Card Counting Spanish21

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Strizkiz

New Member
Hi I have been somewhat of an avid card counter through the years. I also work in a surveillance room for a casino. Last night a couple young fellas came in and started hammering black on SP21 table. So i ran them down and thought they couldnt be counting or if they were they were doing something wrong. The guy went from $5 to $200 on a running -14, so im thinking have at it, because from from what I know thats not correct. He ended up doing a bit of damage, so i went on the computer today to see if there was something I was missing and because weve entered some parallel reality you dont have to start at a TC-4 you can count normal and just add a -1 to an ace, oiow you start at zero but instead of treating an ace as -1 you treat it as -2. I ran the guy down using this method and thats exactly what he was doing. I just dont get how -2 for an ace equates to a true-4, on a 5 deck game. When he first raised his bet one count equated to a running -14 and roughly a -3 TC (so nowhere near playable) and the second count was just over a +1 and playable for a raise in bet size. What am I missing here? Thanks
 
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johndoe

Well-Known Member
Katarina Walker wrote the seminal book on beating Spanish 21, and advocated for hilo tags and starting off with a negative running count. More recently just using A=-2 and a balanced count is more popular. Obviously the strategy is totally different.

But yeah if you were counting with hilo and saw a -14RC, there's no way that was a positive count even with that adjustment.
 
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johndoe

Well-Known Member
bjcardcounter said:
@Strizkiz May I ask what was the trigger to review the play? Is betting black on Spanish 21 by itself a trigger? Table loss?
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Pretty sure going from $5 to $200 instantly would catch anyone's attention.
 
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EnigmaAP

Member
johndoe said:
Katarina Walker wrote the seminal book on beating Spanish 21, and advocated for hilo tags and starting off with a negative running count. More recently just using A=-2 and a balanced count is more popular. Obviously the strategy is totally different.

But yeah if you were counting with hilo and saw a -14RC, there's no way that was a positive count even with that adjustment.
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Hi John, you write ‘Obviously the strategy is totally different’ above.

Just looking for clarification:

Do you mean ‘The BS for Spanish (as published in Katrina’s book) is totally different to regular BJ’ and can be used with this new variation of the count?

OR

‘The BS for Spanish with A=-2 has a different strategy to that published in Katrina’s book’?

I’m looking to learn Spanish over the next few months and have just purchased KW’s book, so want to make sure I learn the best count and strategy for the game.

thanks in advance!

enigma
 
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gronbog

gronbog

Well-Known Member
He's talking about the index strategy. Obviously, BS for Spanish differs than BS for regular blackjack, but BS has nothing to do with count tags.
 
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