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Answering Reader Questions Wanted to respond to this reader email, full of questions and misunderstandings. I'm dividing up the email into bite-sized chunks: I've read all three of your blackjack publications and find them all incredibly innovative and groundbreaking. That being said, my question is about the eight deck shoe games. Living in Queens, NY, i take the two plus hour drive to Atlantic City quite often, especially in the summer, and am restricted to only the eight deck shoes. A: This doesn't sound right to me. There are 6 deck games too (and 5 deck shuffle machine games) and even some pitch games in Atlantic City (as this reader admits shortly afterward). This premise doesn't make sense - that you are "restricted to the eight deck games." I'm not sure, but I'm suspicious that this question was sent by a casino guy, who wants people to play these games. I might be wrong, though, and I'll keep an open mind. (Sorry if I sound testy, but players don't typically ask these questions. It's the casino guys, who work for casinos that offer only these inferior games, who typically ask the questions, often at my book events, to make it seem as if players have no choice. They HAVE to play the worst games. Well, they DON'T.) In all of your books you seem to be consistent in your thoughts that we should be avoiding these type of games. Is there an approach in your book(s) that i am either not seeing/ understanding on the 8 deck shoes, or is it possible the books are outdated for todays blackjack games. A: Again, this seems like someone who is not up front about the true reason for posing these questions. I began my career in Atlantic City, playing the 6- and 8-deck shoe games. I did very well, thank you (and that was before I'd even come up with the even more precise methods and discoveries that came from my most recent years of card behavior studies). No. It's not outdated. In fact, my books are the most state-of-the-art books on the market today, and I'm not the only one who has said that. They've been widely recognized as such. Now, when I say 8-deck games suck it's because they do. Casinos didn't add decks to the game to make them easier, do they? Plus, if you read any of the better Old School books, they all warn you that your odds of winning go down with each additional deck added to the game. Your choice to play the 8-deck games is foolish - especially given the fact that you have better alternatives in Atlantic City!! Moreover, can you not fly? There are great blackjack games to be found in many states nowadays. If you can drive the long distance to Atlantic City, I'm sure you're well enough to fly to, say, Las Vegas, where great games are to be had at many of its 150+ casinos. I am presently using the Circle of 13, but with eight decks against me... I feel that the shuffle tracking is impossible to follow. A: OK, this is also a canard, and a mixing of two concepts. The Circle of 13 is a learning tool. I made that clear in Cutting Edge Blackjack. It is simply to teach you some important concepts. The Circle of 13 is akin to the scales and arpeggios pianists learn before they go on to play real pieces. It's a way for newcomers to state-of-the-art blackjack to "get it." The card strategies you should use - if you're foolish enough to play the 8-deck games - come after that very early chapter, which should be obvious. Did you not read beyond the first few chapters? This canard has been raised by one or two Old School writers, desperate and unable to find anything to criticize in my books (which make their books antiquated). So they bring up my learning tool, The Circle of 13, and pretend as if they actually read my book and understood this chapter, and then say: "Well, this isn't what you'd use to play." Well, duh. I say that in my book. It's a LEARNING TOOL. And it's a GREAT learning tool, which apparently threatens some people, people who don't want you to know what it teaches. Just as a classical pianist must learn arpeggios in order to play sonatas and concertos, you, the blackjack player, must learn the Circle of 13 in order to have the proper fundamentals. Hopefully, I've put that ridiculous twisting of the facts to rest. Now, with shuffle tracking (you're changing subjects here), yes, it's harder with an 8-deck game than with the better games. That's why I suggest in my books that you don't play the 8-deck games. But, if you're stubborn and want to, then you'd better work on your memory skills and be ready to accept lower profits from a less winnable game. Your choice. I've seen the pitch games in Trump Plaza but the cards are face down and the dealers only deal themselves one card face up, dealing the traditional hole card face up after all play has concluded. These are games i feel should be avoided. A: OK. So now you admit you have much better alternatives than to play the 8-deck games. I'm puzzled. I'm taking your question at face value - in other words, let's say that you're not a casino guy with an axe to grind. Now, if you've really read my books, as you say you have, you know I introduced, in Cutting Edge Blackjack, a huge historic breakthrough method that now allows me (and hence all other players who read my books) to identify the facedown cards you describe. So players no longer are handicapped by this facedown situation, instituted by casinos in the 1960s to try to thwart card counters. Re-read Cutting Edge Blackjack for the two chapters on that method and don't avoid those games. Those are your best bet The reason I post this Q&A here is that the questions smack of oft-repeated disinformation the casino industry and/or competing authors (with outdated books) throw out. It doesn't stick and hopefully I've just laid it to rest. Why The Old School Methods Are
...Another in a series of examples showing you why the Old School methods of basic strategy and card counting are hopelessly antiquated and faulty. First, what is the Hi-Lo count? The Hi-Lo card counting method is the one the MIT teams of yore used. Created in the 1960s (and not by the MIT teams), it assigned a count of +1 to 2s through 6s and a count of -1 to 10s and Aces and ignored the other cards. The count? Zero. What on Earth does that tell you? That's supposed to tell you the cards are balanced. But are they really? (Take a good look.) The cards are not balanced. (Another example of why I say the Hi-Lo system is hopelessly inaccurate.) The table is heavy in high cards - 8s through 10s (there are already as many 10s as should appear by the end of this round, if this were a balanced situation). These are the cards that would usually be necessary to bust the dealer's 2; now, they're much less likely to come the dealer's way. And no Aces have been dealt. So they're more likely to come the dealer's way; this is a card that would be highly helpful to the dealer. Nor have 4s, 5s, 6s or 7s been dealt; these are also now likely to come the dealer's way and help the dealer avoid busting. Now, my research has shown that the dealer 2's busting rate given this mix is in the low 20-percentile range; well below the 35% rate the Old Schoolers claim is characteristic of the dealer 2. In other words, the dealer is highly likely to achieve a good score here. My studies have also shown that the dealer's 2 achieves some of the highest scores of any up card. Looking at its score profile, which I developed for Cutting Edge Blackjack, you can see that it achieves point totals of 20 and 21 more than 25% of the time (which is the third best 20-points-or-higher average of any dealer up card, behind the Ace and 10) - and that assumes a balanced card situation (which is true any time you do a global statistical survey). The probability that the dealer would achieve a 20 or 21 point hand actually would be higher than 25% in this card example, however, given the imbalance. So, is this a great time for the 3rd baseman to split those 8s? FYI: 2s and 3s have also been over-dealt and are unlikely to come your way; these cards would have been highly helpful, boosting the 8s to great starting totals of 10 or 11 points. 'Not likely to happen now. My research has also shown that most of the cards highly likely to come next (because none has been dealt yet) are devastating if you get them on your split 8s - namely the 4s, 5s, 6s and 7s. We don't have to go into numbers here; you can see they create stiff totals (bustable hands) of 12, 13, 14 and 15 points. And, as you might know, with most of these totals (except the 12 point hand), the Old School basic strategy approach tells you to stand, which almost guarantees that you'll lose in this card situation since the dealer has a nearly 80% likelihood of NOT busting. Plus - even if one of the 8s draws an Ace (one of the more likely cards to fall on the split hands), 19 points is unlikely to beat the dealer given the mix of cards. The imbalance (in the undealt card stack) being heavy in low cards all but ensures a high dealer total. So, once again, the Old School methods totally mislead you. The Hi-Lo count tells you the cards are balanced (wrong), therefore they would tell you to play according to (Old School) basic strategy. And Old School basic strategy then gives you a double whammy here: First, it tells you to put twice the money down (to split the 8s) in a losing situation (wrong!). Second, it instructs you to play those split 8s wrong, making it even more likely you'll lose. If you stand on stiff totals (your most likely 2-card hands), as basic strategy would dictate, you'll have a nearly 80% likelihood of losing each of those hands! So basic strategy makes you two times the fool. Just One Truth Blows Of all the breakthroughs that have come from my 10+ years of research into blackjack, card behavior, shuffling, etc., one of them alone proves why the Old School methods are based upon a house of cards. And that is this discovery, which came early into my last major card study: dealer up card busting rates are NOT constant as the Old School types claimed. And without this, the Old School assumptions cannot be justified. Their whole claim to knowing “correct” card strategies is based upon the faulty and mistaken notion that you can accurately predict, always and forever, what the dealer's busting rate will be based upon the type of up card that's showing. And this is far from the truth. For one thing, the mathematical equation that was used to formulate the Old School basic strategy approach is dependent upon the notion that there's a “constant” you can plug in for all dealer up cards, reflecting a predictable busting rate. If there is no “constant,” the whole equation becomes untrue. And this is the case, as I've proven – dealer up card busting rates vary; they're not predictably constant. And, if you read some of the better (but now hopelessly antiquated) Old School books, you can see