The most important single variable of any game, I have been led to believe, is the deck penetration. Now, in order to know the penetration of any given dealer/game, you must be good at deck estimation; else how can you differentiate between a 6 decker with 1 deck cut off or a game with 1 1/2 decks cut off? So if you must be profficient at estimating decks for that reason, what is the point of an unbalanced count where there is no need for tc conversion if you have to be able to estimate decks anyways?? Am I missing somthing??
Can someone please explain this to me??
- Thread starter sruly2020
- Start date
With a balanced count, you must not only be able to estimate the cards played to about a 1/2 deck, but you must be converting running counts to true counts. With an unbalanced system, all you have to do is become familiar with what a deck and a half of cards, or a deck looks like, when the dealer takes out the unplayed cards to shuffle.
One path has a dozen or more landmines per path, the other has one,at the end.
One path has a dozen or more landmines per path, the other has one,at the end.
Black/white: What about shades of gray?
As shadroch alluded to, there is a world of difference between observing where the cut card is placed once per shoe and having to keep continuous track of how many decks have been played so you can make a calculation before each betting or playing decision.
To estimate pen, you do not have to be good at deck estimation. You do need to be good with fractions. I’ll use a pack of six decks for an example. Using an “eyeball” estimate, you can mentally divide the pack in half, and then quarters. Did the dealer cut off about 1/4 of the cards? Then she cut off 1.5 decks. Did she cut off something less than that, like maybe 2/3 of a quarter? Then she cut off only 1 deck. At one place I could see they were cutting off more than a quarter of the cards, but less than a third of the cards, so I concluded the pen was around 70%.
As shadroch alluded to, there is a world of difference between observing where the cut card is placed once per shoe and having to keep continuous track of how many decks have been played so you can make a calculation before each betting or playing decision.
To estimate pen, you do not have to be good at deck estimation. You do need to be good with fractions. I’ll use a pack of six decks for an example. Using an “eyeball” estimate, you can mentally divide the pack in half, and then quarters. Did the dealer cut off about 1/4 of the cards? Then she cut off 1.5 decks. Did she cut off something less than that, like maybe 2/3 of a quarter? Then she cut off only 1 deck. At one place I could see they were cutting off more than a quarter of the cards, but less than a third of the cards, so I concluded the pen was around 70%.
