How do you calculate deck penetration???

[Taco55]

Considering the house edge, how do you calculate in the deck penetration advantage/disadvantage percentage for a double deck game? What is the difference between 50%,60%,75% penetration?

[EasyRhino]

Depending on how you want to look at it...

The advantage at any given moment depends on the count, just like always.

The penetration of doubledeck can be fairly easily estimated, just look at how many cards are in the discard tray when the cut card comes out. 1 deck out is 50%, 1.5 deck out is 75%, and then you can fudge those numbers around.

If you're looking at the overall desirability of the game, then you'll probably need to piggyback on others math. Either buy Blackjack Attack, or run some sims.

(50% is quite poor, 75% is good, many games seem to be sorta in the middle)

[Taco55]

Thanks for the quick reply.I'm tring to calculate overall HE by adding and subtracting the +/- percentages of all the bj rules for the game. But I can't find the +/- percentage for penertration. Is thier a set percentage that I can add for the different penetrations?

[FLASH1296]

The House Edge has nothing to do with penetration.

It is the negative expectation that you have "off the top"

[beyondbj]

whats the meaning of "off the top"

[FLASH1296]

"Off the top" is an American English idiom.
It simply means - without regard to penetration
as it is the first hand "off the top" of the shoe.

[Taco55]

OK thanks for the help.

[stophon]

Penetration does not affect the HE but it is good for counters because with deeper penetration you are able to see more extreme counts, which means you get to put a lot of money down in very favorable situations and walk away in very low counts.