that those who developed those systems had an inkling that they were going down the wrong path, but chose to ignore their data. One book, for instance, talked about how his “numbers” (i.e., dealer busting rates) were different than other books, but that's because he ran many more millions of computer simulations. Hey, buddy. If your “constants” change over time, depending upon how many pretend blackjack rounds you run in your little computer (non-reflective of the realities of true card behavior, by the way) – then you don't have a “constant.” What is a “constant”? A constant is a scientific term for a number that never changes. For instance, the speed of light is a constant . So, if you board a space ship going the speed of light, we can always say: you're going 186,000 miles/second. Period. It doesn't depend on the number of passengers on board, the size of the ship, etc. This is a constant. However, dealer busting rates – as even newbies suspect – are all over the place. Lately, since I've been making players aware of this, the Old School types are trying to gloss over this severe flaw in their understanding of the game, and in the creation of their strategies. They poo-poo this reality, saying, “well there are short-term vagaries” or some such horse poop. I've made this challenge before, but no Old School type dares to accept it because it will not only make me a lot of money, but it will also destroy their credibility in the eyes of anyone still thinking of using the Old School systems: Let's go to a casino that is preferably unaware we're there (so the Old School type can't pre-arrange the results). Or – even better – let's arrange to get security camera tapes from a variety of casinos, from days past, showing hours of blackjack action. Let's then choose segments reflecting the average number of hours a player would play in any given session, so we can see what the average player experiences, in the way of up card busting rates. For each up card that busts at a rate that fits the Old School mistaken notion, I'll pay the Old Schooler an agreed-upon amount. But, for each up card that does not bust at the “constant” rate the Old School books say it will, the Old Schooler will pay me the same agreed-upon amount, per up card. And we'll go public with the results. It'd be rare if even one of the up cards busted as the Old Schoolers say it should. When confronted with this challenge, the Old Schoolers usually grumble something about: “Yeah, well, that might be true, but it all works out when you play millions of rounds of action, blah blah blah.” Trouble is, none of you reading this column will come close to playing even one million rounds of blackjack. And fortunes are often lost in just one session, using the Old School methods. How could they not, when those methods are based upon “constants” that are not constant, and they don't give players scientific loss-limits methods? Players don't have a lifetime to try to make up the losses they incur following the faulty Old School methods, which are based upon mistaken notions. And who wants to spend a lifetime chasing inevitable losses anyway? What kind of system are they selling? If you ever get to corner an Old School yahoo, ask him to explain why he bases his strategies on “constants” that are not constant. As he uncomfortably hems and haws, you will see that you have your answer: the Old School guys make no sense. Why Basic Strategy Is
I'm fed up with all the Old School claptrap about basic strategy being "The Book," or "perfect" or created through "mathematically correct" computer-generated data. I've proven this to be wrong, many times over, through detailed explanations in Cutting Edge Blackjack, NEW Ways To Win MORE At Blackjack and in countless columns. I've shown you in excruciating detail how wrongheaded the Old School research was (from the pre-research assumptions - such as the wrong notion that dealer up cards have predictably constant busting rates, to the computer-generated pretend blackjack data they used, to the way they used the data - such as their simplistic and misused application of statistics). And then they took that bundle of garbage and hastily threw together a simplistic one-size-fits-all strategy that fits few situations properly (much as those one-size-fits-all socks fit no one). OK, but now I've decided to take this a step further: In the coming days, weeks and months, I'm going to show you LOTS of card examples, starting with the one above, to give you further proof of how incorrect the Old School advice is. Print this out and ask any of the Old School types to explain this. (I demonstrate this kind of thing at my seminars, all day long. It doesn't take long for players to realize how wrong they would be to follow this system; even more wrong to put money down on it!) Above, the dealer has a 5 as the up card. I've played out all the hands as the "wizard of odds" - one of the Old School types on the Internet, who presents himself as the knower of all - says they should be played. Yet, playing according to the "wizard's" basic strategy scheme, the last four hands were in fact played wrong! (No wonder. He writes: “This strategy is simply the best way to play every possible situation, without any knowledge of the distribution of the rest of the cards in the deck.” [my italics] The last part of that sentence is the kicker. He's asking you to check your brain at the door. Any good player of any card