Has the Wizard made a mistake??

I can't help but notice that the Wizard's Blackjack survey page seems to make a number of mistakes in the "BJ Pays" column. Or am i not understanding this column? lol

for example:

He lists all of the "Switch-L" games with BJ Pays at 1.5. Doesn't Switch pay even money on BJ?

Likewise, he lists all of the "TU21" games with BJ paying 1.5 as well. Doesn't Triple Up pay even money on BJ?

Even lists "1-1" games with the definition: The even more dreaded game where blackjacks only pay 1 to 1 (ouch!). Yet, his chart shows BJ Payout at 1.25

am i missing something here? We all know the Wizard is borderline genius. How can this be?

Yes, I did. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Not that it is a good excuse, but it wasn't easy getting the CBJN in Excel into what you see. I made a formatting error when I tried to distinguish between the stingy and liberal versions of BJ Switch last month. I can't fix that from where I'm at, but it will be corrected tomorrow (Jan 3). Again, I always appreciate corrections. My sites would not be nearly as good if it weren't thousands of other eyeballs letting me know when I blow it.

my pleasure - your work has been a very valuable source of research for me.

speaking of EXcel - is there any chance this survey could be provided as a downloadable spreadsheet in the future. i would love to be able to sort the spreadsheet by house advantage / game / etc etc - so i can water it down to a short list of must-play casinos.

and - last question - given the extremely low HA of Switch-L, do you know of any card-counting systems that you suspect can beat this game? My QFit software is not really very helpful with SWitch - but my instincts are telling me that a high card count would help the switch player 'make' more 20 and 21 hands - as well as aid in doubling down. but of course - the 1:1 payout on BJ negates the usual gains associated with counting.

has anyone done any serious work on this game?

Quote: Transender46

my pleasure - your work has been a very valuable source of research for me.

speaking of EXcel - is there any chance this survey could be provided as a downloadable spreadsheet in the future. i would love to be able to sort the spreadsheet by house advantage / game / etc etc - so i can water it down to a short list of must-play casinos.

and - last question - given the extremely low HA of Switch-L, do you know of any card-counting systems that you suspect can beat this game? My QFit software is not really very helpful with SWitch - but my instincts are telling me that a high card count would help the switch player 'make' more 20 and 21 hands - as well as aid in doubling down. but of course - the 1:1 payout on BJ negates the usual gains associated with counting.

has anyone done any serious work on this game?

I'm always happy to be of help. I just corrected the table, by the way.

You can always copy and paste the table into Excel yourself. The source spreadsheet is very messy, and contains information on penetration I can't give out, per my agreement with Stanford Wong.

Regarding counting BJ Switch, I keep hearing rumors that there are players counting the game, but I don't know of any published strategy for doing so. James Grosjean, I believe, is studying the game, and may have something unpublished on it. Another mountain yet to be officially climbed in that game is the publication of a decent switching strategy. I'd do so myself if I had the time.

Wizard,

Didn't you already publish a switching strategy? What I did was put your basic strategy into Excel and then put the table of expected returns on top of it.

Then I add the expected returns of the two combinations and take the higher value. I get funny looks from the casino and other players using this card but I'm allowed to use it.

I really have thought about the counting strategy for blackjack switch as well. Certainly the strategy would need to be changed based on the push on 22. I thought that counting wouldn't make a difference but after thinking about it some more I figured that since the dealer is still getting one set of cards you definitely can take advantage of some things.

But there a few things to consider.

- Because you have the power to switch and the dealer's ability to push two ways instead of one, does that take away from the power of counting?
- In a negative count situation, having low valued cards together works to your advantage because you can combine them differently to give you favorable advantages (for example, four low cards together have more ways to yield cards that give you more doubling possibilities.
- Because players receive four cards instead of two, your count can be adjusted more after the cards have been dealt.

My feeling is that the end result of creating a counting strategy for switch will result in creating lower spreads based on the count and strategy changes with higher counts.