.

Phil

I haven’t read about the KO count until recently. Interesting, a user doesn’t need to calculate true count. Consider an 8-deck blackjack game. KO uses an initial running count of -28, but doesn’t use the remaining deck number information. Why not?

Now, consider an 8-deck Spanish 21 game. The late author Katarina Walker uses a similar approach. Her shifted HiLo uses an initial running count of -32, but she uses the remaining deck number to calculate a true count for betting and playing.