zengrifter said:
DAVID MCDOWELL'S BLACKJACK ACE PREDICTION is NOT a "bad book" its actually a fairly exhaustive treatis where non before existed. Its flaw, perhaps, is an overly aggressive betting prediction (over-betting?) that invalidates its own premise. With that said, I would recommend the book zg
the mathematics (particularly with regard to false key cards) is also fairly flawed and several people i know (including myself) have read the book and ended up having to re-derive most of the equations themselves.
additionally his math/method of determining probability of sequences being cut seemed fairly off. i might add that if you have extremely good eyeballing skills your probabilities of seeing the sequence being cut may be vastly different than those in the book.
that said, the parts of the book (first half) dealing with shuffle results (ie stats/probabilities on how many cards fall between a key and the ace) is fairly exhaustive and in my opinion usable.
i too would recommend the book if only to open your eyes to what is possible (though incredibly hard to find in the real world).
just my two cents