What if I play the strategy for the wrong rules?

Both Basic Strategy and card counting strategies include variations for H17 and DAS. If you have learned tables for one set of rules and play a game with the other rules, what is your loss?

Let us start with Basic Strategy in a six-deck game. This chart contains two sets of bars. The set on the left is for the S17 rule. In Basic Strategy, your edge is negative, so all bars point downwards. The cyan bar on the left set of bars is the house edge assuming that the S17 rule exists and you are playing correctly. The dark blue bar is the edge with the same rule; but this time you are using the strategy for H17. The small difference is the cost of using the wrong strategy. The green bar is the edge in an H17 game playing correctly. The house edge is much worse with H17. The red bar is also an H17 game, but using the S17 tables. There is a bit of an additional loss for playing incorrectly. On the right side we see the same set of bars, except for the DAS rule instead of H17.

The first thing we see from this chart is that playing the right game is far more important than playing the right strategy. We also see that the red and green bars are very close on the left and the blue and cyan bars are very close on the right. This would indicate that if you wish to learn only one set of tables, you are better off using the S17 tables and the non-DAS tables. Of course if you run one set of rules 90% of the time, learn that set.

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 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger