Basic strategy without counting and its progression ...

[tribute]

I've recently started reading up on BJ seriously and one of the things that caught my attention was that basic strategy doesn't take into account the cards that have already been dealt i.e. it only considers a scenario where the deck has just been shuffled and no cards have been dealt. I just want to ask how basic strategy changes once the game has been going on for a certain amount of time e.g. 2 decks have already been dealt out of a total of 6.

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You have posed the question I was always afraid to ask (or didn't know how to ask) and I also put it this way:

Considering a six deck game with HA of 0.44 using basic strategy chart, how does this % fluctuate with the removal of certain number of cards, or specific cards, or even a random deck of cards, or in your example, two decks removed? Of course we already know the change based on removal of a standard 52 card deck, or multiples thereof, (fewer decks better for the player...) So, does the 0.44 change to 0.41 or 0.38, etc? I guess the answer depends on which specific cards have been removed. (Maybe I have answered my own question.) To me, the bottom line to all this is, for a basic strategy player, the house advantage % constantly moves up and down as cards are dealt from the deck, and this % can go into positive or negative territory depending on which cards are removed.

 

[assume_R]

To me, the bottom line to all this is, for a basic strategy player, the house advantage % constantly moves up and down as cards are dealt from the deck, and this % can go into positive or negative territory depending on which cards are removed.

Yes, and the advantage at any given time within the shoe will indeed be different, but when the HA is estimated from simulations, this averages out all the fluctuations. Not sure how this affects the combinatorial approach to calculating HA, but in sims (or after playing enough hands) the estimated advantage is inherently averaged over these fluctuations.

 

[Sucker]

To be more precise about it...basic strategy outlines the correct play off the top of the shoe. The strategy doesn't assume the player isn't paying attention (how could the strategy know that ), rather BS assumes that all the cards, aside from the two the player sees, are still in the shoe.

Very good explanation. Much better job of explaining it than I did.

 

[johnwatson11218]

these graphs give an idea

here are some graphs I did,
the yellow line is the average bankroll after n hands were played with various strategies

(Dead link: http://www.barracudafix.com/backtests.jsp)

You can clearly see that Basic Strategy is still a loser.

 

[pomkon]

Where I play some people think they to know what the next card is. So for instance if the dealer has a 6, they think they know that the next 2 cards will be picture cards and ask everybody not to take a card. I have tried to tell them only 1 person knows what the next 2 cards is and his name is God and he is up there and not on the BJ table.

The only other thing I want to add to this thread is don't just pay attention to the House Advantage. The speed of play is also very important. If you are playing 1 to 1 with the dealer a HA of 0.50% becomes like a 3.00% HA because the speed of play is about 6 times fast then playing with a full table.

I do not understand why playing heads up increase my house edge, the loss can be greater, but the HA should be the same every hand.

 

[aslan]

I do not understand why playing heads up increase my house edge, the loss can be greater, but the HA should be the same every hand.

I think he meant it would seem like, or have the result that would be had, if the HA were 3%, because you're playing six times the number of hands (which I am not sure is accurate). But you're right, if the HA is .5%, it doesn't matter how many players there are, it remains .5% if you play perfect basic strategy.