Please Forgive a Newbie

[CriminalMind]

As a 24 year veteran of message boards, I'll only ask this one stupid question, and then I'll tread water for a long time. I've done a lot of reading here today, so I don't want you to think I'm just asking this out of laziness. There's just a lot of threads here, and I could wade for days looking for the answer.

I've been playing Blackjack for about 15 years now, but never looked into the prospect of card counting.

My local casino offers a 6 deck shoe, with no surrender, double after split. They take about 100 cards from every shoe out of play with the cut card.

The thing that's always confused me is: By only playing 4 out of the 6 decks, how do you work that into your counting? Statistically, any card could be as dead as another, I understand. But is there something card counters factor in to cancel this unknown?

If I can wrap my head around this problem, I could likely work it out.

 

[no_fear]

You pretend as if those cards just haven't been seen yet

 

[ihate17]

why pen is so important

As someone just looking into cardcounting you found one of the most important aspects of the game, penetration.
Cutting a third of the cards away in a 6D game is really poor penetration and to explain it in very simple terms would go something like this: You are counting down the deck, get an excellent count and now hope that all those good cards are not in the two decks behind the cut card. Compare that to the same count in a game where only one deck is behind the cut card and you quickly see that the chance of the good cards coming out before the shuffle is much better. And that it is, it is chance and the fewer cards cut, the better your chances.
This all goes along with getting more hands to play with better pen at good counts.

Play bad pen games and you will face too many instances where you are reaching to make big bets and see the cut card come out while there is still a monster count.

ihate17

 

[shiznites]

Playing 4/6 deck is crappy penetration with no surrender is a game you probably should AVOID.

 

[non-self-weighter]

For a card counter (not a shuffle tracker), all unseen cards are treated the same, whether they are behind or in front of the cut card.

Assume you know there are exactly 5 aces that haven't been played yet. The game is as you described, 100 cards are cut off. Let's say there are 200 cards left in the shoe (100 are behind, 100 in front of cut card).

What's the chance the next card will be an ace?

You may ask, how many of the 5 aces are in front/behind the cut card? This is where you get stuck. We simply don't know.

We just know there are 200 cards in total we haven't seen, and 5 of them are aces. The chance that the next card will be an ace is simply 5/200. Sure, if we knew where those aces where, we could say, "5/100 chance next card is ace, because all aces are in front of the cut card." In order to know that, you would have to be a shuffle tracker.

Statistically, any card could be as dead as another, I understand. But is there something card counters factor in to cancel this unknown?

No. This would be entering the realm of shuffle tracking.

Side Note: The game you describe is NOT worth counting. If you are playing a 6 deck game, you need surrender, and you should look for at most 75 cards cut off. You also didn't mention if it is s17, which is obviously preferred.

 

[Kasi]

The thing that's always confused me is: By only playing 4 out of the 6 decks, how do you work that into your counting? Statistically, any card could be as dead as another, I understand. But is there something card counters factor in to cancel this unknown?.

Hey, no such thing as a stupid question so nothing to forgive lol.

All I can say is, your counting is always the same, it's the "how much to bet and when with how much roll to keep risk where I want it to be" question that card-counters factor in to know what to expect from one's roll and how likely it such roll may last for how long in any given game.

Basically adjusting bet sizes in different games to keep risk to roll more or less the same in each game one chooses to play.

Based on what one determines of how much is needed to have a certain risk with a certain EV, then either play or don't play.

Hope that helps a little lol.