8 deck game 50% penetration

hi to everyone, i'm new in this forum and i'm luca.
'm starting to playing in william hill casino online with live dealer with 8 deck and 50% of penetration, is it beatable?
If the answer is yes, how can i find something to beat them?
ty all

Yes, it can be beaten. You'll need a large spread. How large will depend on the rules of the game. With the very best rules I would not spread less that 1-30. Will that be allowed by the casino? You'll need a very large bankroll to cover the wild variance that you will encounter.

This is just an estimate. If you come back and provide the rules perhaps someone can be more specific. I would never play with that penetration online or in a casino.

Have much familiarity with that game. Very barely beatable, and counting it is crushingly boring. Bonuses can be good to practice with, but it's no road to riches unless you are rich to start with. There was a guy counting at a VERY similar establishment. He ramped from £5 or £10 through £100, £300 to £500 on TC+3. Could not have been more conspicuous. I know he did it for many months but haven't seen him around for a month or so. I suspect he either ruined himself, or got his account terminated with extreme predudice (bankroll can be confiscataed by the casino at their discretion under the rules). If you are reading this (you know who you are, B) then please PM me.

As 1BB mentioned it's beatable...but barely and what is the point. You would need a huge bankroll, and there would be wild swings of variance. It's not a playable game in my opinion.

Quote: vendman1

As 1BB mentioned it's beatable...but barely and what is the point. You would need a huge bankroll, and there would be wild swings of variance. It's not a playable game in my opinion.

It is very wongable. I found it too boring to count in any professional way. Good for counting practice.

You would likely make more money and enjoy yourself more if you were working the graveyard shift at a gas station in the middle of Iowa during a winter storm..... than playing that game........Oh God.....a 50% 8-decker?!

Quote: RS

You would likely make more money and enjoy yourself more if you were working the graveyard shift at a gas station in the middle of Iowa during a winter storm..... than playing that game........Oh God.....a 50% 8-decker?!

Heyyyy. Do Iowa gas station attendants get the free use of an internet connection?

Quote: vendman1

As 1BB mentioned it's beatable...but barely and what is the point. You would need a huge bankroll, and there would be wild swings of variance. It's not a playable game in my opinion.

The problem is waiting for the plus counts. At 50% pen you'd be lucky to see TC +2 maybe 10% of the time. Plus 5? I wouldn't hold my breath. It's so bad that I doubt many have bothered to sim it.

Quote: 1BB

The problem is waiting for the plus counts. At 50% pen you'd be lucky to see TC +2 maybe 10% of the time. Plus 5? I wouldn't hold my breath. It's so bad that I doubt many have bothered to sim it.

Exactly so. I've counted with Hi-Lo and opt!! and I'd guestimate that I'd have about 20 to 30 betting opportunities with TC +2 in a long evening of back counting, and thats even when hopping away from tables where TC -2 makes it obvious that a shoe is a waste of time.
To see a TC+4 might occur once every couple of days, and even then for very few hands.

If it's an online casino it probably cannot be beaten because they cheat.

Quote: sc15

If it's an online casino it probably cannot be beaten because they cheat.

I have to disagree. I've had nothing but the fairest of treatment by the 5 establishments that I've used. They have some rather ropey bonus wagering requirements, and highish edges on slots, and they make the odd error, but I'm actually impressed by them. Live Dealer games would find cheating difficult to conceal. Other 'Cheating' such as simply not paying out or debiting bank accounts without authority just doesn't seem in evidence. Even RNG blackjack seems, to my extensive experience, to NOT be gaffed at all. My very first week with one such, they paid me >£6k of winnings with speed and good grace. Cheating would just be stupid when the business model and house edge is so good for them.

Quote: sc15

If it's an online casino it probably cannot be beaten because they cheat.

I'll never be able to prove that because I will never play online.

Quote: OnceDear

I have to disagree. I've had nothing but the fairest of treatment by the 5 establishments that I've used. They have some rather ropey bonus wagering requirements, and highish edges on slots, and they make the odd error, but I'm actually impressed by them. Live Dealer games would find cheating difficult to conceal. Other 'Cheating' such as simply not paying out or debiting bank accounts without authority just doesn't seem in evidence. Even RNG blackjack seems, to my extensive experience, to NOT be gaffed at all. My very first week with one such, they paid me >£6k of winnings with speed and good grace. Cheating would just be stupid when the business model and house edge is so good for them.

Gaffing a live dealer game is easy. Just take some 10s or aces out.

Quote: sc15

Gaffing a live dealer game is easy. Just take some 10s or aces out.

True online or offline.

At my preferred online casino, each day, when they first put the decks into the shoes, they are spread face up in front of all to see. Those same cards are played throughout the day and are always visible to players, in the shoe, being played or being shuffled. Besides, after a few days of counting, it would soon be conspicuous if the rolling count was at -ve for significantly more than half the time.

Quote: OnceDear

True online or offline.

At my preferred online casino, each day, when they first put the decks into the shoes, they are spread face up in front of all to see. Those same cards are played throughout the day and are always visible to players, in the shoe, being played or being shuffled. Besides, after a few days of counting, it would soon be conspicuous if the rolling count was at -ve for significantly more than half the time.

Well any US casino is regulated.

It's not illegal for an online casino to cheat you. (It's illegal for them to operate, but that's a whole different story).

i'm italian and i don't understand everything what you write LOL so for example if the minimun bet is 1$ how big should be my bankroll?
and what is the spread that you write?

Quote: OneMoreTime

i'm italian and i don't understand everything what you write LOL so for example if the minimun bet is 1$ how big should be my bankroll?
and what is the spread that you write?

Hi OneMoreTime (I'l call you OMT)

Simple stuff first.
To beat any Blackjack game you need to use a card counting system. That in itself is easy. The count (True Count as it's called) will indicate when the house edge is gone and the game is starting to be in your favour. It's only ever a VERY VERY tiny percentage advantage to you. E.g. normally the house edge on that game is 0.7% in favour of the dealer. at True count greater than +2 the edge might be roughly 0.3 to 0.5% in your favour. But that count will be pretty rare, maybe one hand in 10 or 20 will be favourable. So this is where spread comes in. It's the difference between what you bet per hand when you expect to lose, compared to what you bet per hand when you expect to win.
Typically, when the count is not in your favour, you place minimum bets. You do so to keep your seat and you expect to lose slowly. When the count goes in your favour, you GREATLY increase your bet. The hope is that what you win with the advantage will more than wipe out what you were losing at min stakes. Alternatively you don't bet at all unless the count is favourable. That's called Wonging out or back counting. Minimum bet doesn't matter then.

Now, sit down when you read this.....
All calculations below are approximate.

Lets say you want to profit by €10 per hour for this 'work', and that you only bet when you have a +0.5% advantage.
From experience you will bet no more than 10 hands per hour at that game, probably waiting 2 or 3 hours before you see your first chance.
So, each hand played must make you, on average, €1
At 0.5% advantage, each bet must be €200
BUT you won't actually make €1 on any hand: you may lose €200 or win €200 or occasionally €300.
In other words even playing perfectly, your bankroll will swing MASSIVELY losing hundreds or thousands of Euro some days and winning hundreds or thousands on others. Some days will go by without you placing one bet. Most of the time you will be counting and seeing no advantage. To survive even perfectly ordinary random chance, you need to balance your betting over many tens of thousands of bets or maybe thousands of days. Those €200 bets must be small compared to your bankroll if you are not to crash and burn, losing all you have. You have to be happy to win or lose thousands, maybe tens of thousands in a week. A rule of thumb that is commonly applied is to have a bankroll of 100 times your individual bet.

Now, ask yourself. If you have €20,000 to play with and risk, why would you slave away for €10 per hour?

Go and read posts by Romes, where he explains this mathematically.

hi oncedear hi written what you wrote and in the first part where you talk about card counting it's ok, in fact i've done 2 days ago a card counting program (i've uploaded a photo so you can see it ) .
there are 3 button for counting rounning count, carte viste means ( how many hands i saw on table), n' mazzi means number of decks saw , mazzi rimasti means n' of deck in the sabot and the true count.
beside of this there is a little chart with bet accorting to kelly's basic and the basic strategy chart for 8 deck.
For banrkoll i read kelly's basic and with minimun bet 1 euro, it tell that my bankroll should be something like 265 euros.
Is it wrong?

I'll reply fully by IM.

If you are doing this for fun, fair enough. But you are working in entirely the wrong magnitude of betting. Your hourly rate of profit will be very roughly 1/200 of what I would deem a bare minimum €10 per hour. You would be slaving away to make an average of 5 cents an hour.

okok so what's in my last post wrong? i'm sorry but i'm new in bj.
i would need something like a trail to improve my knowledge in this game.
and the most important question are:
1- If minimum bet is 1euro how big must be my bankroll?
2- how i should bet?

Quote: OneMoreTime

okok so what's in my last post wrong? i'm sorry but i'm new in bj.
i would need something like a trail to improve my knowledge in this game.
and the most important question are:
1- If minimum bet is 1euro how big must be my bankroll?
2- how i should bet?

Nothing dramatically wrong except for the smallness of the amounts you suggest. Bankroll size is subjective and dependent on how much risk you want to take. If we assume that TC+3 is so rare as to not matter, which it pretty much is in this case, then you do suggest a bankroll of approx 100 x you max bet. That bankroll will last you a long time, in much the same way as it will take you a VERY long time to double it. Do you want to spend a year counting to make maybe €300 (+/-€3000). Just multiply everything in your suggested values by maybe 100 or 200

Quote: OneMoreTime

okok so what's in my last post wrong? i'm sorry but i'm new in bj.
i would need something like a trail to improve my knowledge in this game.
and the most important question are:
1- If minimum bet is 1euro how big must be my bankroll?
2- how i should bet?

A couple people have given you the summed up answer of No... because while "technically" and "mathematically" the game is beatable, it is not realistic to think you'll be taking it down any time soon. Penetration (PEN) is one of the most important factors in counting as this helps a counter see more profitable situations. The more PEN you get, the more often you'll be betting more and making EV over the long run.

A game that's 8D 50% PEN is awful. If one were to play an 8D game, They should go for under 2 decks PEN, meaning 6+ decks are shuffled out (75%+ PEN). With 50% PEN, you'll see positive counts very rarely, so to compensate you will need to bet much harder on the true counts you do see... Having your max bet out probably at TC +3. When you do this (jack your spread up to take advantage of the fewer amount of positive true counts) this also jacks up your variance, which in turn increases your bankroll requirements. Let's pretend this is a $10 game. You'd want to have your max bet ($200?) out by TC +3. On this 1:20 spread (others have already suggested higher even) you would need probably MORE than a $40,000 bankroll because your max bet is out so early it's going to drive more variance. So unless you have $50,000+ to devote to this game, which you'd probably make about $20/hour, then I wouldn't count it.

Thus, technically/mathematically beatable... 1) not worth it. 2) you probably don't have the bankroll to do it.

To answer your 2 questions above... Your bankroll is defined by a few things, the minimum bet is not very important other than taking your total spread in to account. As shown above, if your max bet is $200 at TC +3, you'd probably need around a $50,000 bankroll to get your Risk of Ruin (RoR) down low enough to withstand all of the wild swings.

Next, how you should bet... Your bet spread is also a variable of many things. What can you get away with and not get kicked out/banned for? What can you afford? Is your spread within the limits of your bankroll? Often times a spread or a bankroll will drive each other. If you have $X bankroll, then you can figure out your max bet and thus work backwards to find your spread, etc.

I would highly suggest checking out my A-Z Counting Cards in Blackjack thread, as all of this and a lot more is broken down in fine detail and explained.