Best course of action under such circumstances

Basic Rules are as followed:

6 decks
Blackjack pays 3 to 2
Doubling on 9-11
Dealer stands on soft 17
Double after split allowed
No Re-splitting aces
No Surrender
Dealer No Hole card

Bet spread of 20-500


This is a CSM game, however the dealer plays out approximately 20-25% of the 6 decks before shuffling the 6 decks.
There is also a rolling commission of 1.2% (E.g change 1,000 chips for 1012 Non-Negotiable Chips)


What is the expected advantage for the player under such circumstances? And is it possible to apply a card counting strategy to maximize the edge here? Thanks for any valuable input!

Quote: MBSBJ

Bet spread of 20-500

Really?

Erm, Yes ? 1:25

blackjack house edge calculator says that the game has about a .6% house edge. Add in the change commission, and it's 1.8% (which isn't quite correct*).

The CSM and the commission combine to keep the player from having an advantage, ever. That may be quite good penetration for a CSM, but it's quite poor penetration in general.

The best course of action under these circumstances is to find a better game to play.




*Since the "rolling commission" is only applied when you buy (or change) in, it doesn't apply evenly once you've won a hand (it gets lower if you're wrinning). However, it's still unfavorable, and I don't think it's worth calculating how unfavorable.

The commission actually lowers the house edge, not increase, you get $1012 in chips for every $1,000 cash you put up.

More info @ :

Quote: MBSBJ

The commission actually lowers the house edge, not increase, you get $1012 in chips for every $1,000 cash you put up.

Sorry for misunderstanding.

Your description sounds... strange. If it works the way as described in the link, that makes more sense. (It sounds like a "rebate", not a "commission".)

Card counting may be able to help develop a slight edge, but not enough for me to want to play it.


If you get comps as well as the rebate (and they're calculated in a usual way), it makes sense to bet larger than minimum - 100 or 200. Since card counting doesn't work (in my subjective opinion), flat betting is the way to go.

Quote: MBSBJ

The commission actually lowers the house edge, not increase, you get $1012 in chips for every $1,000 cash you put up.

More info @ : http://wizardofmacau.com/general/deadchip.html

Is there some kind of time limit you have to play or something? Why not buy in for $100,000, get $101,200 and walk away, cash out up $1,200 every day?

Even with this "bonus" the game is pretty poor and is going to have ridiculous swings in variance that I'm quite confident your bankroll doesn't allow. $500 max bet, in a wild game like that... So you have like a $75K bankroll then?

Theoretically, it is possible to count the CSM game with the ultra-thin edge if you are willing to wong-out aggressively. Read http://discountgambling.net/2012/07/27/counting-csm-blackjack-ev/

Is there any limitation on the maximum buy-in for the non-negotiable chips? If not, it seems to be a positive game already. The HE is 0.52232%% (if Player can resplit up to 4 hands) and the bonus chip is 1.2%.
I won't even bother doing card-counting to draw any heat. I would just keep buying the NON-negotiable chips and cycle the money as fast as possible based on the bankroll.

The dead chips do not move the house edge 1.2% towards the player. A perusal of the wizard's dead chip site reveals they are worth a little less than half the rebate value at baccarat, so we can make a similar assumption at blackjack. That is, I think they are worth a little less than 0.6%.

So without counting you are probably running at a razor-thin player's edge, and then you could squeeze out a little more with some aggressive CSM counting. There's a small edge, enough that I would do it casually if I was in town, but not big enough to hit hard.

Quote: dwheatley

The dead chips do not move the house edge 1.2% towards the player. A perusal of the wizard's dead chip site reveals they are worth a little less than half the rebate value at baccarat, so we can make a similar assumption at blackjack. That is, I think they are worth a little less than 0.6%.

So without counting you are probably running at a razor-thin player's edge, and then you could squeeze out a little more with some aggressive CSM counting. There's a small edge, enough that I would do it casually if I was in town, but not big enough to hit hard.

Thanks for pointing it out. According to wizard's webpage at http://wizardofmacau.com/general/deadchip.html,
the face value = 1 - HE/(Probability of losing) = 1 - 0.5223%/49.1% = 0.989
face value of $1012 non-negotiable chips = $1000.868