Tandem Play

Has anyone considered the advantage of playing as two player team, one counting with a count system optimized for betting, the other optimized for playing?

The playing optimized player (POP) could bet by mimicing the betting pattern of the betting optimized player (BOP). The POP could give advice to the BOP when the hand called for variance from BS.

Would the extra advantage be worth it? Has anyone run any sims on this? MM

Sure it would bring a slight advantage, BUT

Win rate of 2 counters at 2 different tables > 2 counters on same table.

Ming

Ive thought of it before, and would like to try it someday. I havent got around to simming it, because I havent figured out how to go about it.

Heres a couple of ideal counts i had in mind. Check it out!

One player, could use the playing and insurance count

(a-x)111111110-2
pe.66
ic.98

The other player would use the betting count:
(2-A)2223210-1-2-3
bc.994

Heres the cool part:

The betting count has a much better playing efficiency for particular hands, such as

A6-A9
7-10
77-XX

You would use the betting count for these particular hands, in effect enhancing your playing efficiency to around .76

Note: That if you were to use, an optimal playing count such as
(A-X)11123220-1-3
pe.70
ic.90

your specs would be an awesome
.994
.80
.90
for both players.

I actually generated indices(cvdata) using this concept, with my betting count, where a secondary is used to convert it into a completely different count. (A-X)12223210-1-3(pe.68)

Note: notice only the ace and tens are different from the above betting count(.994).

One person counts normally, and the other person does a side count of tens and aces.

The counter ramps up his bet sizes according to the count, and the side counter can determine the true count purely from the size of the bet. Insurance would be very good with a count of all the tens in the deck, and the counter would just follow the side counters actions.

I have simmed playing with a two counts, one for betting and one for playing. There is a substantial improvement in results. However, if two players do this, then they will be increasing bets at exactly the same time making them obvious counters. Or, they will be throwing away the advantage gain.

Unless of course they just signal what the total bet between the two needs to be and one may rise so many units and the latter just finishes it out. That way their bets aren't rising with the count. They would have to be pretty slick to keep passing that much information back and forth.

It's a good system for a guy/gal couple to play, or two buddies. They need not both bet, or one can backline the other, etc. There are plenty of ways to make it non-obvious. I used to do this often.

I'm curious - what's better, a betting count with insurance count, or with a separate PE-improving count? How much does it help?

Depends on the game. In a SD game where you are spreading 1-4 at best, getting good PE in the negative counts is very helpful. In a shoe game where you're not even playing in negative counts and you have a big bet down when insurance becomes a critical decision, insurance becomes more important. Which is why RPC is better than Halves in some situations; counting the 9 hurts your insurance.

In the 6:5 SD games I've been playing where you have both extreme counts to be played and huge spreads, the value of the indices changes. 16 vs. 10 doesn't matter that much, you can always stand on 16 vs. 10 and it won't change your win rate significantly. But splitting 10's becomes huge, and there are indices for splitting 10's vs. 2 through 7. Had some fun this past week splitting 10's, even got to enjoy some racial epithets!