Strategy Comparative Study — A New Look

There have been numerous attempts at comparing strategies, and all are flawed — including this one. The problem with comparing strategies is that it is simply not possible to include all of the huge number of variables involved in a general study. I thought that I would take a stab at including as many variables as possible into four SCORE charts. The four charts are for one, two, six, and eight decks and compare twelve strategies. The variables included are:

Ø  Penetration – Nothing new here as far as this book goes. Every reasonable penetration by the card is included. For each penetration, the optimal betting ramp is calculated and then SCORE is calculated using that ramp.

Ø  Bet Spread – Each point is calculated for two bet spreads. For example, for the six-deck chart, betting ramps are calculated for each penetration for spreads of 1-8 and 1-16. The SCOREs of the two calculations are averaged.

Ø  Rules – There are sixteen combinations of the major rules, S17, DAS, LS, and RSA. But not all combinations exist and the combinations that do, exist in different percentages of Blackjack tables depending on the number of decks. Fortunately, we have already looked at the table conditions that currently exist in the U.S. on page 166. For example, we see that H17, DAS exists on 24% of six-deck tables. Add RSA and you have another 21%, etc. So, let us calculate the SCOREs for each penetration, for two spreads, for each of the sixteen rule sets, and then create a weighted average SCORE depending on the frequencies of rule sets that currently exist in the U.S. Let us perform these calculations for each of the major strategies and plot them all on one chart. We will call this a Super-SCORE.

So, for the six-deck chart, we have 12 strategies, 104 penetrations, 2 bet spreads and 16 rule sets for a total of 39,936 sets of conditions. For each of these sets, the optimal betting ramp and SCORE are calculated from simulation. These results are then combined into 1,248 weighted averages, and charted in a single graph. A picture is worth a thousand words.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger