Betting ramp adjustments ?

A question to all the regulars . . .

Do any of you adjust your betting ramp to take account of the number of players at the table (ie reduce bets because there are more players at the table that dilute away the advantage of a high count).

Alternatively, how will an advantage be improved if, say, switching from a normal 1-8 spread with a crowded table to a 1-16 (or greater) spread where there is only one other player or it's one-on-one.

And before anyone comments on the 1-16 or greater, I'm in the UK where it's possible to spread bets far more liberally than I suspect can be done US. One contributor to this forum has told me he's got away with a 1-50 spread before now.

Thanks in advance for comments.

Newb99

Your best bet would be to avoid full tables at all costs. Try to set a standard of no more than 4 hands being played at one time...including yours. If you have a +2 TC at a full table, in the long run you will see the +EV, but the N0 will be much greater.

Spread as high as you can without getting banned and without overbetting your bankroll.

Of course you cannot always avoid a full table, but I'd play it more cautiously. You will find the results are not the same as when you play heads up.

well i guess you know that when you run a sim for a given game that one of the parameters that you give the sim is the number of players. that being said i'm not really sure the nature how various numbers of players makes things happen. just one thing would be the more players the more it slows the game down and further more i guess getting less hands in for a given shuffle (because of more players) seems as if it would in effect reduce penetration or at least make a given penetration effects seem even worse.
but then i'm pretty sure that strange as it may seem, a given advantage for a given game condition (ie. one on one or full table) if that advantage is one and the same according to the true count then it's not really any less of a significance of an advantage because of the number of players. but as far as the question of would one bet differently for a given advantage at a full table as opposed to a one on one table, lol i don't really know.
like in my case the number of players at the tables i play may fluctuate, sometimes one on one, one on two or full table, what ever.
well even if i ran sims for all those scenerios, heck i'd never be able to remmember the differances for this or that scenerio. so what i do is just run a sim for the average number of players i think it's gonna be. so i pretty much bet the same ramp and spread regardless.
i haven't the foggiest on the idea of betting 1-8 as opposed to 1-16 depending on how many players, sort of thing.

I think the wise frog hit the nail on the head. The game becomes less profitable with multiple players because it is slower and you will get fewer hands when the count turns positive. The advantage at any particular TC probably doesn’t change much so your bet spread should not be adjusted.

-Sonny-

The size and slope of the ramp shouldn't have to change.

The speed of travering the ramp might. If you're employing any sort of cover where you are slower to raise/lower your bets rather than robotically according to the count, then a crowded table is going to hurt you more, because there's a greater chance for larger count changes (and larger bet jumps) between rounds. BJincolor has some charts, i believe.

My question was based on my thoughts that this is to do with managing risk. If playing heads-up against the dealer, there is no risk that the high count won't be diluted away by other players. If at a full table, there is a high risk that all of those additional high cards will go to other players and not you (it's happened to me with monotonous regularity).

If say, you normally spread 1-16 would it be prudent to put out a 16 unit bet (which could be 30% of what you're carrying for that session) when there are 6 other players at the table, or is it a good idea to scale this back to decrease risk and variance? Or looking at it the other way, would it be beneficial to increase bets when there are less players at the table and the risk of missing out on the high cards decreases?

Mr Snyder's profit index matrix includes the effect of different numbers of players on a basic traffic light system - profitable, marginal, avoid - but I've never seen anything that does the same and indicates the optimal ramps against reduced risk. Does this make sense?

Like you say, the win rate/round doesn't change much just because the number of players change. Probably, I'd guess, the TC's frequenciesa and the advantage associated with those TC's might change a little but probably not enough to change a ramp.

You want to use avg # of players, that's fine, but, on the other hand, it's why I'd rather estimate rounds played after every session rather than time played or number of players at the table.

But, OK, good homework assignment, how much does a win rate/round change with 1 player or 7 players, all other things being equal?

I love being the teacher giving homework without a clue as to what the answer actually may be lmao.

Changing from 1-8 to 1-16 would change things somewhat. Either not betting the same $'s as quickly at the same TC's or, especially in deeper pen levels, even change one's min bet unit. To keep the risk the same in both cases lol.

But there is a higher risk that the big cards will be absorbed by the dealer, which is really a pretty terrible situation when it happens. Also, in negative counts, you're going to have to play many more hands to get through them.

So it stays about the same.

homework complete, lol.
six grand bankroll, play all, 1-8 spread, $5unit where supposedly our hero gets in 100hands/hr in both cases.

Thank you for your efforts sagefr0g. Another theoretical conundrum solved with maths. Nothing worth worrying about in it. I'l stop worrying.

Newb99

Thanks Wise One. So I guess it's like newb99 surmised - heads up produces plus counts more often than playing at a full table. And seems, for the most part, to have a higher advantage associated with the same count.

So I guess that expalins the slightly higher avg bet and avg adv heads up. So one wins slightly more units per round played.

Also heads-up actually has more variance than when playing at a full table.

Anyway, nice to know that basically the only thing that really effects your win rate/hr is how many rounds you play an hour.

And, you know, sims can answer alot of questions lol.