Getting ready for another Caribbean cruise in February with my honey. Cruise ship offers about 8 tables of 6 deck BJ, Double any 2 cards, Double after split, typically dealt to 70% +-10%��casino advantage is .41%
I play hi-lo, illustrious 18, and Wong in and proportional bet with the advantage on one or two hands up to two hands of 6 units on each hand. Avoid negative hands at all times except when I can�t find a reasonable excuse, but anything approaching too negative and I am gone in any case. Easy enough.
But the ship, because of crowds at the tables, continuously allows the following optional play rule, all clearly spelled out in the casino on a �rules board� for the games. When playing with my wife at the tables, this rule can be used, whether that table is crowded or not.
Bottom line is, a �rider� can back the bet of any �player� at any time, with a second separate bet; the original player retains all playing decisions. The entire reason for doing it of course, versus me going to two (or three) hands total with my wife, is to glean the advantage of the optional betting on the rider bet when pair splitting�..as the rule specifically states that the rider can avoid the second split bet if desired. Wong covers this pretty well in �Basic Blackjack (1993)�, but I don�t think he answers the questions I�m finally getting around to asking.
�Basic Blackjack� has two pertinent tables. Table 13 is a set of �sacrificial splits� that a player should make to benefit a �minimum 7X betting� rider. At the 7X+ point, with this chart, the rider advantage compensates the player�s sacrifice. (I assume that Wong arbitrarily chose 7X+ for simplicity sake and set Table 13 up that way, the calculations could be separately made for any multiple bet which I presume would result in several sacrificial split tables�...the computations are daunting.) Table 14, on the other hand, is the relatively simple set of split plays that apply to the optional betting on the second hand by the rider when the player is using basic strategy, i.e., tells the rider to place the second bet or not, this correlates to betting when the player split to win more, and not betting when the player split to lose less. Again, Table 14 was straightforward to compute.
I think this rule boils down to some nasty risk/reward questions, difficult to simulate I think, but maybe it�s been done.�.I�ll try these, for starters:
As the count rises, I play up to a max of 1 hand of 9 units or preferably, 2 hands of 6 units. Is the �one hand rider option� preferable to playing 2 hands?
At 7X rider bet, is the sacrificial splitting the way to go for optimum risk/reward?
Ideally, using Kelly, what is the best way to use the rider option versus betting up to nine units on one hand or up to 12 units over 2 hands? Is the payoff of 1X player and 11X rider the way to go? Bringing the sacrificial splitting in at 7X+ rider bets complicates things dramatically.
