unabalanced spanish 21

#1
hello all-
just received katarina's guide in the mail and was disappointed to find out it was a level one balanced approach... i was wondering where i could find information on a level 2 count (for greater efficacy) unbalanced (for my sanity) count and indices for spanish. Actively working on learning UBZ for single deck blackjack and hoping there may be some transference for spanish 21. Any advice for this newbie would be a great help.

dj
 

assume_R

Well-Known Member
#2
You won't find any other published Sp21 system so it's up to you to come up with and simulate an unbalanced Sp1 count! However, note that kat's system works quite well!
 

Brock Windsor

Well-Known Member
#3
-Walkers count tags are unbalanced, she has just true counted it for improved PE (like TKO)
-Modern Blackjack Vol II has FELT indicies for Spanish 21. It is level two balanced.
-Taging the Ace as -2 balances the count and strengthens BC. You can just add 4 to Walker's indicies.
I suggest HiLo as presented in Walker's book.
BW
 

assume_R

Well-Known Member
#4
Ah, I stand correct regarding unpublished Sp21 systems and qfit's book.

I'd only add that don't tag the Aces as -2 if you play H17 games, as Kat's system would be better in that case.

You are more than welcome to not true count Kat's system, as it's unbalanced as it stands.
 
#5
dj999 said:
hello all-
just received katarina's guide in the mail and was disappointed to find out it was a level one balanced approach... i was wondering where i could find information on a level 2 count (for greater efficacy) unbalanced (for my sanity) count and indices for spanish. Actively working on learning UBZ for single deck blackjack and hoping there may be some transference for spanish 21. Any advice for this newbie would be a great help.

dj
UBZ is an excellent choice for single deck.

Your best choice for an unbalanced level 2 system is probably to take Kat's count, raise the ace to -2 and the 5 to +2. But I wouldn't recommend using it in RC mode. SP21 is about as different from single deck BJ as you can get; you have a lot of decks so you are always going to be far from the geometrical pivot point, and the huge spreads you use with SP21 are not so accurately mapped to an RC. In single deck you're never using a spread larger than 1:4 and your max bet is going to go out right around the numerical pivot point so you don't lose anything significant by working with the RC.

Geometrical pivot point: the center of the shoe. Derive RC indices and spreads for an 8D game, and all of them will be exactly accurate at exactly 4 decks in.

Numerical pivot point: the sum of the unbalance for the total cards. Your IRC is usually set to the negative of this so that the pivot point is reached at 0. All indices that occur at the pivot point are accurate at any point in the shoe and the further away the are from the pivot point, the less accurate they are.
 

duanedibley

Well-Known Member
#6
Automatic Monkey said:
Your best choice for an unbalanced level 2 system is probably to take Kat's count, raise the ace to -2 and the 5 to +2.
+1. This count performs the best in my own investigations of level-2 systems.

If you want to balance it you can count the 9 as -1, which doesn't seem to make much (if any) noticeable difference in performance.
 

duanedibley

Well-Known Member
#8
Brock Windsor said:
With that count when do you first have the advantage?
BW
For standard S17, you will have a very small advantage at -3 (where -4 is your neutral TC, i.e. +1 in the balanced case) but you will want to start raising your bet at -2.

A good spread might look like:

-3: 1
-2: 4
-1: 8
+0: 12
+1: 16
+2: 20
 

duanedibley

Well-Known Member
#10
Brock Windsor said:
Is that using the count in running count mode or are you converting the TC? Im interested in the edge in running count mode.
I only did sims for 8-deck, and I got these SCORES after ~500 million rounds:

Unbalanced Level 2 (RC mode): 21.0
Unbalanced Level 2 (TC mode): 22.5
Hi-Lo: 20.3

For the Running Count version, I used the following spread:

<= IRC+25: 1
IRC+26: 2
IRC+27: 4
IRC+28: 6
...
>= IRC+34: 20

It was very hard to figure out when we "first had the advantage" since everything in the IRC+15 to IRC+24 range showed up around 0% advantage.

So this count seems to outperform Hi-Lo even in RC mode. But I don't see why you wouldn't True Count it to get an extra 7%.
 
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