Eight Decks

There is one variation for eight decks. We remove the 12v4 variation and just use Basic Strategy for this play. It turns out that with eight decks, that variation does not work well with REKO.

Note: If you use the tables for the wrong number of decks, you will still have a significant advantage, just not quite as high. Using the correct betting tables is far more important than using the correct playing tables. The fewer the number of decks, the greater the value realized from these playing modifications.

Do-It-Yourself Charts

One of the interesting aspects of REKO is that you can create a set of strategy charts that look just like Basic Strategy charts and take them into a casino. Casinos normally have no problems with BS charts; they just do not like card-counting charts. Nearly all card-counting strategies use indexes, different numbers for each decision that are included in the strategy charts. Since the REKO variations are all at +2, you do not need to include the numeric indexes that exist in more complex strategies and that give away card-counting charts. Simply create a Basic Strategy chart with a mark wherever one of the strategy variations occurs.

I have created a set of charts like this, which you can modify and print. You can add your own title like “Horoscope Weekly.” Feel free to change colors or anything else to further disguise the charts. Three formats are included: Microsoft Word, RTF (supported by nearly all word processors,) and HTML. Charts for all combinations of S17/H17, 6D/2D, LS/nLS, and DAS/nDAS are included and can be found at the Modern Blackjack home page: www.qfit.com/Book.

The next two pages include a sample. Below each chart, you will find a key to the characters in the cells. A tilde (~) in a cell means that playing decision is changed when the count is +2 or higher. A further explanation can be found after the tables. Thanks to Maverick for the idea.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger