What is a Reasonable Spread on DD?

Until now, I have limited my play to 6D and 8D. I am now moving to DD. What size spread can I expect to get away with without drawing too much attention?

DD with the usual 50-60% penetration will surprise you just how bad a game it is. Unless playing for relatively small stakes or very short sessions you will not get away with big spreads in DD for very long in most places.

i second this question.. although I have read it is 5x or 6x for hand pitched games

can someone please suggest an ideal spread for a $5 min and for a $10 min

this is what I have been doing for single and double deckers:
(numbers are true count)

negative or zero = $5 min or $10 min
1 = $10, $15
2 = $15, $25
3 = $20, $30
4 = $25, $35
5 = $35, $40
6 = $50, $50
insane = $60 max

so $5 min i spread it to 12x
and $10 min spread it to 6x

is this spread mathametically sound?
I have searched Pro BJ and I see nothing written about this

If you have the opportunity to run some sims, you will find that in pitch games, Single Deck especially, it is not so optimal to have a spread as you outlined. The problem is the count jumps so quickly that you can't get the money out fast enough unless your act is marvelous. Imagine this, you put out $5 on the first hand of the new deal, you win the hand. The count has jumped to +4. Will you be able to put out your $25 bet. I bet you won't. You will probably only be able to bet $10 on this next hand. Try starting higher and drop your bet if it goes negative. This will allow you to get the money out when the count jumps way positive.

Also, in single deck, it is my experience from running sims that you should max out your bet at around +3.

For your betting levels, you may want to try a spread for single deck like:
-2 or lower = $5
-1 = $10
zero = $15
+1 = $15
+2 = $30
+3 = $45

Going to $60 at +4 could be done, but I bet if you run a sim on that it will hardly affect your win rate, but it will increase your variance and thus your risk of ruin. Note, your zero bet is the off the top wager as well.

It is alright to bet the minimum off the top in shoe games but I think that in the pitch games, it is wisest to begin at 3 to 4 times the minimum off the top and raise and lower that figure accordingly; with a predetermined max bet, of course. The benefit is two-fold; it tends to lower your risk of ruin and increases your longevity. So Shaggy18VW has provided good advice that you should heed.

1. Follow Chappy's advice and look at sim data to see what 1-2, 1-4, 1-6, 1-8, etc does to your hourly win rate. That is a critical step so that you will know whether a game is playable or not depending on what spread you can get down.

2. Don't forget that in step 1, be sure to vary the penetration as well, so that you know what your spread will do vs the level of penetration you see in the games you play. 50% pen is not a very playable game. 66% can work. Anything beyond that is gravy.

3. I play a lot of DD. 1-8 is generally not frowned on but it depends on what the "1" represents. $5 or $25 or $100? $100-$800 could raise eyebrows and draw attention depending on what is normally seen there. I do $5-$40 or $5-2x$25 all the time with no difficulty. Someone else I know here has played really insane spreads, even at single-deck, and gotten away with it (How, I don't know, but he's done it.)

4. Finally, at DD you can win with a 1-2 spread. Not very fast, but you can win. As you run the sims, and look at the results, the primary issues becomes "how much do I want to win (a lot of course)" and "what can I get away with without getting kicked out?" That forms a balancing act. Probably the most critical point is what is your betting unit (red green or black) and can you count without looking like a counter?

Good luck. And remember, CVCX is a critical resource to have handy, as it can answer the questions about "how will this affect my win rate" although it won't help much with "can I get away with this?"

I'm not a pro, but for DD, 1-8, using hi-lo, My betting ramp looks like this:

count<=0, 1 unit
count=1, 2 units
count=2, 4 units
count=3, 8 units.

Sometimes on count=3 I might go to 2 hands of 5 units each if there are others at the table. If I am playing alone I just bet 8 units period. You can exceed that on occasion if things seem to be going your way, knowing that if you bet more than 8 units, you increase your hourly win rate, your risk of ruin, and the potential pit attention.

But in any case, 1-8 is playable for me at unit=$5, and I have played some with unit=$25 although I don't do that very often...

To "begin at 3 to 4 times the minimum off the top" adds up over time and is a bad idea. If you are playing DD with others at the table and there is only 50-60&% penetration, you are betting many more units in a negative situation. With others in the game and little penetration you may be playing every 4th or 5th hand off the top. Adding all those extra units in a negative count hurts your edge over time.

Then you say "it tends to lower your risk of ruin and increases your longevity" a) no it doesn't, it adds to your risk of ruin and b) you look equally obvious when in a negative count you go from 4 units to 1.

Run a simulation before you assume these things. You need to determine if you are serious about winning or not.

I go with Chappy here.

Here is why:

Take a good DD game, no LS, 67% penetration. What you will find with a sim (CVCX) is the following

TC percent of hands played
<0 34%
0 35%
1 9%
2 7%
>=3 15%

Now we have a framework to analyze your betting strategy.

In 70% of the hands, you should be betting 1 unit. But in some small subset of those, you are going to be betting more. Which is only going to accelerate your loss rate where the house has the edge. Note that in about 1/3 of all hands, you will have an advantage. In some sub-set of those, the advantage will spring into being from a house advantage (TC <= 0) to your advantage (TC > 0) over one hand.

You are trying to specifically handle the case where the TC goes from <= 0 to 3 or more, which is where the big bet jump (1-8x) would need to occur but could be too obvious. In only 15% of the hands, you will be betting a max bet, and the number of such hands which follow a TC of <= 0 is going to be pretty small.

It would seem that this is risky in that your average bet is going to be more than what it would be if you started at 1 unit. The only place I might even consider this would be a SD game with RO6 and say 3 players, which means 3 rounds. There you need to react quickly. But I am not sure the math works out in your favor there either, because 1/3 of the hands played will be the first hand after a shuffle, which means a 2x bet in an unknown count.

I'm sure that given the time, I could probably give an accurate idea of what it would cost (or gain) to use such a betting ramp. But first blush says it costs more than it saves. With a thin EV already, you can't shave it too far or you have a thickness of zero...

I'll be happy to take this further with some more analysis, if you want to discuss it, so long as we don't get hijacked into another "this is the wrong way to do this" kind of discussion without any comments about the "right way". :)

I don't see any way in CVCX to use a specialized betting pattern, although CVData might support this. I have a trial version of CVData that came with my CVBJ/CVCX CDs, so I will experiment a bit with it later.

Interesting question, however. Learning how to answer such a question accurately with a Sim is (to me) an important skill to have, do you really want to bet _your_ money on what _I_ say? Or would you rather find out for yourself? That's why I love CVCX. If I watch a DD game for a while, and see that the dealer is dealing 60 +/- 4 cards every time (that is the number of cards before the cut card pops out) then I can go find out "is this playable or should I keep looking?" without having to guess or lose a bunch of money to conclude that it is not a game I ought to be beating on...

If this is directed to me, I specifically outlined my statement as a single deck game. As mentioned before, a DD game is more like a shoe, wait... wait... wait... kill.

In the single deck game, assume you are playing heads up, not jumping bets, and get five rounds dealt to you. If you started at the min bet of $5 you would be able to bet a max of $80 only on the fifth round, $40 on the fourth. $5-$10-$20-$40-$80. This is assuming you won all the previous hands and the count went up. If your bet spread is between $5 and $80, I maintain that the zero bet should be about $25 and the max should be bet at +3. Moving up as the count increases and down as it decreases. The count moves too rapidly to have your bet limited by such a low starting bet. True a higher bet at the time when the game is approx. 50/50 will increase your variance, but without it, you would not be able to spread as much. Pick your poison, do you want a low ROR game spreading $5-$20, making $1 per hour or will you risk a little to make $20 an hour spreading $5-$80. Your bankroll and risk tolerance will decide, but only sims can give you this type of info.

disagreeing with any one person here. My point was that in some games, and I did say that SD might be different due to the few rounds played between shuffles, starting off with a higher than normal bet might be a EV-harming idea.

But for SD, dealt R06 for example, I get the following numbers:

TC percent of hands
<0 33.5%
0 39.2%
1 7.6%
2 7.5%
>=3 12.2%

Now there are some numbers to work with.

70% of the hands are played at a house edge. In 1/5 of those hands, the first ones after a shuffle, you are going to bet 2 or 4 units (I use a 1-4 spread in SD so sticking with what I have experience with your idea would be to start off at 2 rather than 1 if I understood you.)

So your net negative hands are going to be .8 * 1 unit, +.2 * 2 units, which adds up to 1.2 units if I did my math right. That is, rather than betting 1.0 units in negative EV situations, I would end up betting 1.2 units in those same situations. If the count drops, we are both in the same situation as we would both bet 1 unit in hand 2, where I would be continuing the same 1 unit bet from hand 1 while you dropped from your initial 2 unit bet. Your risk is that extra .2 unit bet, which you are going to make in 70% of the playing situations.

Now for the remaining 30% of the playing situations where we are playing with an edge in TC > 0 situations.

I don't have any data to suggest what percentage of the time the TC jumps from - or 0 to something big. I know it happens, but how frequently I can't guess. Someone else might jump in with a number. But in the absense of a good number, your advantage over me here is that if the TC jumps to 2 from 0, I would probably go from 1 unit to 2 units in many (but not all) cases. I can jump from 1-4 on occasion, I just can't do it every time without arousing suspicion unless my act is very good.

