I watched a TV show a while ago, MIT's attempts to "break Vegas" with
card counting at blackjack, and their mishaps.
I personally found it pretty funny, especially Mr "M"'s (the
"Mastermind" of the operation) idiosyncratic ways, but mathematically
sound, nonetheless. This gave me a few ideas.
I don't have a PhD in Mathematics, like those eggheads at MIT, but I'm
reasonably intelligent, and I can write code.
I've won 925 USD this first month with my new program. I expect to do
better next month, now that I've lost the fear inherent to playing
online.
The normal disadvantage to the blackjack player, assuming he/she plays
correctly each and every time, is approximately -5.25% for each hand
played, (thanks, to John Scarne, for that accurate and concise
calculation) or so say the odds. But these "odds" don't include
knowledge of the state of the deck.
What if we dig a little deeper...
Counting cards to get the running count, true count, etc is easy
enough to do, and that's just one powerful advantage, my program does
that to calculate the best next bet, but what about the correct play
as the hands are dealt?
I've written a very nice Windows program that does all this
seamlessly, with only mouse clicks to enter cards played. It doesn't
figure the correct bet and subsequent play based on only standard
"odds", but takes the remaining cards in the deck(s) into account.
You're probably saying by now, how can you do that?
I found that the easiest way, for me, is just to run about 30,000
simulations of each hand, based on the cards that remain in the
deck(s). I have a fairly slow computer (a Pentium II, 400Mhz), so 30K
sims works well for me. Most of you could probably achieve much better
results. Anyway, my program plays each hand as many times as I tell it
to, using the cards left in the deck(s), then gives me the best play,
and then the correct next bet based on this and prior information.
Calculating the exact edge this gives the player is very hard to
calculate, and I'd never even attempt to, but after a month of using
my program, I'm estimating it to be somewhere in the area of +1.5% to
+2.5%.
This advantage seems to be enough to continually beat the online
casinos.
Just letting you know it can be done, never give up, you guys! :-)
TJ
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