Tough time believing this re Illustrious 18

The other site must have seen the posts here and came up with a new entry. The short of it, he sims a game where he bets his max bet at +1 and above with full indices and compares it against the Illustrious 18 where Don starts betting one unit at +1 and ramps as the count increases. He then claims that because the I18 win rate is lower he is proven right. I just lost all respect for this guy (not that I ever had much to begin with). Any first week card counting idiot knows that a ramp wins less than putting your max bet out at +1. All you have to do to resolve this is run the same game, same pen, same rules, same max bet at +1 and just use the I18 against a full spread of indices and compare the results. And this clown tries to sell his services to the casino industry? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

... you need to stop talking about him. He is pretty much a laughing stock among serious players.

Don

I've seen a lot of other things he says that are wrong. I don't bother correcting him. But this is the most basic aspect of card counting that he fails to comprehend. I think it's quite funny.

New entry on the home page.

I'd appreciate it if you would run 2 sims. If I still had my programs I would do it myself. Same game Don S. used for his I18 sim Eliot refers to. First sim bet $100 at +1 and above , zero below, and play basic strategy. Second sim, use full indices and 1 - 12 spread starting at +1, zero below, $8.33 unit and ramp up with the count, as Don did. I'd bet the basic strategy with max bet at +1 wins more than the full indices with a 1 - 12 ramp. I promise I will use the results, too, so your efforts are not wasted.

The trick is to maximize your bankroll growth and not your win rate.

A maximal bankroll growth (or log(bankroll growth) will lead to steadily increasing expected income as your bankroll grows.

Raw increases in hourly rate are less important if your ROR increases 3-4 fold for a given bankroll. This is the problem with not ramping your bets as your advantage increases. Either you lose out on money at the high advantages or you risk too much of your bankroll at the low advantages.

If you have a truly gigantic bankroll then go ahead and max your win rate but if you are this unusually well funded player then I would suggest other forms of investment could be more profitable, easier, and healthier than blackjack.

what does that have to do with my post?

Sorry about that. At a very quick read it looked like you were advocating for some sort of binary big bet / small bet betting scheme.

Re-reading it seems like you are arguing against this scheme and are just curious for a sim...

Regards,

Don S may have too much class to engage in petty arguments but I don't. I have PBA but to get it to work with Windows 7 I have to install a virtual machine and I really hate doing extra writes on my SSD hard drive for something I have little need for now. If nobody accommodates this request in a couple of days I*'ll have to go that route.

Many (most?) of you have Norm's CVCX. In the many canned sims, which allow for wonderful comparisons, there is one for Hi-Lo Sweet 16 (not even the full I18, because ten-splits are eliminated) plus Fab 4 (which, of course, only matters if you stipulate surrender in the game you choose), while another is Hi-Lo Full Indices.

Now, you can stipulate any game rules and conditions you please, but typical for my studies was something like 4.5/6, S17, DAS, four players, 1-12 spread. You can knock yourself out playing with deeper pen, different rules, just one player, bigger spread, etc.

But, what you will find, virtually 100% of the time, are the truncated indices winning anywhere from 85% to 92% of the full indices ... ALL THE TIME! The above scenario won 89+%.

Now, of course, this comes as no surprise to me. How could it? Nor does it come as a surprise to me that Eliot doesn't know his ass from his elbow. After all, it has been forever thus.

Don

Don, why do you not advocate for learning more indices? Even learning 100+ indices takes a tiny fraction of the time it takes to become well versed in a count system. 10% more EV for such a small time investment seems well worth it to me. The % difference in EV is even greater if cover is used. What are your thoughts?

I can't for the life of me understand why you and others think I advocate for any amount of indices. I have used 150 indices for the RPC for the past 38 years. Does that sound like I advocate for 18, or 22, or 26 indices?

What I did was to present to the BJ-playing community my findings as to the relative value of indices exceeding the most important 18, or 22, or 26. What players do with those findings is their business. Apparently, a great many players don't agree with you, because they have decided that the effort to learn the additional numbers isn't worth it to them. That's an individual and personal decision of each such player; it isn't up to me.

I presented the facts. What players do with those facts is their business. What I bitterly resent is: a) anyone who purposely or maliciously distorts those facts, either for his own aggrandizement, or to attack me; or b) anyone who accuses me of suggesting that any player should or shouldn't use any particular set of indices.

You want to use 150? Knock yourself out. I'm just the guy who told the blackjack world what the last 132 of those numbers on the list were, or weren't, worth.

So please: don't shoot the messenger.

Don

You play RPC and 150+ index plays when you play because that is what you learned back I guess 38 years ago.

But the real question is, knowing what you know now, from the work that you have done and are for better or worse are so linked too, what would you do if you were starting out today? What count? How many index plays?

That's not to say that you 'advocate' for anything, but rather just your preference of what you would and wouldn't find worthwhile, based on what you now know. :)

Don was pleased to find out that I had taken the time to learn more than 50 to up to 100 departures, in addition to basic strategy. I understand his position on learning more when 18 to 22 will suffice. But I like the idea of standing on 14 vs 10 with a large bet on the table.

I'm not my brother's keeper. So, I'll answer your question, and then I'll say immediately that just because it's what I would do, it doesn't mean that it's what you or anyone else should do.

Time and time again, on these an other boards, new players are told to begin with a simple count, and to master it so that they play effortlessly, rather than try to learn a more complex, higher level, count that may cause more mistakes.

I began with Hi-Lo. After a year or so, it became clear to me that I could surely handle a more complex count. I read Revere's book, and I mastered his Point Count. I am extraordinarily gifted with numbers and have a great facility with mental calculations; adding or subtracting one or two to a number didn't pose much of a challenge!

I also have an unusually fine memory, bordering on the photographic. So, I learned the indices that Revere provided for $25 with his multi-deck booklet. No big deal for me. And, the I18 didn't exist! :-) I can't tell you what I would do today, starting over. I would probably learn more indices, because doing so would present no hardship for me. That said, as I wrote in the article and in my book, I would realize that, unless one were playing for rather high stakes, the added advantage wouldn't be huge.

Don

I thought I had remembered you saying in the not to distant past, that if you were starting out today, with todays condition (multi-deck, average pen), you would have just stayed with a level one count like hi-lo and less index plays.

But in all fairness, I am not sure if the exact context of the question was what YOU would do starting out today or what you thought might be best for most new players starting out.

But at any rate, you answered fairly and I thank you.

Killed the cat. No, I mean, how many Indicies were provided by Revere for $25? I looked at Revere's book many years ago ( ~20 ) before I learned from Ralph and found it overwhelming! I would probably be able to cope with it today.

"No, I mean, how many indices were provided by Revere for $25?"

Just went back to the booklet. Brought back many fond memories! He provided about 80, but I added more than 60 more of my own, because he didn't have DAS numbers, nor any indices above +7. I added all the way to +10. Then I had to add early surrender numbers for A.C. and late surrender. When I was done, it was close to 150, which I used all my life.

Don