sagefr0g said:
so i know in Blackjack Attack, Don S writes about back counts and about at what point it might be best to abandon back counting a table and moving on to another table to try and back count.
so it makes me wonder, say you are in a play all mode. six deck or double deck. what ever. thing is wouldn't it a lot of times get to the point where your counting and the count becomes so 'miserable' that any pragmatic hope of the count becoming positive is dashed? such that, at that point if you are in play all mode you could just forget counting that pack and min bet and play basic strategy. save a few brain cells, lol.
i guess what i'm asking is would Schlesinger's chapter 13 stuff discussing Mr. Perfect, WiWo and White Rabbit be applicable to such a ploy?
edit: i dunno something on the lines of for a Z deck pack, say your X decks in and the count is -Y then foughgetaboutit?:cow:
Most of the times I have played blackjack, it was play-all. When I first started playing I spread like I was supposed to. I had some good wins and also some bad losses doing this.
I stopped playing for quite awhile until one day I had the opportunity to enter a pro-am bowling tournament at Sam's Town in Henderson near Vegas. I had been dabbling in analyzing blackjack on a very old computer that was just the next step up from a calculator. My main focus was on the bowling tourney but I was gonna play some blackjack too but decided to spread like a steaming hot bowl of chicken noodle soup.
Anyway I won the bowling tourney and they paid $1000 cash and seemed to point me in the direction of the casino, but I also had a pretty good win at blackjack so it was a very good trip.
Since then I have made several trips to Vegas using various counting strategies, playing all, and using a chicken spread since I didn't have much of a bankroll. I can't say I made a lot of money and I was probably lucky but I did OK. I did a lot of camping out sometimes playing maybe 24 hours straight just to see what happened. I got the feeling the pit knew I was counting but I was spreading so little that they thought I must be crazy.
Blackjack can be a crazy game. Counts can tank in a hurry, particurlarly if you're playing double deck. But when the count tanks that means high cards are coming out. The thing is you can't take advantage of this because it can't be predicted as being probable beforehand. I think my biggest winning streak ever came on a series of tanked counts. I was down some but I kept winning and winning with a min bet out. I won enough to recoup money I had lost over several hours in just a short time betting min. Wouldn't you know that when the count finally became good enough to raise my bet, I lost.
My last trip I wonged using a model I came up with. Nobody ever mentions this, but I think a wonger needs to be in better physical condition than a play-all person.
When it probably ain't worth it? When do you abandon play all and get out of Dodge? I prefer to use intuition and common sense based upon what I have learned and living with the consequences.
Continuing on with my rambling, in my opinion the best encapsulation of gambling at blackjack is offered by Sonny, "It's not the size of your bankroll, it's how you leverage it!"
:grin: