Looking into card counting

A/5 sounds great at first but the RoR on it according to some youtube videos is very high (like 50+%). Can someone confirm?

I don't care what the player advantage is. A 0.1% advantage is fine as long as the Bankroll req are not in the 6 figures (prefer not too far into the 5 figures) and the risk of getting backed off / banned is almost nil. Just looking to get comps without getting backed off, while not risking ruin more than a reasonable amount.

Quote: Talldude90

A/5 sounds great at first but the RoR on it according to some youtube videos is very high (like 50+%). Can someone confirm?

I don't care what the player advantage is. A 0.1% advantage is fine as long as the Bankroll req are not in the 6 figures (prefer not too far into the 5 figures) and the risk of getting backed off / banned is almost nil. Just looking to get comps without getting backed off, while not risking ruin more than a reasonable amount.
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Well, that surprised me. I didn't know that Ace 5 was designed by our own Wizard.

I see in that video, he talks about 1-15 bet spread. I doubt you'd go un-noticed if you ramped that.

How would you propose to ramp your bets? According to Kelly?

Back of the envelope before I watched his estimation...
Assuming $50,000 bankroll at risk, max wager the same percentage as your edge (Roughly kelly sized for BlackJack) = $50,000 x 0.1% = $50. Even assuming very aggressive wonging in or out, say you get to make that max wager 10 times per hour, that's $500 per hour. on which you make 0.1% which is 50cents per hour.
So the game won't cost in on that. You need comps. So, what comps do you expect on $500 play per hour? My casino would be good for three free coffees per hour. $:o)
Now having watched the video, with his 1-15 spread and £20k bankroll, he came up with an hourly of 73c, so we mostly agree on that and an RoR of 80%

Seriously, why use A-5 when Hi-Lo is really pretty simple. You could use Hi-Lo and barely ramp your bets at all, say 1 - 2 - 4 and looking just like a Martingaler , you could just grind away hour after hour for a better hourly.

Talldude90,

While quite simple, the A/5 system is weak, and unless the game has extremely liberal rules, A/5 will not give shift the edge from the house to the player.

If you are looking for an easy card counting system, I would suggest "reKO" ("ridiculously easy KO"), which was developed by Norm Wattenberger and is explained here:

https://www.qfit.com/rekostrategy.htm

Hope this helps!

Dog Hand

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
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Hi Eliot,
I posted this about HUH in another thread and think you might not notice it. Let me try to ask you here. I found your 888casino article very interesting. It lists the basic strategy for HUH in four spreadsheets, each about 21M in size, but I cannot download them for some season. Can you help?

If I have them, I will be able to compare HUH with the UTH online calculator. However, there is another problem. Your results were calculated using this bad-beat-odds pay table (straight or better 500-50-10-8-5), but the casino I play has a cheaper one (straight or better 500-25-6-5-4). How much does this affect the strategy? To an extreme degree, if we totally remove the bad beat bonus, how will the strategy change?

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

at about 1:56 in the vid you say_______


"there are much stronger ways to beat the house than ordinary card counting"


it would be very interesting to me, and perhaps to others, to hear your list of these ways


.

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

at about 1:56 in the vid you say_______


"there are much stronger ways to beat the house than ordinary card counting"


it would be very interesting to me, and perhaps to others, to hear your list of these ways


.
link to original post

There are no other ways, as far as I know. I mean legal ways.

Quote: aceside

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

at about 1:56 in the vid you say_______


"there are much stronger ways to beat the house than ordinary card counting"


it would be very interesting to me, and perhaps to others, to hear your list of these ways


.
link to original post

There are no other ways, as far as I know. I mean legal ways.
link to original post

I think you would be surprised. Elliot is one of the foremost experts on beating casino games.

Quote: DRich

Quote: aceside

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

at about 1:56 in the vid you say_______


"there are much stronger ways to beat the house than ordinary card counting"


it would be very interesting to me, and perhaps to others, to hear your list of these ways


.
link to original post

There are no other ways, as far as I know. I mean legal ways.
link to original post

I think you would be surprised. Elliot is one of the foremost experts on beating casino games.
link to original post

He has beaten many games, including Baccarat.

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

at about 1:56 in the vid you say_______


"there are much stronger ways to beat the house than ordinary card counting"


it would be very interesting to me, and perhaps to others, to hear your list of these ways


.
link to original post

Visit my website https://www.advancedadvantageplay.com ...

Quote: teliot

And I would recommend you do absolutely anything else other than count cards:

https://youtu.be/E1U-LQDUCf0
link to original post

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What He said.

It really is a chore and at those kind of RoR, it's an insane grind, never worthwhile in its own right. Maybe the counting is good for the amusement if you must play BlackJack to grind out a wagering requirement.
There are way so many better ways to earn $1 an hour.

Thank you, Eliot. I just found some of these HUH files in your website
https://www.advancedadvantageplay.com ...
And I successfully downloaded them.

Again, the biggest thing is not getting backed off. So hi-lo is good for that as long as you don't vary your bets significantly (and don't play the exceptions)? I don't mind learning a card counting technique, but I don't want to spend 20-40 hours or more training how to do something and then get kicked out. My goal is just to get free hotel rooms and possibly a meal or a show ticket every now and then. I say free there, because I would like to be able to do that (in this case maintain that) without having to spend a significant amount of money. At this point I already spent a good bit playing Illinois duces to get diamond status to avoid having to pay resort fees. I am at this point trying to determine withier to do some sort of card counting or to research all the variable state plays on this site and try to find those. It seems simpler to memorize card counting than the slot plays, but it also seems more dangerous.

I don't think card counting helps when you're losing 2/3rds of your hands.

Care to elaborate? This seems like you are just taking a shot at me, but maybe I am just taking this the wrong way.

There could be a 1,000 hand stretch where you have terrible luck and if you're card counting, you raise your bets accordingly, and you still lose. You'll lose much more as those high value hands get defeated. You expect to be winning by a certain amount based on EV, but months and months later you'll end up in the loss column because those high value hands didn't pan out. Casinos might be doing counters a service by refusing their high bets because it's ruinous to players during a losing streak.

Quote: Talldude90

Care to elaborate? This seems like you are just taking a shot at me, but maybe I am just taking this the wrong way.
link to original post

ChumpChange rather abruptly referred to variance and it's potential impact.
As the count goes high, you increase your wager. Keep losing and you keep betting and losing high. It's not unknown to get 86'd just after you've lost several max bets, but before getting the ones that win.

Hi-Lo really is quite simple. You can practice online at zero cost.

Ok. But. Simply, the goal here is to never get backed off, to hopefully be +EV (but if necessary even), and get enough "theo" and or play to keep the mailers (free weekend nights) coming, while having a low RoR (like 1%) with a bankroll in the 10-20k range.

The more I talk, the more I feel taking variable state games at an even EV to be a more palatable option.

If your goal is to NEVER get backed off, blackjack is not the route to go. You will absolutely, with 100% certainty, get backed off from blackjack... EVENTUALLY. You can have a lighter spread, use cover plays, and basically beat your EV down to 1/2 of what it should be. Then it comes down to the pit/surveillance. If you're at a lazy place, sure this might buy you some more time. How much? Um, a month, a year, a couple years? However, if you're at a sharp place, or run in to the wrong pit on the wrong day, you could get booted on literally any given session, regardless of cover plays.

At the end of the day you're in beggars can't be choosers spot, in my opinion. You want something with an edge that you can play and never get backed off. That's a catch 22 in an of itself. ANYTHING with an edge will have variance and be subject to ban pending frequency and in some cases just raw profit. Yes, casinos kick people out who aren't even AP's just for winning too much. News at 5: Casinos are absolutely stupid.

You could slot hustle, promotion hustle, etc, etc... but if you want regular mailers you need regular play. If you can find another game to accomplish this goal, then good luck to you and that's the way to go. If you're a weekend warrior that doesn't want to do a ton of research (given your first post started with questions about A-5 count, a non long term profitable count in my professional opinion, this would 'appear' to be the bucket you fall in) then there is nothing wrong with blackjack. Just know though that eventually everyone gets the boot. Might be months, could be years. If you're only going to play once a week on the weekends, you'll have more longevity. If you find success and love it and want to count every single night, then your longevity at any 1 casino goes way down simply from the amount of exposure going way up.

If you do decide to go the blackjack route, I actually have 3 articles on this very sight I'd recommend you read and use to make an informed decision on how to move forward with your specific case:

https://wizardofvegas.com/articles/A-to-Z-Counting-Cards-in-Blackjack/
https://wizardofvegas.com/articles/A-to-Z-Counting-Cards-In-Blackjack-2/
https://wizardofvegas.com/articles/A-to-Z-Counting-Cards-in-Blackjack-3/