game does NOT play without any knowledge of the distribution of the rest of the cards in the deck! This is called: failing to pay attention to the cards! Either he's assuming you're too stupid to look at the cards and draw intelligent conclusions or he's trying to gloss over the utter failings of the strategy he's hawking. Basic's not the “best way” to play anything. As they say: you can pretend doo-doo is a lovely sight and anything but what it is - but it still smells. For, take a look: the truth is, in this common card example, the "wizard of odds" basic strategy system completely miscalculates the odds.) Now, before any of you say, yeah, basic sucks, but that's why you should count cards - look again. (Counting cards doesn't help you here.) The card count in this situation equals zero according to the half-century old Hi-Lo card counting system the MIT guys used! (This is arguably the most popular card counting system in the world today. But I don't mean to single it out; they all are faulty.) The count is zero! What does that tell you? Nothing! (And even that assessment - that the cards are "neutral" - is wrong.) For those of you unacquainted with the theory of card counting, a zero count supposedly tells you the cards are "neutral" or "balanced," and that you should play your hand in this situation according to basic strategy. But look again at the example. Are the cards really balanced here? They're off the chart in high cards. And four cards haven't been dealt at all! Yet, because the Hi-Lo system (and most card counting systems) does not factor in the 7s, 8s and 9s (which they ignore and consider "neutral" - go figure!), the Hi-Lo system is blind to this heavy imbalance of high cards!!! And the Hi-Lo system did not detect that the Aces, 3s, 4s and 6s have not appeared AT ALL! (Because it wasn't designed to detect this kind of important information, which its creators apparently didn't realize was important!) For any one card not to be represented is a glaring imbalance, but for four not to be represented (as is the case in this example) is a huge imbalance! (And, by the way, when the dealer gets an Ace in its hand - either as the hole card, third card, fourth card, etc. - the dealer's overall busting rate is a measley 8 percent! Compound this with the fact that the 3s, 4s and 6s, now overdue, will almost ensure that the dealer will not bust and you'll realize what no basic strategist or card counter can possibly figure out: this is not a player-friendly situation.) Now, in their (rare) moments of honesty, the Old School types admit that basic strategy ONLY WORKS WHEN THE CARDS ARE BALANCED. Yet, this is almost a mythical occurrence. To be balanced, the undealt cards have to (at all times, for basic to work) have the same percentage of each card in its mix as is the case in a freshly opened deck of cards, namely: each of the non-10s should each comprise 7.69 percent, or roughly 8 percent of the mix, and the 10s should comprise roughly 31 percent. WHEN DOES THIS HAPPEN??? Contact me if you EVER see it!!! The bottom line: A state-of-the-art player (using my system) would recognize that, in this not-atypical card example, the dealer is HIGHLY likely NOT to bust. The table is loaded with the cards that would combine with the 5 to bust the dealer. You need to be able to recognize these situations. The Old Schoolers would have you sit on totals of 12-16 points, which would have you lose more than not; and they'd have you double here, where that would only lead to twice your losses (it is not the time to put more money on the table; this is a case where the dealer is exceptionally strong!!!). You cannot afford to stand on stiffs when the dealer is so likely to score - you won't win very often doing that!!! ...Those 12-point hands especially - why would you stand on those in this situation, when the 10s, which are the only cards that could bust you, are overplayed and highly unlikely to come your way?! Furthermore, a state-of-the-art blackjack player (using my system) would know not to double here - as two players did, as you can see. You may say: well, gee, they lucked out, with the hit cards they got. Really? No. My research shows that the dealer's 5 scores high when it does not bust. For instance, it achieves scores of 19 points or better nearly 34% of the time when the cards are balanced. And here, that number would be much higher, skewed as it is toward low cards coming the dealer's way. So in this situation, that 18 point hand is a loser. What about the 19 point hand? A score of 19 is the average winning score, in a balanced situation. Here, where the dealer is going to achieve 20s and 21s much more than normally (normally being 23% of the time) it's not such a great score to have. Nonetheless, the player with the 19 point hand is the only one who really has any kind of chance. The sad thing is, the four players on the left were led astray by the faulty Old School "logic" behind basic strategy. They were made to lose when they would have had better shots of winning if they'd played according to a modern, state-of-the-art approach, based upon the latest card behavior information. Get the picture? Both basic strategy and card counting are highly faulty, ineffective and antiquated Old School methods - not to be followed anymore. Use them at your own risk. It's your money. Come back for more examples. I'm going to FILL this site with them until no one is foolish enough to follow the now-discredited systems first introduced in the 1950s and 1960s. (If you want to have some fun, take a deck of cards and lay out the example above. Then see how the dealer does. To make the results correct, play this situation out repeatedly and make a proper statistical analysis of how the dealer fares, over time, in this very same situation. This, in and of itself, will open your eyes. Plus, it's a great way to learn what blackjack is all about. In blackjack, we play the odds. That means, you make the move that wins the most for you, or, in a losing situation, cuts your losses as is appropriate. Here, you'll find the dealer occasionally busts. But not anywhere near 42 percent of the time - as the Old Schoolers say it should. Keep track of the scores the dealer achieves, too, and do a statistical analysis of how often the dealer reaches scores of 19, 20 and 21 points! You'll soon realize you cannot afford to sit on stiffs - hands of 12 through 16 points - here. And, to my knowledge, my system is the only one that: 1) identifies these situations; and 2) lets you know this is something you must consider, in analyzing the cards! For more powerful numbers regarding the dealer up cards, see Cutting Edge Blackjack. Barnes & Noble and other fine stores carry it. Or, if you're on a tight budget - try your library. If they don't have it yet, simply ask them and they'll be glad to order a copy for you. Libraries will order any book you request.) If You're Thinking of
I'd love to have the MIT teams' publicist...the one who claimed they were geniuses who invented their own fabulous system of playing and then made millions. The truth is - and the MIT guys who worked with Ben Mezrich on Bringing Down The House admitted this freely - they used the oldy moldy Hi-Lo card counting system, now nearly 50 years old, sorely antiquated and hopelessly ineffective. So, if you were fired up by Mezrich's book, that's great. Just don't use that system! It's hardly state-of-the-art. (If you think it is, you ought to be driving a 1964 Ford Fairlaine, because that's the era that gave birth to both "technologies." If, instead, you prefer today's cars and today's innovations, read on.) The above card example is just one of many I could show you to scare you off from the Hi-Lo card counting approach. For those of you new to this, Hi-Lo assigns arbitrary numbers to the 2s through 6s (these are arbitrarily named the "low cards" and you count each of them as +1, as dealt). Arbitrary numbers are also assigned to the 10s and Aces (these are arbitrarily named the "high cards" and you count them as -1, as dealt). For some crazy reason, the Hi-Lo people dubbed the 7s through 9s "neutral cards," even though my 10+ years of research have proven these are anything but neutral. (They are highly important in determining whether you will or will not win in the next round!) According to the Hi-Lo's creators, it's a great thing when the count is positive - this, they said, was the time when you placed your maximum bets. Zero counts indicated the cards were "balanced" and you then played your hand according to the Old School basic strategy and did not raise your bet. Yet - and, again, the MIT'ers in Bringing Down The House were totally honest about this - the MIT teams said the Hi-Lo's results were pitiful (my word): it only gave them a 2% advantage, they figured, over the house. With such paltry results, they said, that meant that they had to place HUGE bets (of hundreds if not thousands of dollars) in order to profit from such a low projected gain. So - off the bat - this is not the kind of system your average player should want to use. (If my memory is correct, one of them lost $150,000 in about 10 rounds on one occasion.) But, let's look at the example above for why you definitely would be foolish to use the Hi-Lo method. Tell me: what is the count in this example? (Take your time. I'll play the Jeopardy theme music for you while you do the math. Da di da da, da di da, da di da di breeeeep!, da da da da da...I'm trying to hide the answer from your view on this screen, by placing some distance between the question and the answer.) Time's up! The answer is: Zero. So, therefore, according to the Hi-Lo people, the cards should be balanced. But ARE they? Clearly the Hi-Lo card counting system tells you nothing about this situation (or, more to the point, most situations in general). For the cards are NOT balanced. Far from it. For one thing, three of the Aces and three of the 6s have been dealt. And just one 10. With 14 cards on the table, there should be at least four 10s, just one 6 and just one Ace. So, in the next round (assuming this is the first round), 10s are overdue (and more likely to come your way) and 6s and Aces are highly unlikely to appear. Also way overdue are the cards that didn't even show up in this round: 3s and 5s. Do you understand what this means, with regard to your likelihood of winning in the next round? If you played state-of-the-art blackjack you would. (HINT: my Auxiliary Betting Indicators, introduced in Cutting Edge Blackjack - and soon to be renamed Next Round Probability Indicators in the next edition of Cutting Edge Blackjack - would tell you this.) For now, I'll just leave you with this thought: Play with the Hi-Lo system and this is just the kind of trouble you'll get into. You want your money riding on this?
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