Amateur arithmetic at the table.

We were down at Borgata for a couple days last week, and we wound up at a BJ table. And since I've become a little bit used to the game, it has slowed down for me, and I'm used to keeping the Wizard's strategy card palmed and I've memorized the "edge" plays, and I had some free space in my brain to think while the game progressed. So here's what I thought about.


It's 8 decks. So that's 400ish cards. The cut is about 2 decks in, so that's 300ish cards in play; maybe a little bit less. (Why can't there be 12 cards in a suit? That'd make the math a lot easier for an old ex-stoner, eh?) Anyhow, about 6 decks means that there are about 96 10s and 24 As, and 24 9s: 4/13 of the cards are 10s on average. 6/13 are OK cards to get in tandem with each other. Or, a little less than half. (Like I said, this was amateur thinking; it doesn't happen linearly.)

There are 6 players at the table, so each deal is going to be 14 cards minimum, and figure 3-4 hits average per deal, so every 2 deals will use up 35 cards; figure mid 30s. So I figure 6 deals uses up 2 decks. So I figure, all I have to pay attention to is the first 6 rounds from the shoe. That would be 1/3 of the "happy cards". I figure if I see fewer than 40 happy cards in the first 6 rounds, then I should up my bet.


So the next shoe where I saw fewer than 40 happy cards in the first 6 deals, I tried that, I went from betting $10 to $20. And it sort of worked, in that there were a hell of a lot of 20s... for everyone else. Sitting at first base, every damn hand I was dealt seemed to be 12 through 15. And every next card was a Q or K. My dad and my brother in law cleaned up, though. Too bad they didn't have their bets doubled like I did.

It was a cheap experiment. I bought in for $300, and left with $100. I'd been up as much as $150 before the experiment, but I was about even when it started. I still think I'm on to something that would be really easy for a casual player to do, though.

Later on I sat down at a 4 Card Poker table and won $1000, betting $15 on Aces up (3.89% pay table) and $15 on ante/play (3.34% when raising 1 unit on pair of 2s through 9s and 3 units on pair of 10s and higher). But the deeper involvement at the BJ table was fun. I'm not interested in making it into a job, but I know how to count to 40.

duplicate.

The easy part of card counting is the counting itself. Try it.

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Quote: Ibeatyouraces

Been there hundreds of times and its disgusting.

Even more fun is when you get 14-15 every hand and every one else at the table gets blackjacks and 20's. Plus you bust ;)

-B

Quote: Mosca

It's 8 decks. So that's 400ish cards. The cut is about 2 decks in, so that's 300ish cards in play; maybe a little bit less. (Why can't there be 12 cards in a suit? That'd make the math a lot easier for an old ex-stoner, eh?)

LOL! I know that feeling (I'm a young drinker, I suppose). Just make the math easier. 52*8=(50*8)+(2*8)=400+16. That method works reasonably well for just about any mental multiplication up to maybe figuring the product of two 3 digit numbers.

That's how I did it, too. The divide by 13 part, that was a dead end anyhow. The important part of the arithmetic is that 96 is 48*2, and 24+24 is 48. So, three 48s, and 2 decks is 1/3 of the 6 in play, so each 48 is the number of happy cards to be expected. I picked 2 decks/6 hands because it is not too much or too long to do the work, and 40 as the flag because it looked to be about right, it would leave 8 extra happy cards in the last 200ish. It "feels" statistically significant.