Recent content by duanedibley

Just have to check: Does this game offer surrender?

I was sitting at last base at the beginning of a shoe game once when some early 20's kid walks up with his friend and starts backcounting the table. I can see he's really struggling to keep the count, lips moving and everything. A couple decks in the count becomes barely playable, and the kid...

That's not REKO.

His chances of reaching $5k are much worse than that with a $500 buy in - less than 10%. Bondy's primary strategy should be to avoid busting out, and of course other tournament principles like being in position are important. With this much on the line he'd do well to read the "Blackjack...

Risk-averse indices.

I once sat down at a table with a 50 something year old guy from Texas who, as it quickly became apparent, was doubling his bet after each loss. After losing three hands in a row he won the fourth and proclaimed to the table, "That's what you call progressive betting, gentlemen." Someone...

Lost 30 max bets in one shoe a couple of years ago. That was a fun one.

A few of points: Alternating between a small and a large bet is not the same as betting the average of the two every time. The former costs a lot in variance. Leaving a large bet out until you lose after the count falls is bad for exactly the same reason that betting progressions fail. The...

Sometimes I wonder about you... ;) Of course it is bad. Once surveillance is checking out someone else at your table, it's not going to be hard to notice that someone two feet away knows what he's doing. We all know how easy it is to identify a counter from the times we've sat next to another...

The Hi-Lo true count will give you essentially no information about the dealer bust rate before the cards are dealt. Take a look at this chart on the QFIT blog. As you can see the dealer bust rate is within a 1% window for all true counts from -10 to +10.

This is correct. And the reason it doesn't equate to a 4% edge is because you get paid slightly more on average for the hands you win (e.g. Blackjacks).

Your list looks pretty good. If you take everything worse than -40% EV on this chart you get the following: 13 v. 10 14 v. 9,10,A 15 v. 8,9,10,A 16 v. 7,8,9,10,A 17 v. 9,10,A 88 v. 10 The only difference you have is Surrender 88 v. 9 which is pretty close. The chart is an infinite deck...

You will probably need at least his pin number, and often an ID for most transactions. It's really not worth it.

He must be some kind of master sleuth. You didn't even post a picture of yourself after all the times you mentioned exactly when you played and how much you made.

Just did a google search and found various articles/posts indicating that some police dogs are trained specifically to smell cash (in addition to drugs).