Question for the High-Low Masters
- Thread starter boneuphtoner
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I used fractional indexes for insurance for SD and DD games (+1.5 hilo for SD, +2.5 hilo for DD, rounded to nearest .5). I also made composition-based adjustments. I don't claim this made much difference, but my thought was that, not only is insurance the single most important count-based strategy departure, its index also happens to be right in between two integers.
I suspect that, though fractional insurance indexes are worth little, they are still probably more valuable than some of the soft double and split indexes I learned. Are they worth it? Well, learning more (or more refined) indexes doesn't add much difficulty to counting. Using a more complicated count, however, can be a significant increase in difficulty. So for almost no extra work, you get slightly more than no extra money
I suspect that, though fractional insurance indexes are worth little, they are still probably more valuable than some of the soft double and split indexes I learned. Are they worth it? Well, learning more (or more refined) indexes doesn't add much difficulty to counting. Using a more complicated count, however, can be a significant increase in difficulty. So for almost no extra work, you get slightly more than no extra money
I do. But, as others have said, I don't claim that there's any big advantage to it. It's just how I was taught. It's certainly a boost to your confidence to know the TC to a few decimal places before the dealer has even placed the discards in the rack, but the extra accuracy (assuming your deck estimation is correct!) doesn't give you much extra info.
-Sonny-
-Sonny-
Greetings,
Although that this is probably accurate I would question the gain from knowing this "fractional" index. Assuming that this is a hi-low index (I use the ZEN) then due to the PE of only 0.51, I would imagine that the gain would be very small. Furthermore, as we know from Griffins book, every situation has a different effect of removal for each card, which is used to determine the playing efficiency of that particular index for that system. For this particular play we have:
SYS A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 T
PERFECT -0.47 -0.06 -0.25 -1.25 -1.41 -1.56 -1.65 -1.81 -1.41 2.46
HI-LOW -1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1
As can be seen from this play alone, the Hi-Low doesn't really capture the true effect of removal for each card. The issue is that notice how important 7's,8's,9's for this play, yet they are not even counted in Hi-Low. Furthermore, notice how much more beneficial a removal of a ten is. Almost 2.5X more than Hi-Low says for this play. This will be true in general for determining whether to hit 12's, 13's, and 14's. I would imagine for this situation, the PE is much lower than 0.51. This is the main reason why multilevel and/or multiparameter systems are better at capturing strategic departures. They are more correlated to the true effect of removal for each card in more situations.
One more thing that some of you may already know, by using a multilevel counting system, you in effect kind of have fractional indices compared to hi-low. For example, the index for 12v3 in the Zen Count (Multideck) is TC of +3. This occurs as frequently as a TC +1.5 in hi-low and in fact there would be a strong correlation that if two people were counting a shoe, one using Zen and the other using hi-low that the Zen player would say the TC were +3 while the Hi-Low player would say that the TC were +1.5. This is because to first order, the effect of removal for the two systems are roughly a factor of 2 for each card.
I hope this helps.
Although that this is probably accurate I would question the gain from knowing this "fractional" index. Assuming that this is a hi-low index (I use the ZEN) then due to the PE of only 0.51, I would imagine that the gain would be very small. Furthermore, as we know from Griffins book, every situation has a different effect of removal for each card, which is used to determine the playing efficiency of that particular index for that system. For this particular play we have:
SYS A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 T
PERFECT -0.47 -0.06 -0.25 -1.25 -1.41 -1.56 -1.65 -1.81 -1.41 2.46
HI-LOW -1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1
As can be seen from this play alone, the Hi-Low doesn't really capture the true effect of removal for each card. The issue is that notice how important 7's,8's,9's for this play, yet they are not even counted in Hi-Low. Furthermore, notice how much more beneficial a removal of a ten is. Almost 2.5X more than Hi-Low says for this play. This will be true in general for determining whether to hit 12's, 13's, and 14's. I would imagine for this situation, the PE is much lower than 0.51. This is the main reason why multilevel and/or multiparameter systems are better at capturing strategic departures. They are more correlated to the true effect of removal for each card in more situations.
One more thing that some of you may already know, by using a multilevel counting system, you in effect kind of have fractional indices compared to hi-low. For example, the index for 12v3 in the Zen Count (Multideck) is TC of +3. This occurs as frequently as a TC +1.5 in hi-low and in fact there would be a strong correlation that if two people were counting a shoe, one using Zen and the other using hi-low that the Zen player would say the TC were +3 while the Hi-Low player would say that the TC were +1.5. This is because to first order, the effect of removal for the two systems are roughly a factor of 2 for each card.
I hope this helps.
David Spence said:
I used fractional indexes for insurance for SD and DD games (+1.5 hilo for SD, +2.5 hilo for DD, rounded to nearest .5). I also made composition-based adjustments. I don't claim this made much difference, but my thought was that, not only is insurance the single most important count-based strategy departure, its index also happens to be right in between two integers.
I suspect that, though fractional insurance indexes are worth little, they are still probably more valuable than some of the soft double and split indexes I learned. Are they worth it? Well, learning more (or more refined) indexes doesn't add much difficulty to counting. Using a more complicated count, however, can be a significant increase in difficulty. So for almost no extra work, you get slightly more than no extra money
I suspect that, though fractional insurance indexes are worth little, they are still probably more valuable than some of the soft double and split indexes I learned. Are they worth it? Well, learning more (or more refined) indexes doesn't add much difficulty to counting. Using a more complicated count, however, can be a significant increase in difficulty. So for almost no extra work, you get slightly more than no extra money
Use a count where you side count the ace!!!