Before leaving the Performance chapter, I wanted to present a few charts about which I have always been curious. At the end of the Blackjack Rules Chapter, I presented a table of the Basic Strategy advantages for the common Blackjack rules by number of decks. This is somewhat different from the tables in other Blackjack books since I included the effect of the cut-card, which reduces advantage.

Some players assume that a card counter has the same advantage as a Basic Strategy player when the true count is zero. This is not true, partially because a true count of zero is actually a range of fractional counts. Also, a counter plays a slightly different strategy than a Basic Strategy player even at a true count of zero. So, I decided to put together a table of advantages for a counter when the count is zero.

On the next page, you will see two charts. The first is a duplicate of the Basic Strategy Advantages chart from the Blackjack Rules Chapter for comparison purposes. The second is a table of advantages for a counter using the FELT Count when the count is zero. We can see that the counter advantages are higher and that the rules have somewhat different effects. A Hi-Lo player would see larger difference because Hi-Lo has a larger frequency of counts of zero.

Overall Advantages

On the page after that, you will find two additional tables. The first provides the overall advantages, at all counts, for a FELT player. The second is the same, except the advantages are displayed relative to a six-deck, H17, DAS game.

Overall advantages are heavily affected by penetration and bet spread. In creating the second pair of charts, 2, 4, 6, and 8 decks were simmed with spreads of 1-8, 1-12, 1-15, and 1-20. Penetrations were 59%, 72%, 72% and 72%.

These tables suggest that surrender is more important to the counter than the Basic Strategy player. On the other hand, S17 is less important for the counter.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger