www.qfit.com/book/z3001chart.gif

At the far right of this chart, we see the SCOREs for the three systems with 26 cards cut off. That is, 5½ decks dealt out of 6 (often referred to as 5.5/6). At the far left, 130 cards are cut off, or 3½ decks dealt out of 6 (3.5/6). At the deepest penetration, all strategies perform over six times as well as at the shallowest penetration. We can also see that the curves accelerate upwards towards the right. Every extra card of penetration is valuable.

The red line displays the SCOREs for Hi-Lo, the standard. REKO performance is depicted by the blue line. We see that at poor penetrations, Hi-Lo performs better. At deep penetrations, REKO performs better. Here we see an example of how looking at only one penetration can affect the results of strategy comparisons. If we wanted to suggest that Hi-Lo was superior, we could pick one penetration or we could pick a different penetration and claim REKO was superior. Overall, REKO and Hi-Lo perform about the same. Of course, REKO does not require the skills of remaining deck estimation, true count calculation, and memorization of different indexes.

FELT is depicted by the green line and performs about 7% to 12% better than Hi-Lo depending on penetration. Although FELT has simplified indexes (only two values), it does require the same skills as Hi-Lo and is a level II strategy, adding to complexity.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger