spreading 1-2 in 8 deck game???

I was playing at a table today ($25 min) with a older gentleman whom I have encountered several times before at one of my regular casinos. He only varied his bets from $25 to $50, but it did seem he always had $50 out in positive counts. Happened that he was sitting in front of me on the train ride home and we struck up conversation about many things, eventually getting around to blackjack and counting. Turns out he does indeed count betting $25 between true counts of -1 and +2 and $50 at +2 and above. He sits out or leaves the table at counts of -1.

He claims he makes a few bucks an hour and gets much better comps than he did when he was playing the $5 tables. He says his very small spread enables him to avoid the big swings in flucuation. He's retired and very happy to make a couple bucks an hour and eat free and occasionally stay overnight for free. If he's happy, it all sounded reasonable to me. But I am wondering if he is really even playing a break even game with a spread like that. I realize not playing the negative hands helps a great deal, but still am curious.

Would anyone be so kind as to run a quick sim on this game for me.

Atlantic city rules
8 decks, 75% pen, dealer stand all 17's, DAS, resplit to 4 hands, split Aces only once, no surrender. Betting $25 at true counts -1 to +2, Betting $50 at true counts of +2 and above, Betting 0 at true counts -1.

thanks.

dont have time to do a simm but im going to guess $5/hr.

Leaving at true counts of -1 is the reason this is better than break even. I calculated about $7.39/hr. Play-all was -$4.32/hr. (Obviously this will vary with # players and hands/hr)

ok i ran a sim on these too.

assuming Hi-Lo I18
wong out if TC is equal to or less than -1. hence player seems to be skipping about 47% of hands. assumed that 3 shoes will be played in 1 hour, with 1 other player playing at the table, and 75% pen, that allows for approx 110 rounds/hour.

winrate is $5.45/hour (50 million round sim).
SD is 10.4 units per hour (i.e. about $260).

thanx matt and johndoe, sounds like the guy was right on. I guess I just never realized the house edge could be overcome simply by not playing most negative hands.

Most people underestimate the power of Wonging in shoe games; in general, Wonging out at -2 will halve the house advantage, and Wonging in at +1 on top of that gives you a break-even game. Any raising of your bets is basically icing on the cake - if your goal is to kill time, you can just play break-even blackjack by just Wonging. I would have guessed that a 1-2 spread would have given him about a +0.5 unit/hr win rate ($10-$15/hr) but that's just a guess.

his way is in the custom bets, looks like he should go ahead and bet the fifty at tc=1

but his way does give him a slightly lower ror.
looks like he needs at least twenty two grand for a still risky 11%ror
kind of a hefty standard deviation to for a nickle player like me, lol

Wow, I have no idea what kind of BR the fellow has. Got the impression from his comments about formerly being a $5 bettor that he probably doesn't have that. thanx for running the sim, frog.

I do this all the time and I think the analysis above is pretty much right on. i also agree the comps are much better at that level than $5 tables and there's much less of a fluctuation. And having much less of a spread cut out pretty much any attention from bosses. The only thing I do is play at a $10 table with this technique and if the count is negative I drop to $10 and just flat bet. At my place it's too hard to find another table sometimes. I know I probably should just not play but I minimize thr losses. If it drops to anything really negative I just sit out hands.

Isn't that Trip RoR on the $600 trip br? Doesn't seem very onerous to me.

Well, here's what strikes me a little. And maybe confuses me too lol. Easily done lol.

First, is he flooring or truncating when he calcs a TC of -1. Like, if flooring and he leaves at -1, it would mean he would leave at any neg count.

Second, do you mean he bets 0 only at "less than -1"?

Like Matt, in his sim, specified "wong out if TC is equal to or less than -1" and yet got that he only played 47% of hands seen while back-counting.

The Wise One included -1 in his sim but the sim also says "76.6 was it?%" after "back-counting" implying he plays that %age of all hands seen.

How do we reconcile the two? Apparently, in Matt's sim, he never plays a hand at TC-1. When we run a sim, we better be as specific as possible in defining our assumptions lol.

It can make a pretty big difference exactly what he may doing. Like in Matt's sim, although he didn't say, (just guessing here) he may only have that 11% ROR with a $10K roll instead of a $22K roll. What was his ROR with how much rolll (maybe assume $10K lol) Matt in your sim?

And, Wise One, you could probably do what he is does in your sim, except bet $5 and $10 with a $7K roll and have a fairly low (maybe less than 3% ROR?). Also, I'd guess, if he bet $50 at +1 in your sim instead of $25 with his $22K roll, his ROR actually would increase.

To Jeff-prime, no, it means 11% lifetime ROR with $22K roll. Would be my guess anyway lol.

answers: I don't know and I don't know. I only had a casual conversation with someone I had just met. I didn't ask him to go into specifics. I only know what he volunteered. And for our purposes, I don't think it matters that much. It would only slightly change the numbers. I was just trying to figure out if he was even playing with an advantage as he thought he was and the sims by sagefrog and matt indicate that yes he is.

Well, I know that you don't "know" of course and appreciate your point.

My point/opinion anyway, is that, depending, on what may actually be going on, would majorly change the numbers.

Not so much whether either might be just +EV, becasue I think both would be, but more as to risk to one's roll and the degree to which it is +EV.

Like you say, both would be +EV but the actual rate of +EV and the risk with a fixed $roll, would likely be very different.

When back-counting, alot changes depending on entry and exit points and how much one is betting when.

It seems to me anyway lol.

Absolutely, spreading 1-2 while back-counting changes the whole universe. Try only entering at +2 and never playing a hand below that and see what happens.

Hmm, that's not how the display reads to me. Look at the section to the right titled "Risk (Trip Ruin is in first row)".

What sw is this screenshot from?

Well, in the top 2 rows, under "Custom bets" in second row the ROR of 10.7% is lifetime ROR with a $22K roll. I know I said maybe I was guessing or something but I really wasn't lol. That is what it actually is.

In the trip ROR section, I think the first line with "infinite" goal and "infinite time" of 5.3% means the risk of losing 24 units ($600) in 1 hr of play.

With a goal of "5", that I assume means 5 units and not $5, then the risk of either losing $600 before winning $125 or less is that 0.38% or whatever it was. That is one quits within 1 hour if goal has been achieved or, obviously, if he has nothing left but never achieved goal or he played 1 hour and never achieved goal or went broke. In other words finished somehwere in between.

But I do often have trouble exactly understanding, verifying, the trip ROR stuff. I just try to understand the assumptions behind what it is displaying and accept it from there lol. And, I'm never quite sure what the assumptions actually are lol.

The software is a screenshot from CVCX software I think.

my sim used flooring and full deck resolution for figuring the tc.
as far as the 76.6% or what ever it was, that just sort of auto set there when i was 'foolin' with the sim to get it to not play below at tc=-1, so as to be similar to how Kewl's friend plays. what ever, apparently stopping play at some tc like that and maybe restarting play at above that tc, in reality would effect the tc frequencies because of changing number of player effects, but the change in tc freq's can't be reflected by cvcx once the sim has been run and you go and change to wonging, so what you have is an estimate.
but yes, i think the 76% means thats how many hands you play of what's i guess seen in 'theory', at least thats what the simuation saw, lol. like, i can't really control that 76% number, it sort of is what it is apparently depending on your departure point tc-wise.
lol, i never thought about that, so i'm glad you mentioned it.
this new version of cvcx sort of has me lost a bit, lol.
well my posting my sim was kind of a rush job, i really didn't think it all out, just i tryed to match close to how Kewl's friend played, but i guess i could have set that departure spinner as well.
i think that would give you an idea of, say maybe you stayed some hands at tc=-1, and an estimate of how many hands you might miss if searching for another similar table. i dunno, i don't fully understand that stuff yet.:whip:
but i guess, probably how Kewls friend really plays is likely, he plays some hands below tc=-1 and then leaves, or sits out, ect. , then maybe comes back in if the tc rises, or maybe not, kind of it's hard to guess.

but i don't really know how Matt's sim was set up.

edit: oh, yeah, ok, i can take a look at that.
right lifetime is 11%.
the trip roll risk is 0.38% for a trip roll of $600 trying to make $5 in one hour.
i noticed in your other post you was wondering if the 5 is units, i'm pretty sure that is dollars, even though the dollar sign didn't appear in the image. by the way that trip risk of ruin is apparently for the custom bets, as i set them to reflect the betting Kewls friend makes.
but i think Jeff-prime might have been referring to that Kelly factor widget that shows a ror in the widget, i gotta say, i don't really understand how to use that feature, but i don't think the ror shown in that widget means anything about lifetime ror or trip ror, in that sim. changing that Kelly widget, the kelly factor, well that does change the ror number in the widget and makes the CE and CE/WR numbers change but really nothing else changes. like i say, it's an advanced option, i don't understand how to use yet.

see the bolded text near the bottom in this link:http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=143330&postcount=16

What would be the win rate if we changed to 6 decks, 75% pen, dealer stand all 17's, DAS, resplit to 4 hands, split Aces only once, no surrender.

Betting $25 between a true count of -1 and +1 Wonging out and betting 0 a true count at -1 or lower but betting $50 at true count of +1 or higher instead of waiting for +2, Betting $50 at true counts of +2 and above,

So basically the same thing except using 6D and increasing your spread at a true count of +1