Multiple Hands @ Neg. Counts
ZG -- I've been reviewing Malmuth's Consolidation Betting, Uston's Card Eating and Grifter's Gambit. Unless I've missed something, here's how they look to me. Please call my attention to anything I may have overlooked.
In negative counts, the most efficient way to bet (short of wonging out) without regard for cover is one hand of one unit. But there are other ways to bet at these times that are only modestly less efficient, but may be considerably less noticeable compared to your large bets in positive counts.
As an example, let's take a heads up betting spread in double deck from the Grifter's Gambit interview of $50-to-$350. It's a straightaway 1-to-7 spread, and will be seen as such by the pit. But if you come off the top, and in negative counts with 3 x $50 as your minimum bet, three things will change.
.....1) You'll be betting three basic units on that round rather than one.
.....2) As a result, you'll eat almost exactly twice as many cards in negative counts.
.....3) Your variance on that round will be just about equal to that of one hand at $88.
Focusing on #2, since 3 x $50 uses twice as many cards in negative counts, it's probably mathematically as efficient as one hand of $75 -- with regard to overall EV (you'll put in the same total action either way).
Focusing on #3, betting 3 x $50 is more efficient than 1 x $88 with regard to overall variance, because there would be twice as many 1 x $88 rounds as those at 3 x $50.
So what if we just struck an intuitive compromise, and said that 3 x $50 in negative counts performs about as well with regard to both EV and variance as 1 x $75. That would lead to two observations.
.....A) 1 x $75 in negative counts is not as efficient as 1 x $50 in negative counts.
.....B) 3 x $50 might possibly look more innocuous to the pit than 1 x $75 when other bets are 1 x $350 ?????????????
Is that about the size of it?