most important index's for play all

What are the most important index's for play all? Also how well does zen compare to hi-lo in negative counts?

Got myself a blackjack shoe in the mail today too bad the decks haven't arrived yet!

The Illustrious 18 are the most important indices, for anything. The surrender indices are important too, when applicable.

If you want to add a couple of indices for negative counts, DD 9 vs. 3 and 10 vs. 9 are good choices.

From what I recall, the I18 made the assumption that we wong out at TC -1. Althought I don't think that the plays would change too much, I agree with AMs double indexes. I may also consider some more H/S indexes i.e. 13v4,5,6.

the ones that make the biggest difference are insurance, 16vT, 15vT - this make up 60% of the benefit to be gained from the I18. The next ones are T,T v5 and T,T v6 however might not be worth doing because of heat implications. Those 2 make up a further 10%. The remaining 13 index plays make up the remaining 30% of benefit.

On the page where i am getting the data (Blackjack Attack, p62) the lowest index play is for TC=-2. You got to remember that most of the negative index plays are not going to matter as much because you will be betting less.

hope that helps

I thought I18 was for HiLo ,

Why not.

if your going to play all.. then learn all. Don't be lazy.

I like this advice right here.

because sometimes less is more

well, lol, just me maybe, i didn't exactly decide to start card counting cause i wanted to work hard, really i wanted an easy way to get money with out working hard.

thing is with all these indices, that's just more complexity, more chances for error.
better for some of us i think, the KISS philosophy.
my vote is for the I18 & Fab4 and maybe use some intuition after having studied the other indices, but not necessarily having committed them to memory (for the ones other than I18 & Fab4).

The index values may be different for a different count, but the plays themselves are the ones that have the most effect on your EV based on hand frequency, bet values, etc.

I agree if your going to play all then you should know more then the I18 and Fab 4. For my local shoe games I limited my range to all indices between TC's -6 thru TC +6 (lvl 2). Hitting a TC outside of that range is so rare I'd probably forget the index before using it even once. Thats already 90 indices for a 6d or 8d, ls, das, game.

This is just a guestimate but in DD I would extend the range to -8 thru +8 since using my strategy the TC distribution outside of that range only occurs ~ 3.7% of the time.

JMO

BJC

If you are using a level 2 count as you suggust, then learning indices thru +6 is not nearly enough. 3 of the most important 5 plays are outside this range.
(stand 15 vs X, split xx vs 6, split xx vs 5) The most important play, Insurance is probably a hair outside this range as well as it is technically +3.1 for 6 & 8 deck games using hi-lo, so for a level 2 count should be right around +6, maybe slightly higher.

Kewl J

Good points, but all are still in my range. (using 1/2dtc - RPC, not 1dtc -ZEN)
Insurance is TC+3.
15 vs x is S@ 4
xx vs 5 or 6 is P@ 4

As I said, the range is based on my count. Using CVData or CVCX you can easily determine what range of TC's would be best for a particular playing strategy.

BJC

EDIT: I have these for ZEN which would follow your comments
(RA)insurance for zen (1dtc) is 5
xx vs 5 = 8
xx vs 6 = 7
15 vs x = 5

Didn't realize you were using 1/2 tc. That makes much more sense then. All of the Ill18 + more should fall in to your range then, except possibly a RA index for splitting XX vs 5 and 6, if you were inclined to use such.

Wow, I bet you're dissapointed! Nothing worthwhile is easy. :laugh:
I really don't understatnd why folks think learning a lot of indices is that hard. Although, I do understand why a casual/occasional player might not want to invest the time. But, then again, casual or not it's still your money!

Actually the ones I posted above are RA indices which still fall in the range.

For DD the indices for xx vs 4 is TC+7
xx vs5 or 6 is TC+5

BJC

Indices

(TC freq)*(units @ correlating TC)*(|change in adv.|) is the way to figure out which indices are the most essential as far as I know.