Spreads and ramping

Billy C1

Well-Known Member
#1
Can someone post table or provide link that shows proper use of betting spreads and ramping.
My area has some 5-50 tables so the max spread is 10 but also some 5-500 tables where you conceivably could go 1-100 spread. Do some of you spread that big? If so, with what TC?

Billy C1
 

callipygian

Well-Known Member
#2
Billy C1 said:
Can someone post table or provide link that shows proper use of betting spreads and ramping.
Well, if you can stomach large fluxuations of bankroll, the best spread is to bet the risk-adjusted Kelly fraction (EV divided by variance) of your bankroll. Most people don't want to ride the "full Kelly roller coaster" so they use 1/2, or 1/4 of the Kelly bet. Additionally, Kelly bet sizing doesn't work when you don't have the advantage, so ideal Kelly betting means you're not playing any hand you don't have an advantage on (bet = 0). If you play hands at a disadvantage, you'll need to spread higher on the top end to make up for the loss in EV.

So basically, the answer is unless you describe your game in detail, nobody can really answer your question in detail. There's no magical formula.

Billy C1 said:
My area has some 5-50 tables so the max spread is 10 but also some 5-500 tables where you conceivably could go 1-100 spread. Do some of you spread that big? If so, with what TC?
The biggest problem with spreading your bets is heat. Nobody bats an eye if you spread from $5 to $20, but they might notice if you spread from $5 to $50. Generally, any bets over $100 get called out to the pit boss, and hitting the table max will definitely trigger some attention. Smaller casinos care about smaller bet spreads, larger casinos can tolerate a lot more.

Again, there's no exact formula for how much of a bet spread you can get away with, but most people consider 1-10 large and 1-20 very risky.
 

Sonny

Well-Known Member
#4
Blackjack Attack has several chapters that discuss how to set up and optimize your betting strategy. Chapter 10 will give you charts that show the results of different spreads and different backcounting techniques so you can see how they work and pick the one that works best for you.

-Sonny-
 

Mimosine

Well-Known Member
#7
At +4 I aim for a max bet of roughly 1.15% of total bankroll.
I have seen some monster counts lately and I have bet slightly higher for a few rounds, say 1.25-1.3% of total bankroll, or two hands equalling 1.3% total BR.

I'm playing with a higher ROR and EV than Full Kelly, intentionally with the hopes of maximizing returns. I also am constantly resizing max bets based on total Bank Roll, even from session to session (i.e. week to week). Lately I have had many back to back sessions with +10% BR growth. In each case I up my Max bets to roughly 1.15% total BR.

A good rule of them is that max best should be 1% of total BR - this gets you close to Kelly if I recall. Though spreading 1-10+ in 6D and 1-5/6 in DD is also essential, so if your total BR is so low that you can't fully spread 1-10+ then you need to Wong aggressively, especially out of negative counts.
 
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