Don is correct in that surrender is one of the most profitable options in the game. BUT, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it with some caution because in my experience, surrender plays do stand out or draw attention, just as Dopple said. Part of that is just ignorance on the part of the pit as most pit people will know the BS surrender plays at most (if any at all), and if they see anything other than that will just jump to the conclusion that you are an expert or very knowledgeable player. For this reason, I limit my surrender plays, right along with all index plays. I play a combination of Illustrious 18 and counter's basic strategy.
Now understand that I am about longevity. I often say I am in the shearer camp in the shear vs slaughter approach. I think ZG used a slightly different analogy last week, I forget...Milking vs skinning maybe.
Anyway everything I do is about that. Don's basis of the illustrious18 plays right into that. If I can get say 80% of advantage using 20% of the plays, that is the way I want to go
because each strategy change play draws attention.
Even basic strategy: I use a counters basic strategy
because strategy change plays draw attention. In particular playing one way at times and differently other times and that includes surrendering a hand sometimes and not surrendering others.
I am not saying I never use any strategy change plays or numbers (indices), but the fewer the better. I would rather play a hand wrong some of the time when I have minimum bet out and play it right when I have my max bet out, all the while playing it the same way both time. And again, this includes surrender plays.
Yeah there is a cost to this style of play. But if you are giving up say 20% of the advantage gained by strategy change plays, and it allows you to play 5, 10 times longer at that location, maybe more....Yeah that's a pretty good trade off for me. Especially since the total advantage from strategy change is only a small fraction of the total advantage in most (shoe) games I play. Shoe game most of the advantage comes from bet spread alone. So yeah, again, if minimizing some of these strategy change plays, including surrender index plays, allows you to increase longevity by 10 fold....it's not even close.