Thank you Apex again for your input. I will also be doing mostly 6 deck but I hope to move to pitch games once I save up a larger bankroll. I plan to backcount/wong in and out although I've read if you can get a table to yourself play all would be better. In your list of extra efforts I imagine counting two tables at once must be pretty tricky, I hadn't thought of that.
Picking a System, lot's of questions.
- Thread starter GoodBJ
- Start date
Sure thing iTrack I guess this post would count. So 10 posts let's me pm people?
Also if anyone can answer one of my earlier questions about FELT vs. RPC ""In ModernBlackjack it shows FELT does better then RPC because "FELT uses full-deck divisors for true count calculation. This improves the precision of the betting ramp." "
Could someone do the full deck divisors with RPC and use RPC's more precise indexes for best of both worlds? and/or use RPC's indexes with FELT fr the same effect. I'm still thinking I'm going to try Halves first but this is something I'm curious about. And by the chart it looks like FELT does better then Mentor, I imagine adding RPC indexes would also boost FELT a tad more? But I guess that ruins the purpose of FELT's compromised indexes for speed and ease.
Edit** okay not I feel like a big noob, can't find how to send pm's. How do I go about doing that?
Also if anyone can answer one of my earlier questions about FELT vs. RPC ""In ModernBlackjack it shows FELT does better then RPC because "FELT uses full-deck divisors for true count calculation. This improves the precision of the betting ramp." "
Could someone do the full deck divisors with RPC and use RPC's more precise indexes for best of both worlds? and/or use RPC's indexes with FELT fr the same effect. I'm still thinking I'm going to try Halves first but this is something I'm curious about. And by the chart it looks like FELT does better then Mentor, I imagine adding RPC indexes would also boost FELT a tad more? But I guess that ruins the purpose of FELT's compromised indexes for speed and ease.
Edit** okay not I feel like a big noob, can't find how to send pm's. How do I go about doing that?
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Going off the Cliff!
halves is basically RPC divided by deck. If you double halves you would then divide by half deck, and it would be a lot like the RPC. I don't think doubled halves works as well as halves just as RPC does not quite work as well as halves.
Don't get to caught up in which count to choose. Once out in the real world and you start using any bet camo; which you should, things get very blurry on the fringes. For this reason once you go to a higher level count there is not much difference in which one to choose.
Counting by 2 card combos and cancelling is important with havles.
Of course I am not biased
not at all
halves is basically RPC divided by deck. If you double halves you would then divide by half deck, and it would be a lot like the RPC. I don't think doubled halves works as well as halves just as RPC does not quite work as well as halves.
Don't get to caught up in which count to choose. Once out in the real world and you start using any bet camo; which you should, things get very blurry on the fringes. For this reason once you go to a higher level count there is not much difference in which one to choose.
Counting by 2 card combos and cancelling is important with havles.
Of course I am not biased
not at all
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Okay Blackjack Avenger so you are recommending to use the regular card tags for Halves rather than double them, sounds good to me. Searching around the forum I saw you use Halves, may I ask what kind of indexes you use? Any compromised or rounded? Just the Il18 + Fab4 + Catch22, or some extra? Although I guess I couldn't copy you completely since you probably play S17 and I mainly have H17 where I am.
Halve as Good = Great
Yes, regular old halves.
start with catch 22
don't worry about surrender until you may play it
After that it's subjective:
For playing shoes with poor penetration there won't be a lot of added value for more indicies.
If you play deeper penetration shoes or decent DD then learning a few more can have some value, perhaps those against the dealers 10. Soft spl and double indices just arent worth much.
Nothing wrong with learning more indices if you wish.
On difficulty of the count:
The benchmark is suppose to be counting down a deck in under 30 seconds, perhaps 10 times with no errors.
Me halves?
What?
I am not biased not at all!
The halves legion grows!:devil:
Yes, regular old halves.
start with catch 22
don't worry about surrender until you may play it
After that it's subjective:
For playing shoes with poor penetration there won't be a lot of added value for more indicies.
If you play deeper penetration shoes or decent DD then learning a few more can have some value, perhaps those against the dealers 10. Soft spl and double indices just arent worth much.
Nothing wrong with learning more indices if you wish.
On difficulty of the count:
The benchmark is suppose to be counting down a deck in under 30 seconds, perhaps 10 times with no errors.
Me halves?
What?I am not biased not at all!
The halves legion grows!:devil:
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Don't be afraid of halves
I use Mentor, which first drew my interest because of the true-count conversion and the general similarity of the tags to the doubled halves tags.
If I ever move to another count, it will be halves. That extra weight on the 5 fits its heavier effect on your fortunes.
I wouldn't bother to double the tag values for halves. I tried learning the doubled values, and my count-down times and general accuracy seemed no better. For the .5 on the running count, I mentally affix the syllable "kay", so that 7.5 is "7k" and -3.5 is "96k" in my head. If you tend to make the glottal stop for "k" when thinking it, you should pick another syllable, in case the dealer picks up on your throat pulsating like a frog's.
On Casino Verite my halves running counts were often off by the end of the shoe. Figuring that my casino results were even less accurate, I figured I was negating the advantage of halves, so I practiced with Mentor for a couple of weeks, and my error rate was far lower.
The "downgrade" to a level 2 count may have been premature: I now think I could handle halves without a problem. But I have flash cards for the Mentor indices, and know them all now, so I'm not sure any upgrade would return enough extra earnings to justify eating the sunk cost of my Mentor training plus the additional hours to adapt to halves.
