Insurance is the shiiit

[bj bob]

Agreed, but...

Well, maybe I'm not understanding exactly what you're saying but I'm just saying playing SD heads-up off the top of a new deck versus a dealer Ace never take insurance regardless of any count and no matter what your 2-card is comprised of.

I mean only 3 cards are seen and 49 are unseen. The ratio of 10's to remaining cards can never be 33% or more.

On the top of a single deck my eyes are trained to "wander", i.e. sneaking a peek at my neighbor's hole cards. Just one quick glance (left or right) and you now have all the info you need.If you're holding an A-6 for example and your neighbor has a pair of 8"s it becomes a GO. I used this gimmick while sitting next to one of our illustrious members here and we didn't even pre-plan the tactic, we just naturally shared our info instinctively.

 

[ThodorisK]

Some of you said that because insurance has e.g. only 34% to win, placing it increases variance (how long the swings of your current bankroll above and below EV, are) comparing to not placing it. And I said this is a misconseption. It is actually decreasing variance instead of inreasing it.

 

[rukus]

Don't think of it as having anything to do with your hand. It's a sidebet, and either it has +EV or it doesn't.

to play devil's advocate cause im bored tonight :devil::

actually if i recall correctly, back in grosjean's ~40% ace article he goes into detail about how insurance (or at leaset how much you bet) should indeed be tied to your current bet and bankroll. there is a risk-averse optimal amount to bet for insurance purposes given what you already have on the table. NOW, granted, the article was talking about situations where you knew an ace was coming to your hand and so had a large % of your BR already riding on the original bet. in normal situations you wont have such a large % of your bankroll on the the original bet, so you can for all intensive purposes bet insurance as if it was an independent side bet.

 

[Kasi]

If you're holding an A-6 for example and your neighbor has a pair of 8"s it becomes a GO...

Well, sure, then it's a GO :grin:

Even though a Hi-lo player would have an RC of -1 and never take it lol.

 

[bj bob]

Well, sure, then it's a GO :grin:

Even though a Hi-lo player would have an RC of -1 and never take it lol.

Looks like we're same page, Bro.

 

[Kasi]

Some of you said that because insurance has e.g. only 34% to win, placing it increases variance (how long the swings of your current bankroll above and below EV, are) comparing to not placing it. And I said this is a misconseption. It is actually decreasing variance instead of inreasing it.

So what does it/you do off the top of a shoe in the first round when, according to you, you say the dealer has about a 70% chance of making BJ and therefore you have about a 70% chance of winning your insurance bet?

I think I got it now. If insurance will win 34% of the time and is therefore a profitable bet but, if bet, actually decreases variance I guess, if I chose to not bet it at all, my variance would increase?

With a 66% chance of losing the bet, is my variance still decreased if I lost it 10 times in a row?

If you were allowed to bet more than half original bet, would you bet 10 times original bet to decrease variance even more?

I hate it when my variance goes up and I haven't even made a bet and at the same time passed up a profitable bet.

 

[Kasi]

Looks like we're same page, Bro.

And then there were two :grin:

 

[ThodorisK]

It's like playing roulette:
1.) 10 euros at the first dozen only
2.) 10 euros at the first dozen and 5 euros at the second dozen.
Case (1) is like not placing insurance and case (2) is like placing insurance.
In which of these two cases is the variance lower? (variance= how long the swings of your current bakroll above and below EV, are). Of course, case (2) has lower variance.