Worth learning to count in european casinos?

[Amigo]

The casinos i play in in England use the following rules: No hole card, S17, No insuarance, D9,10,11, no surrender and they have about 75-80% penetration. Because of the lack of the surrender and insurance rule, is there much to be gained by counting against these casinos?

[Sonny]

If you double down or split and the dealer gets a BJ do you lose all your bets or just the original bets (not the splits and doubles)?

-Sonny-

[Amigo]

If the dealer hits a blackjack you lose everything unfortunantly

[RJT]

Alright Amigo,
I'd say you've not really got a lot of incentive as a counter in the UK. The lack of Insurance is a killer, no soft doubles and no surrender - it all adds up to a poor game.
Now from previous posts and the fact that many casinos main land Europe offer insurance i'm going to assume you're playing in the UK. The one advantage we do have in the UK is careless dealers- many dealers couldn't be sloppier. From personal experience i know of one dealer where in if you position yourself in the middle seat with people betting higher denomination chips on either side of you, will on a fair basis pay you off with the wrong chips!!
I remember the first time i encountered this gem - firstly they paid me 2x£5 (~2x$10) instead of 2x£1 (~2x$2). Excited at the prospect, i played around with this a little and was later paid 2x£25 (~2x$50) instead of 2x£1. That alone is a profitable game, but you need the right situation for it to work.
Alongside this, if you can find a hand shuffled game, while there doesn't seem to be such a thing as a 'house shuffle', the shuffles are all very simplistic. You do need to put a bit more effort into eying the shuffle, and the dealers are a bit too sloppy for shuffle mapping to work, but they are very beatable on a tracking level.
Essentially, while the UK offers sever disadvantages in some areas, it offers unique opportunities in others.


RJT.

[Amigo]

Thanks for your response.

Never seen a dealer make mistakes to that level. Surely they are gonna be competent enough to notice the difference in colour between a £1 yellow chip and a £25 green. Best i've found is that they end up paying when you push or push when you lose but that only happens every 5 hours or so.

Dont have much knowledge of shuffle mapping so could you tell me what you mean by them doing a simplistic shuffle? Is this just them simply splitting the 6 decks in half then taking a small portion from each and shuffling them together once through?

[RJT]

You'd be surprised. I never play for extended lengths of time, normally holding to 1-2 hours in any one session, but it's unusual for even the good dealers i've encountered not to make at least 1 mistake in my favor. Agreed the previous example is an extreem one, and far from normal, but you just need to keep your eyes open and you will find all sort of sloppy behaviour that you can emphasize with a little encouragement.
As to shuffle tracking, normally with any US casino i'd suggest mapping the shuffle (i.e. memorizing the shuffle proceedure going home performing the shuffle and drawing a map of where each segment starts and ends, what it's mixed with ect ect), but as the dealers over here are so sloppy, you really can't hope for a map to be in any way accurate.
You've got it exactly when talking about simple shuffling. Go to the states and you'll find that the dealers will split 6 decks into 4 piles, criss cross the piles that they take picks from and repeat the whole thing (often with differences in the process) after they've been through once. It take huge lengths of extra time, but does make it a lot more difficult to track any packet of card.
If you really are interested in shuffle tracking - it's very difficult but i feel worth it - you should look into picking up a copy of Arnold Snyder's 'Shuflle Tracker's Cookbook'. As far as i'm concerned, it's the bible .

RJT.

[Sonny]

Here's a good introduction to shuffle tracking:

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=1919
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=1920
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=2140

-Sonny-

[RJT]

There some nice simple articles there sonny mate. Cut off tracking - alongside tracking the first 1/2 deck out (tops) - is by far the easiest form of shuffle tracking. There is a lot more to it than that and the further into it you go the more complex it gets, but with the greater complexity come other weaknessess that you can exploit.
One thing i would say is that, as pointed out, the simplification of the formula will only work in specific situation and you would have to revert to the formula when you don't encounter these situations. However i feel that with a bit of practice, learning to do these calculations is only a little more difficult than the TC conversion that you would learn with any balanced count.

RJT.

[SecurityRisk]

Originally Posted by RJT

Now from previous posts and the fact that many casinos main land Europe offer insurance i'm going to assume you're playing in the UK.

I would think that the fact that he said that he plays in England is even a better reason to assume he plays in the UK.

[RJT]

Well golly gosh SR, you caught me mis-reading England as Europe as it says "european" in the title. Ain't you sharp as a tack?

RJT.