For some reason, I know my multiplication tables well past 12x12, so it wasn't hard to memorize the lines for 4, 6, and 8 up to 39, so as to do true-count conversions for 5, 3.5, and 2.5 decks remaining, respectively. For example, with 2.5 decks left and a true count of 24, I immediately hear "8x24 = 192" in my head, and the true count of 19.2 pops up.
This sounds like fastidious overkill, but it's really fast at the tables. Multiplying by 2/3 and 4/3 is harder, but they can also be memorized. I haven't made an effort to do this - it seems to be happening automatically. After a few hundred times, things like "17 -> 11" pop into my head without effort when there are 3 decks left.
Mentor is friendly to cancellation, because there are the same number of +2 cards as -2 cards, and the same number of +1 cards as -1 cards. I don't think that it's as easy to count a whole table as with Zen, because you can ignore 9's in Zen, but the cards seem to arrange themselves more easily in cancelling pairs than in most counts. Could be my imagination, though.
The true-count conversion in Mentor is blazing fast for me, and keeps getting faster. I'm good at dividing fractions, so conventional true-count conversion doesn't bother me, but two-deck true-count conversion by multiplication is a paradise I may never leave.
Give halves a chance if you want the best betting correlation you can get in shoes. I wouldn't be put off by initial difficulties unless you're really struggling to get below 30 seconds to count a deck. There's something pure about halves, and the single 1.5-valued card doesn't make it significantly harder than a 2-level count.
I use Mentor, which first drew my interest because of the true-count conversion and the general similarity of the tags to the doubled halves tags.
If I ever move to another count, it will be halves. That extra weight on the 5 fits its heavier effect on your fortunes.
I wouldn't bother to double the tag values for halves. I tried learning the doubled values, and my count-down times and general accuracy seemed no better. For the .5 on the running count, I mentally affix the syllable "kay", so that 7.5 is "7k" and -3.5 is "96k" in my head. If you tend to make the glottal stop for "k" when thinking it, you should pick another syllable, in case the dealer picks up on your throat pulsating like a frog's.
On Casino Verite my halves running counts were often off by the end of the shoe. Figuring that my casino results were even less accurate, I figured I was negating the advantage of halves, so I practiced with Mentor for a couple of weeks, and my error rate was far lower.
The "downgrade" to a level 2 count may have been premature: I now think I could handle halves without a problem. But I have flash cards for the Mentor indices, and know them all now, so I'm not sure any upgrade would return enough extra earnings to justify eating the sunk cost of my Mentor training plus the additional hours to adapt to halves.
For some reason, I know my multiplication tables well past 12x12, so it wasn't hard to memorize the lines for 4, 6, and 8 up to 39, so as to do true-count conversions for 5, 3.5, and 2.5 decks remaining, respectively. For example, with 2.5 decks left and a true count of 24, I immediately hear "8x24 = 192" in my head, and the true count of 19.2 pops up.
This sounds like fastidious overkill, but it's really fast at the tables. Multiplying by 2/3 and 4/3 is harder, but they can also be memorized. I haven't made an effort to do this - it seems to be happening automatically. After a few hundred times, things like "17 -> 11" pop into my head without effort when there are 3 decks left.
Mentor is friendly to cancellation, because there are the same number of +2 cards as -2 cards, and the same number of +1 cards as -1 cards. I don't think that it's as easy to count a whole table as with Zen, because you can ignore 9's in Zen, but the cards seem to arrange themselves more easily in cancelling pairs than in most counts. Could be my imagination, though.
The true-count conversion in Mentor is blazing fast for me, and keeps getting faster. I'm good at dividing fractions, so conventional true-count conversion doesn't bother me, but two-deck true-count conversion by multiplication is a paradise I may never leave.
Give halves a chance if you want the best betting correlation you can get in shoes. I wouldn't be put off by initial difficulties unless you're really struggling to get below 30 seconds to count a deck. There's something pure about halves, and the single 1.5-valued card doesn't make it significantly harder than a 2-level count.
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Hey Friendo, I had started practicing halves today. For a first day I didn't find it that hard to count the .5's at all. I know what you mean about finding short syllables to count with. I don't mouth the words at all it's all in my head but within the first ten minutes I went from saying X"point five" to Xhalf, I'll try saying K in my mind. And at zero counts I started saying zero now I just say oh or don't say anything at all. I will keep practicing with halves and see how I like it, from where I'm starting learning it and learning any other L2 would be the same difficulty.
I had read a bit about speed reading how usually people read the words out in their head but to speed read you need to break that habit and practice slowly moving your eyes over the words taking in the meaning without taking time to mentally speak what you see and you slowly get faster at moving your eyes over the words without that inner voice. I want to try to do that with this where the numbers are in my head without the inner voice saying them.
I still don't know how I'll convert the TC if I'll divide or multiply. I'm doing this in blocks I'm going to get the count down fluently, then drill TC/deck estimation, then figure out my indices and memorize them, then put it together on Casino Verite, and once I think I can do it in my sleep accurately then I'll go to the Casino. I'm really in no hurry to go to the tables I find the learning process fun on it's own.
I had read a bit about speed reading how usually people read the words out in their head but to speed read you need to break that habit and practice slowly moving your eyes over the words taking in the meaning without taking time to mentally speak what you see and you slowly get faster at moving your eyes over the words without that inner voice. I want to try to do that with this where the numbers are in my head without the inner voice saying them.
I still don't know how I'll convert the TC if I'll divide or multiply. I'm doing this in blocks I'm going to get the count down fluently, then drill TC/deck estimation, then figure out my indices and memorize them, then put it together on Casino Verite, and once I think I can do it in my sleep accurately then I'll go to the Casino. I'm really in no hurry to go to the tables I find the learning process fun on it's own.