SD Insurance

[Red_Chipper]

Hey guys, I was playing a single deck game and 3 of the aces had already been played pretty early in the deck. So of course the dealer pulls the 4th ace and asks for insurance. Counting my cards and her ace using hi-lo, I had a running count of -3.

We were on the 3rd or 4th hand at the time and it was me and one other player. It got me wondering if I could do some easy conversion to get a better idea on insurance. Sure the counts negative, but the aces are a big part of that. I'm pretty sure I wanna stick with hi-lo but I dunno, what's your guys' advice?

 

[rukus]

Hey guys, I was playing a single deck game and 3 of the aces had already been played pretty early in the deck. So of course the dealer pulls the 4th ace and asks for insurance. Counting my cards and her ace using hi-lo, I had a running count of -3.

We were on the 3rd or 4th hand at the time and it was me and one other player. It got me wondering if I could do some easy conversion to get a better idea on insurance. Sure the counts negative, but the aces are a big part of that. I'm pretty sure I wanna stick with hi-lo but I dunno, what's your guys' advice?

It depends on how deep in the deck you were when the first three aces were dealt, ie did they come faster than expected (1 every 13 cards). If so, you are correct they are "over contributing" to the negative count. That said, even if you "give back" two of those aces and add two to your Rc, you are still negative and not near the insurance index.

But you identified the crux of the issue. Many people use ace neutral main counts for single deck to avoid something like this and make better playing decisions (and ace side count adjustment for betting).

 

[21forme]

In an insurance-specific count, Ace counts as +1. So, you would need to add back +2 to your HiLo for each Ace played. If your HiLo count is -3, your insurance count would be +5 (-3+8) adding back the 4 Aces. Definitely take INS in that situation.