Match the dealer based Hi/Lo True Counts

I recently played at a casino that has match the dealer side bets. I never considered this seriously until last night. I decided when the shoe got high card or low card rich, I would place a match the dealer bet. It actually worked and as I tracked a shoe from say a very negative TC (High/Low) to a very positive TC, around TC=0 the match play wins generally ceased. Which does make sense. So the question is has anyone done any analysis on bet sizing and say TC values (when to wong in/out of the side bet) with respect to match the dealer only? If you have a buy-in of say $100 dedicated to match the dealer, what would be risk of ruin, expectation etc? So in summary I am suggesting at points in the shoe when concentrations of high cards or low cards exist, is a good time to make that side bet.

I don't know the exact count, but I'd imagine it would have to really high. Like a TC of 10 or higher maybe. I think there is a thread somewhere on here or another forum.

Edit: It probably depends on the pay table also.

Match the Dealer has a positive EV at +7 HiLo TC and above.

Are you sure? I don't believe it ever goes +EV with just a count of ranks. You might be thinking of Lucky Ladies.

Match the dealer

I see where you say +7 and above in Hi/Lo, but I would also think it be -7 and lower as well. Are the TC's really that extreme?

I had run some sims for MTD and using RPC it went very slightly positive at TC+6, which is inline with 21forme's post. Others had similar findings on GC where I started a similar thread. I don't remember it ever going +ev in deep negative counts. So what does that tell us?.... about 3.5% - 4% HA?

BJC

BJCount,
It has to be the same for negative counts as well. I would think the sims you ran would reflect both very postive and very negative TC's ?

You're right. I was thinking Lucky ladies. My apologies.

I went back to my archives and all the mtd sims I ran must have been lost when my hard drive fried up a few months back on this laptop so I just ran two new ones. My recall on the HA was correct above at ~3.88% but the +ev starts around TC+8/+9 not +6 as I originally posted. (providing that I set up the sims correctly). The deep negative TC's show little gain too.

The two sims pictured show the MTD side bet:
Left side is RPC; right side is HiLo complete
4.5/6d, no wonging,

BJC

BJCount,
Something does not make sense to me in what you posted. Especially when the TC's are very negative the win rate should be large as the TC approaches some very large negative number.

I am thinking of writing a sim today to figure this out. Here is what I have
for the logic part.

1. Shuffle up 6 decks
2. Randomly remove 150 cards right away.
3. Calculate the TC based on the 162 remaining.
4. If the TC > -3 AND the TC <+3 , go back to step 1, otherwise
go to step 5.
5. Get TC number. Round it to a conservative whole number( maybe floor function?). Example -6.93 becomes -6 and +7.89 becomes +7.
6. Play 1 hand against dealer hand and do this just one time.
7. Wager is 1 dollar each hand for now. Pay rate is as follows:
One unsuited match 4:1
One suited match 11:1
One suited and one unsuited match 15:1
Two suited matches 22:1
( I believe the above payouts are correct for the 6 deck game.)
8. Save the wins/losses for that particular TC value.
9. Go back to Step 1.

10. Run this sim say 500,000 times.
11. Show results.

I've never played Match the Dealer. Just wondering, if the dealer has a K and you have a Q do you get paid? If so this might explain why you have an edge at high TC+ but not high TC-.

Nope.

Ah OK you must be running the BJ MTD table which pays 4:1 on a rank match. I've only analyzed it for the SP21 table which is 3:1 for a rank.

I think you need to run a few billion more hands!

AM

I ran 200 million, you think the SE would be that great that a billion hand sim is really needed? Looks like a losing SB no matter how you slice it.

How were your results in SP21?

BJC

Very bad. You never really get there. Being the suited match pays 12:1 you really need to convolve the suit data with it. But oddly, MTD in SP21 is a zero-edge bet with infinite decks.

MTD saved my small trip br last time I went out. I didn't bet it every time...just randomly (fail I know) but I got lucky and got two suited match and a two or three match out of maybe 12-15 bets.

I think that unless you can pull a rainman and memorize the decks you shouldn't bother trying to beat it. :joker:

Play it for camo, or fun if you have a bit of gamble in you. And maybe you can ace track three aces of the same suit and do a miracle cut them together. And bet your bank on MTD for a nice 20-1 two suited match :devil: