Chapter Plus Seventeen
Although this technique is rarely used, I decided to invest in a few pages to describe counting by inference, as I know of no other source for this information.
Here is the situation. You are playing single-deck. There are four players at the table and you are at third base. You are getting only two rounds per shuffle. Heat is heavy and you are using only a 1:2 bet spread. That is, you will bet one unit in the first round and one or two units the second round. Most of the gain will come from correct playing decisions.
To obtain a decent return in this situation, you must play a higher-level strategy with many indexes. So, we will choose Hi-Opt II with all published indexes. No side count is needed at single-deck, particularly with a bet spread of 1:2. Just not worth it. Now here is the problem. You have a great count for playing decisions, but single-deck is dealt face down. Your SCORE is 20.5. But, if the cards were dealt face up, your SCORE would be 41.2. Because your advantage in this situation is so dependent on playing decisions, merely seeing the face down cards would gain a staggering extra 100%. We can try peeking at other players’ cards. But the gain is not large and is difficult without being obvious. With all these hidden cards, we are essentially playing at less of a penetration than we think. How do we improve our playing decisions if we do not get to see all the cards?
Situations
This is where counting by inference comes in. Can we infer the count of face down cards from player actions? Let us look at the possible actions of other players:
© 2009 Norman Wattenberger
