Ø  Truncate – For positive numbers, round down and for negative numbers round up. This is the method used in the 1994 and later editions of Stanford Wong’s Professional Blackjack. 1.5 is rounded down to 1. -1.5 is rounded up to -1.

Ø  Floor – Numbers are always rounded down. This is the method used in the early versions of Professional Blackjack. 1.5 is rounded down to 1. -1.5 is rounded down to -2. This is the most popular method used now.

Ø  Round – After the True Count division, the result is rounded to the nearest integer. If the number is exactly between two integers, it is rounded up. 1.5 is rounded up to 2. -1.5 is rounded up to -1. This method is also common.

Ø  Statistical Round – After the True Count division, the result is rounded to the nearest integer. If the number is exactly between two integers, it is rounded to the nearest even number. 1.5 is rounded up to 2. -1.5 is rounded down to -2.

Flooring and rounding are nearly equal in performance. Truncating is slightly inferior, as it results in a very large percentage of true counts of zero, which in turn results in reduced precision. For best performance, you should use the method that was used when your indexes were generated. Flooring was used in development of the FELT Count.

How do we estimate remaining decks?

We need to divide by a value related to the number of decks remaining. But how do we obtain this number? Different players estimate the remaining cards in different manners as follows:

Ø  Look at the shoe – This seems obvious, as we are dividing by the number of remaining decks, and they are sitting in the shoe. However, this is not very accurate as not all the cards are visible and the cards are not always stacked tightly. Very few people use this method. On the other hand, Revere used to teach this method in his private classes precisely because so few people use this approach and it does not require looking at the discard tray. Also, some tables now hide the cards in the discard tray.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger