Need help on Lucky Ladies side bet games

I've been getting hammered at games w this side bet. I play it only LL10 at double deck games w 65% pen or greater.

Am I playing this bet the right way? I use Reko and only play it at max at +3 count or higher.

if I am playing it right, how bad is the variance on this bet generally? I knew it had worse variance than regular blackjack counting, but not like video poker bad.

I know in video poker, if you re playing perfect deuces wild full pay you hit the royal every 44,000 hands and it accounts for about 2% of EV, and you hit the four deuces 1 out if 5000 hands and it's 4% of the EV. In between the four deuces and royals you re getting 94% payback, which leads to huge variance.

Anybody know how much of your EV the two queens of hearts are worth and how often you are supposed to hit them w my count system? I've hit a dry spell of pair of queens hearts and am wondering what my EV is in between queens of hearts.

Quote: Swanson234

I've been getting hammered at games w this side bet. I play it only LL10 at double deck games w 65% pen or greater.

Am I playing this bet the right way? I use Reko and only play it at max at +3 count or higher.

if I am playing it right, how bad is the variance on this bet generally? I knew it had worse variance than regular blackjack counting, but not like video poker bad.

I know in video poker, if you re playing perfect, deuces wild full pay you hit the royal every 44,000 hands and it accounts for about 2% of EV, and you hit the four deuces 1 out if 5000 hands and it's 4% of the EV. In between the four deuces and royals you re getting 94% payback, which leads to huge variance.

Anybody know how much of your EV the two queens of hearts are worth and how often you are supposed to hit them w my count system? I've hit a dry spell of pair of queens hearts and am wondering what my EV is without them.

What is the paytable?

Are they using the double deck pay table or the (worse) 6-deck paytable?

Eliot has some numbers about this on his site. I'm not sure if he calculates variance but your results will not be normally distributed until you play for a LONG time. I would say that a good rule of thumb is, until you've played for so long that one top-line payout is not a big deal for your results, you can't expect your results to look even remotely normally distributed.

There may be something on discountgambling too -- I know that Stephen How loves those countable side bets (or, at least, he loves analyzing them and coming up with count systems for them).

I'd just estimate how many shoes you have played and sim it to see how the results over that many shoes are distributed, and if you are even +EV.

Pair of queens of hearts w dealer bj: 1000x


Pair of queens of hearts: 200x



Same rank same suit ten value cards: 25x



Suited 20: 10x


Unsuited 20: 4x

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Eliot has some numbers about this on his site. I'm not sure if he calculates variance

The DI for LL is 10.7. The SD per 100 hands, making a wager only when the AP has the edge, is 13.5 units. This is based on using the "Ten Count," not a horribly uncorrelated count like REKO. I also provide an optimal count in my post.

card counting the lucky ladies blackjack side bet

fear loathing and blackjack side bets

What is REKO?

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

What is REKO?

Ridiculously Easy Knock Out

Quote: teliot

Ridiculously Easy Knock Out

Oh. That's not going to work.

Yeah, if you want to use REKO the key count for this side bet is probably much higher than +3. I'm actually not sure what it is but I'm fairly certain its higher than +3. I'd also recommend looking into a risk-adverse index number for this play.

Variance in gambling is related only to the payouts and the approximate odds of each payout. It can be calculated directly. I'd recommend the OP go through this process because it is a nice exercise.

I got the +3 from a post on the now defunct blackjackinfo.com from a long time veteran.

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=20896

I used the +3 count just like KO because they are exactly the same.

Also I use REKO w top 18 indexes....does that mean I'm essentially using KO? Either way casino verite has a REKO version w indexes which I use.

Oh wait don't I feel stupid. Initial running count for KO is -4, while it's -5 for REKO. That would indicate I've been under betting the LL10 side bet if anything.

Thanks Teliot.