Archive for August, 2009

New Efficiency Calculator Added

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Thanks to some Flash wizardry by ChemMeister ICountNTrack, the site now has a Card Counting System Efficiency Calculator.

You can plug in any set of card counting tag values, and calculate the Betting Correlation (BC), Playing Efficiency (PE)  and Insurance Correlation (IC).

Just what are these values?  They tell you

  • How effectively a card counting system predicts what you should bet (BC).
  • How effectively the system allows you to vary your strategy decisions (PE).
  • How effectively the system indicates when you should take insurance (IC).

The idea behind these calculations originated with Peter Griffin, and are detailed in his seminal work on the mathematics of blackjack, “The Theory of Blackjack”

As a point of reference, here are some values for popular counting systems:

Counting Tags Values
System A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 T BC PE IC
Hi-Lo -1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 0 0 0 -1 0.97 0.51 0.76
Hi-Opt I 0 0 +1 +1 +1 +1 0 0 0 -1 0.88 0.61 0.85
Wong’s Halves -1 +0.5 +1 +1 +1.5 +1 +0.5 0 -0.5 -1 0.99 0.57 0.72
K-O -1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 0 0 -1 0.98 0.55 0.78

Using the new Efficiency Calculator at BlackjackInfo, you can calculate these values for any card counting tag values that you want.