Recent content by rrwoods

As has been stated before: "Life is one long session". As far as the math goes, if you're playing correctly your individual session results don't matter. However humans are not perfect. You will have "off" days, "off" sessions, hell even "off" weeks. If you're in one of those you probably...

I'm surprised you're getting as much sympathy as you are. As a basic strategy player, you should honestly welcome players with open arms to an empty table as it makes you lose slower. Barring smokers and people who haven't seen a shower in a week, of course.

****, are you kidding? I'd just be getting started.

I'd highly recommend Schlesigner's "Blackjack Attack" after you have some experience and practice under your belt. It's a fantastic foray into the mathematics behind the game.

That's an index chart, and it appears it's for Hi-Lo. I don't know why this is, but for some reason index charts never seem to explain what the indices actually mean, which is especially confusing when all the indices mean different things. All the soft hands (A2 - A9) and the hard 9 - 11...

You would do well to read Rubin's book if you haven't already. As an AP you do need to be a bit more conservative than he suggests, but it's still a fantastic resource. He even has a section specifically devoted to card counters.

"**** off." If the dealer's making mispays, it's worth it to try to get him to leave the table.

Is it 1 or is it 2? 1 is fantastic; 2 is miserable. Also if you're using a true-counted system you need to be able to estimate, probably at least to half-deck precision.

Depends on your spread and the penetration really. Those rules aren't terrible but they aren't great either. The penetration is what will really make or break this game. It also depends on your risk tolerance. Wild-ass-guess: Spreading 5-60 with 1.5 decks cut off, you want around $5,000...

So in other words, the AP encyclopedia. Not comprehensive (it would be thousands of pages) but enough to get you started in every area. I kind of like it :-)

The "big picture" answer is to remember that EV and edge are different things, and that you should give up edge and reduce variance when doing so would allow you to bet more money and therefore increase EV.

Actually, it's over 50%, assuming your edge on the game is about equal to the house edge in the -EV situations. There are a lot of factors there, and every situation is different (most notably you're probably playing more in +EV situations and less in -EV situations; welcome2cardcounting), but...

I have heard "They're out there, you know" at the table before. I did my nods and "mhmm"s and "that's very interesting"s while "figuring out" if I should hit or stand this time around on my 16v10. I love knowing those guys just don't have a clue.

Sounds like someone who's read a sentence and a half about CC and thinks he knows what he's doing. Also sounds like the casino knows he thinks he knows more than he does.

What's funny is that Emi hasn't even said they're new at the game, just that they're new to the board, and Flash is still on his high horse about discarding naivete. Don't get me wrong -- people who legitimately are new at the game need to do more listening than talking, which is...