How do Blackjack indexes affect advantages of counts?

The more indexes that a card counter uses, the higher the advantage. So obviously, the advantages at each true count must change. This chart shows the advantages by true count, but only for six decks. The red line is the same as the red line on the chart on the two pages back — the advantage using full indexes (over 100). The green line represents data for the Illustrious 18 and Fab 4 indexes — the most valuable indexes according to Don Schlesinger. The blue line displays the advantages using no indexes — using only Basic Strategy.

In all cases, the trend is higher advantage at higher counts and the more indexes the higher the advantage. But the effect of using more indexes is different at different counts. At a count of zero, it makes little difference as you are playing very close to Basic Strategy. At higher counts, we see that the most important 22 indexes supply most of the gain. In fact at True Counts of +4 and +5 the red and green lines are very close. This is important since TCs of +4 and +5 should be where most of your max bets are placed in a level I, balanced strategy. At the very low counts, full indexes make a much larger difference. But this does not really matter that much as you should avoid playing at such counts.

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 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger