Weak Dealers V's Good Pen

I played at two UK casino's this weekend both had good BJ games but for different reasons.

Both 6D, DAS, NS, no hole card

Casino 1
Old UK Rules - double only 9,10,11 only no splitting 4's,5's or 10's
with 70-75% Pen, weak shuffles and new sloppy dealers (lots of errors and shuffles to easily take advanage of)

OR

Casino 2
NEW Uk Rules - double any 2 cards, Split any pair (10's same rank only)
with 80-85% Pen. Experiences dealers and complex shuffles.

I found both games to be profitable but which is the better?

personally the penetration because I do not shuffle track

The second game because of the pen and also double any two cards increases your odds by about 0.12% as well.

Weakness!

You can pull much more of an advantage from weak shuffles and dealers.

This is worth much more than being able to double soft hands & splitting 4's & 5's.

As long as you can spot the mistakes that will cost you, weak dealers can add huge EV. Consider that if you are making 2 units an hour, a single error on a minimum bet just gave you 30 minutes of "work" for free. And if the dealer made a error on a max bet... :grin::grin::grin:

Question for the shuffle trackers.

Question for the shuffle trackers. At what point does a crowded table (5,6,7 players) dilute away the advantage of shuffle tracking. If one had tracked, and successfully brought to the front, a slug containing say 15 pictures/aces, with a full table after just one round the advantage would have disolved and the running count would be around -15. Time to walk away. But playing heads up you could be getting 3-4 hands out of it before leaving?

A game I played not so long ago the running count went to +18, and eventually a huge block of face cards put in an appearance over three hands. I didn't win a single hand, although half of the other six players at the table cleaned up. One kid walked up to the table, threw a £25.00 chip into the box and pulled a BJ. I thought "smart kid", must be keeping a close eye on things. Then he took his winnings over to the roulette wheel . . . .




Newb99

I basically divide the amount of high cards in the slug by the amount of hands being played to give me a rough idea of how good the slug is going to be for me.
As with counting the fewer the players the better. Try picking up a card sequence after spotting a slug, this gives an extra guarantee that you've hit the slug. Playing extra spots gets you a higher percentage of the money cards. Also remember to make BS changes as you would during high counts.

Good luck!