Can you make more accurate insurance decisions with hi lo

[Meistro]

Hi lo is lousy for insurance. While the 7, 8 9 and A should all be counted as +1 for this decision they either not counted or counted like a face! the total opposite!



Can you improve your insurance decision by making a temporary adjustment to your running count and counting all visible 7s, 8s, 9s and aces on the table as +1 and then making your insurance decision? And then of course re-converting to your actual running count for future decisions. Or would this lead to less accurate insurance? Why or why not?

 

[johndoe]

Yes, but it's tricky to do this accurately while keeping a regular count. I'm not sure it's worth the effort or risk.

Once nice alternative is to have a partner do a "perfect" insurance count, while you hold the main count. I used to do this with my gal, and it was quite helpful.

 

[moo321]

Yes, you can. And I do.

I also use table scans on close decisions in pitch, like 12 v. 2. For example, if I see a table covered in 7,8,9s, I'm not hitting 12 even if I'm below my Hi Lo index.

 

[21forme]

I side count aces in DD games and add or subtract 2 for each extra/deficient ace.

For example, suppose 1 deck has been dealt, and dealer has an A up. Your RC (and TC) is +3. You know only 3 aces have been dealt, which means one extra ace is still in the undealt cards. Therefore, you subtract 2 from your RC of 3, which gives you a RC/TC of +1, which is below the threshold for INS (which is 2.4 in DD). Without knowledge of the extra ace, you would have taken INS at +3.

In shoe games, it's just not worth the effort.

P.S. Greetings moo - long time, no see!

 

[Meistro]

do you use the ace side count for other playing decisions aside from insurance, and if so what abd how? it seems like this info might be valuable for doubling on 11 (where you would like to the deck to be ace poor).

 

[21forme]

Yes. I use it for doubling 11, 16v9 or T, 15 v 9 or T, doubling T v T (at DD only).

There's a 15 year old post on BJ21 by Cacarulo (one of the well-respected math gurus of the game) that describes this, plus a few other, esoteric plays that don't amount to much EV. He calculated it adds almost 10% EV to the DD game.