The other day I attempted tracking one shoe at one of the Trump locations and was quite successful. Not sure whether it was just luck, but the count was - the whole shoe so I'm assuming that was good. I'm wondering if anyone knows what count the slug behind the cut card must be in order to give you a +EV shoe throughout. Figure a 6D game with 75% pen.
Cut off tracking
- Thread starter rollem411
- Start date
Sonny
Well-Known Member
It depends on the house edge of the game. Typically a TC of +1 will get you about even with the house and a TC of +2 will give you a small advantage. If you can cut out enough low cards to give you a +2 or higher TC off the top then you are pretty much set. If you aren't forced to play through the entire shoe then you can have a +EV shoe much more often simply by avoiding the bad slugs and/or only playing the good ones.
-Sonny-
-Sonny-
Sonny
Well-Known Member
Right. Whatever you estimate the cutoff slug to be, that's your RC off the top. You should also use the number of decks in front of the cut card as your divisor for the TC. Don't use the total number of decks remaining because you have already counted the cutoffs. In theory, it is the same as if you had backcounted as the cutoffs were played then sat down once they were in the discard tray. Don't consider the cutoffs as part of the remaining decks for your TC conversions.
-Sonny-
How many hands of BJ equal $50?
You can't always get something for free... and you won't find the vauable lessons and info on the internet.
BJC
I own it. It's worth having. And best of all you don't have to spend $50 on it here (which is where I bought mine): (Dead link: http://www.shoplva.com/ProductDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=1319)
Automatic Monkey
Banned
What would you consider the best way to adjust for the variance in the cutoff RC as you approach the cut card? Example: you have a RC of +14 and there is a quarter deck left to the cut card! Very possible since you didn't actually see the low cards go into the cutoff, your estimate is only an average value given the parameters of the shuffle and it could be way off. You can't walk away, but you can't assume there are more high cards than cards left either.
Maybe there is some way to dilute the initial RC due to the cutoff tracking as you approach the cut card and it starts to become apparent that you didn't get an even distribution in the cutoff?
This is why I generally choose to cut the low cards to the front of the shoe where I can see them come out, and I'm either skipping the hands or betting low enough where it's not a big deal.
Ferretnparrot
Well-Known Member
In my experience following clusters fo cards, the main factor is a bit of luck.
The random variable that determine how much you gain form following a slug are:
-how big/small a stack of cards the dealer riffles in each riffle.
-how many times the dealer riffles
-wether or not the dealer beaks up your slug at any time
All of those random occurance will have less of an impact on the success of your track if you....
-track clusters that have more cards of interest in them
-track smaller clusters of cards
Thats it, if your tracking the entire slug behind the cut card, its unlikely that it will be of any great signifigance when the shuffle is completed. It would be when the dealer grabs just the correct sized stacks form the correct places during shuffling, but it is less common and not very common at all to successfully track an entire cutoff to yeild a player advantage the next shoe. It will likely yeild an altered house edge however which is still of benefit.
The random variable that determine how much you gain form following a slug are:
-how big/small a stack of cards the dealer riffles in each riffle.
-how many times the dealer riffles
-wether or not the dealer beaks up your slug at any time
All of those random occurance will have less of an impact on the success of your track if you....
-track clusters that have more cards of interest in them
-track smaller clusters of cards
Thats it, if your tracking the entire slug behind the cut card, its unlikely that it will be of any great signifigance when the shuffle is completed. It would be when the dealer grabs just the correct sized stacks form the correct places during shuffling, but it is less common and not very common at all to successfully track an entire cutoff to yeild a player advantage the next shoe. It will likely yeild an altered house edge however which is still of benefit.
Sonny
Well-Known Member
That’s a good idea, similar to how the NRS formula uses a Bernoulli-type estimation based on the information that you have seen so far. Most people will adjust their estimate of the RC at the beginning but not make any other adjustments as the cards are dealt. I suppose you could adjust your TC divisor as you go, but that might cause more trouble than it’s worth.
There’s an easy way to adjust for that: Max bet that last hand and keep an eye on the final quarter-deck. If those big cards don’t come out, get up and walk away. If you’re off by that much then you really f*&$ed something up and need to go back and practice more. If you’re experiencing such large variances in the estimated RC then something pretty serious is wrong. Either the dealer did something differently, you didn’t estimate the grab sizes properly or the shuffle is too complicated. I would rather work on improving my accuracy instead of adjusting my bets to account for my inaccuracy. There’s always going to be some degree of inaccuracy because we are doing so much estimation, but if my actual results were that volatile I would stop and figure out what was going wrong.
That’s just me though. I only track very simple shuffles or areas that don’t move around very much. I’m sure a better tracker would probably tackle the more complex shuffles, and maybe someday I will, but for now I keep it simple and reasonably accurate. I’d rather try to shoot a squirrel with a sniper rifle than an elephant with a bazooka.
-Sonny-
Wouldn't you be wasting winning opportunities by putting the 1/2d or 1d clump of low cards into play instead of cutting them out? It seems like a lot of rounds to sit out and then at what point would you jump back in? I'm looking at it as after the shuffle the slug may be diluted by a 1/3rd so if you had a RC 30 pre-shuffle, it may be only RC 20 post shuffle in double the size slug, unless of course you tracked the marraige of two low card slugs. Then if you did why put them into play just to prove you got it right? Sorry just very inquisitive.AM said:
Speaking of squirrels:
BJC
Attachments
Agreed. There's nothing inherently wrong with cutting them to the front to be sure you got them, but it's not optimal. If you can rely on your abilities, it's much better to cut them out; this way your RC is positive right away, and *more importantly*, you get a larger effective penetration, since you have knowledge of what's behind the cut card.
I think the increased pen is what makes this method much better.