spread question

is it safe to assume that playing 6deck 1.2-1.5pen H17 using a 1-12 unit bet spread is break even with the house? assume i am sitting through shoe after shoe playing bs strategy and only varying bet size with count, no wonging. i seem to have read this somewhere and am wondering if this is valid or not.

note: i do not know the math behind this but would be very interested in it if someone could show me.

also, I was wondering if it is generally better ie (attracts less heat) if a person widens their spread as opposed to wonging in and out?

thanks M.

The biggest advantage to wonging out (or even just sitting out) is you aren't showing extended periods of your lowest low bet. The game you describe you will will have maybe an edge of around 0.6 to 0.7% and a very high N0.

The h17 rule magnifies the house advantage in negative counts and it's essential you find ways, excuses, whatever to get off the table when your count tanks.

For any shoe game I prefer to spread at least 16-1 AND exit the table at any high-low running count of worse than -8.

thanks for your response bp,

when you describe me having an edge in my game of 0.6 to 0.7%, is that my calculated edge for me sitting and playing shoe after shoe playing BS and only varying my bets according to the count with the aforementioned 1-12 spread??? Also what does N0 mean?! Thanks again M.

Say I am using a 1-16 spread, what does my ramp look like assuming I sit out or leave the table at TC = < -1.

-1,0,+1= 1 to 2 units

+2= 3 to 5 units

+3= 6to 9 units

+4= 10 to 12 units

+5 and above= 16 units

is the above ramp, too general, or will this suffice for a normal shoe game?

is the number of hands you have to play for your expected value to equal one standard deviation. In other words, the number of hands you have to play to have an 84% chance of being ahead. You would have to play 4 times as many hands for the expected value to equal two standard deviation (98% chance of being ahead).

the one standard deviation is of variance. Variance shoots exponentially up quickly and then levels off as you play more rounds. EV accumulates in a straight line at a much slower but steady rate. Thus N0 (N-Zero) is an attempt to measure how long the long run is.

Eventually if you have +EV your accumulated EV will meet your accumulated variance. The better the game you choose and higher your win rate the fewer rounds it will take for this to happen. For a great game this might be 10,000 rounds....for a very bad game it might be 50,000 rounds.

Needless to say, if you want to show a profit and avoid going bust you will want your long run to be as short as possible.

"the one standard deviation is of variance."

This statement doesn't make sense and isn't true. Variance is the square of standard deviation. N0 is the number of hands required to be played such that e.v. - 1 s.d. = 0; i.e., e.v. = 1 s.d.

Variance has nothing to do with it.

"Variance shoots exponentially up quickly and then levels off as you play more rounds."

No, again, you mean standard deviation does that. Variance increases linearly with number of hands played.

Don

I just didn't think it was clear to just say that N0 is the number of rounds when EV exceeds one standard deviation without specifying what the standard deviation is of (i.e.,ranges of possible results).