OK, so now we have 30% of our playing hands that are good. In some circumstances, mainly when the first round causes the TC to jump significantly, the second round will see you bet 4 units to my 2 or 4 units depending on whether I jump 2x or 4x. Let's say I jump 2x half the time, and 4x half the time. That is an average of 3x. We are in the second round of 5 rounds, which represents 20% of all rounds played with a big TC. In the remaining 60% I will have bet the same as you assuming the TC is high and my bet has been tracking the count, so we are probably even in rounds 3 and beyond. In round 1, my bet was right and yours was wrong, because we just played a round where small cards came out and we probably got toasted by the dealer. So here, I call it 1 round to me, 3 rounds are tied, and in 1/2 of 1 round you do better.

It seems to me that overall, betting by the count is better. I can do more math or correct errors above if there are any someone wants to jump on and point out.

But somehow it seems to me that Chappy's intuition and my (admittedly quick) analysis agree on this one.

Not that what you are suggesting is wrong. And it might turn out that our two approaches are actually pretty close if the right math person jumps in. I just have a problem with tossing out a big bet in an unknown count, knowing that I can get toasted for it.

I know that was probably ill thought out, and after further thought I'll probably want to modify it one or more times, but it is a starting point anyway. :)

In DD it seems even more obvious that betting big on the first round is worse, because there are more rounds per shuffle, and the count is less volatile in round 1 since TC = RC/2.

I've never personally used a $5 to $80 spread on SD. however, I have not played a lot of SD as there are few 3:2 games around and I don't play 6:5 period. But that might change my thinking a bit if you are really doing that kind of spread.

What do you do to ease the pain of all the bruises on your butt? You must get kicked out a lot with that kind of spread. :) Or maybe I'm just not good enough to get away with that myself...

The more I think about it, the more the idea interests me.

Assume a normal 1-4 spread at SD. But the initial bet is $20 up to a max of $80, but if the count tanks, you can actually drop your bet below the minimum of $20 for a few rounds without getting up to leave.

That idea I buy, so long as you get back to $20 as the count nears zero so you are ready to spring when it goes positive...

That I will experiment a bit with on CVBJ tonight, for fun...

That's the idea. And I don't get canned very often.

To quote Jon Lovitz
Acting... Genius!

playing SD this way unless playing VERY small or for short periods. Just for fun try this at the El Cortez. You'll be in the parking lot before your bet lands in the bet square!

I'm hardly an expert, but I've played my fair share of SD. And without fail, exceeding 1-4 spread has generally gotten me into hot water. Sometimes even 1-4 has had that effect. I suppose the pit might see your initial $20, rising to $80, and not be overly alarmed, but it would seem to me that the $5 min might attract some notice.

But until I "test the waters" with the idea, I have no idea. It might be a while as the only SD game I have played that is decent (on the MS coast) is not one I want to "wreck" by getting tossed out due to wild betting. If I get a chance I might try it in a midwest casino somewhere down the road, somewhere where it is unlikely I will return for a long while...

at the BC, although I don't know if they have a SD game there. But I got tossed for flat-betting in nothing but negative counts and winning more than what they thought was acceptable. I assume anything > 0 is NFG to them. :)

SSR,

First of all, sorry about all the white space in the following... I'm no HTML expert! Any such experts in the crowd, feel free to let me know where I erred!

The version of CVCX I bought contains a command called "Chapter X It!", which produces charts similar to those found in Chapter 10 of BJA3. This option provides the optimal bet schedule, along with various performance measures including Win Rate, DI, and SCORE. In addition, it allows the user to input a custom bet schedule, and calculates the various performance measures for the custom betting, too.

The output below is for a DD game with 67% penetration, a 1:8 spread, and a $12K bankroll with a level two count (not your favorite HiLo!). As shown, the optimal bet schedule is to bet $25 for TC <=1, then ramp up $25 for each TC until the max bet is reached at TC>=8. For comparison, I used a simple custom bets scheme, where I bet $25 when EV<0, and $200 when EV>0 (the Risk of Ruin be Damned strategy!).

As shown, the optimal betting gives a much more favorable SCORE and ROR, while the custom betting gives a higher Win Rate (in units per hour).

Hope this helps!

Dog Hand

Thanks for the critique. I was afraid a sharpie would nail me on this one. Touche!

Unfortunately I only make about 12 trips a year. Totalling about 150 to 200 hours of table time a year. I rarely play with the same shift at any house twice in any given day. If I do, it is because I play at the beginning of their shift and at the end. I don't play long sessions. I schedule my trips such that I am rotating between a few gaming towns.

I have played this way at the Cortez and I've never been bounced there.

I do agree that if I were attempting to hit these joints even as little as once a week for a couple months I probably would wear out my welcome pretty quickly. But that is not my situation. I only get to play a certain amount, and when I do, I hit'em as hard as I can without closing doors on my next visit.