_ HE ees mt elas SLA TO “SPANISH 21 AND alae oa PONTOON KATARINA — 0 - — WAILERSTHE PRO’S GUIDE TO SPANISH 21 AND AUSTRALIAN PONTOON Katarina WalkerMaven Press New York, NY 10025 Wwww.spanishcountess.com books@spanishcountess.com ©2008 by Katarina Walker Printed in the United Scates of America ISBN 978-1-4357-1065-8 Cover Design Elisabeth Glen, Business Exposure vwww-businessexposure.com.au Cover Mlustration Credits Plaza de Toros Monumental, Barcelona, 1936 by Carlos Ruano-Llopis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief excerpts for the purpose of review.Contents 1. The History of Spanish 21. 1 2. The Rules of the Game 3 Splitting rules 5 Double down 5 OBBO and BB+L 5 Forfeit 6 Late surrender 6 3. Basic Strategy 9 How to use the charts 11 trategy charts Super bonus 13 Redoubling notes 13, Learning basic strategy 18 Using Casino Vérité 20 4, Strategy Chart Analysis 23 Expected value 23 Bonus payouts 25 EV for doubling 25 Splitting pairs 26 Surrendering 29 Redoubling 35 Hard seventeen 36 Soft hands 37 Hole-card effect 38 Insurance 38 ‘Stiffhands 40 Super bonus 40 Side bets 41 House edge 44 Standard deviation 47 5. Card Counting 51 ‘The Basic Hi-Lo Sysiem 53 Counting in Spanish 21 56 Learning to count 59 Deck estimation 61 True count calculation 63 Rounding theraw TC_64 Counting accuracy 64 Penetration 65 Playing with the Count 67 Playing style 67 How many boxes? 69 Bet sizing 13 Optimal betting 74 Risk of ruin 77 Betting spread 79 Maximizing your win rate _80 Using an index chart 81 Migration from Blackjack 84 Playing level comparison _ 84 Effect ofpenetration 88 ‘Nour index chart 97 ‘The “Illustrious 18°91 Index adjustment table 93 Learning indices with CV_94 Win sate calculation _95 Risk of ruin calculation 98. index Chart Analysis _99 Eorisit 99 Splitting 101Doubling _101 Appendix A: Index Charts 149 ‘Stihands 102 ‘Al Legend 150 Super bonus strategy _102 A2No draws on split Aces 150 Pontoon surrender 103 A3 Natural after split pays 3:2 150 Soft hands 103 A4 Standard 6-deck HIT 151 The BB+1 conundrum 103 AS Standard 6-deck S17 152 ‘AG Standard 6-deck HI7 RD 153 8. Additional Playing Issues _105 AT Standard &-deck HIT 154 Traveling 105 AS Standard 8deck HI7RD 154 Presentation 107 ‘A9 Standard 8-deck $17 154 Brsvicwed cards 108 Al0 Pontoon 1155 Legal issues 109 All Pontoon 2 156 Tuming pro 111 A12 Pontoon 3. 156 Playing journal 113 A13 Pontoon 4156 “Session dura 4 Al4 Pontoon 5157 Dealing with losing 114 AIS Pontoon 6157 Compsand hosts 116 Al6 Pontoon 7157 Comp counting _119 “Team play 119 Appendix B: Advantage, Variance, and ‘Curreney conversion 122 Covariance Tables 159 ive betting 122 BI Standard 6-deck H17_ 160 Camouflage 124 B26-deck HITNS 190 Player ego 131 B3 6-deck HITNDSA._ 161 Problem gamblers 132 B4 6-deck H17, split BI pays 3:2 161 Dealers 133 BS Standard 8eck H17_ 162 Dealer errors 134 B6 Standard G-deck $17 162 Dishonest players 135 B76-deck $17NS_ 163 Gaming literature 135 BS 6-deck SITNDSA_ 163 B96-deck SITNSNDSA 164 9. Urban Myths _137 B10 Standard 8-deck S17 164 Rad players make you lose 138 BII Sdeck S17 NS 165 Follow winning streaks 139 B12 Sdeck S17 NDSA 165 Opening a box is bad luck 140 B13 6aleck HITRD 166 Find a winning wble 141 B14 Galeck H17 RD NS 166 Don't play against a hot desler 141 BIS 6leck H17 RD NDSA 167 ‘Third base controls the game 142 B16 6leck H17 RD NS NDSA_ 167 Pictures follow low-cart streaks 142 BIT 8deck HI7 RD 168 Wwsall luck 143 BI8 8leck HI7 RD NS 168 Play asa team, win as ateam 144 BI9 8deck HI7 RD NDSA_ 169 Blackjacks come in threes 144 B20 Pontoon | 169 Surrender is for chickens 144 B2I Pontoon 2 170 You must be consistent 145 B22 Pontoon 3170 Blame the cutter 145 B23 Pontoon 4171 Go home while you're ahead 145 B24 Pontoon S171 Full tables give less Blackjacks 146 B25 Pontoon 6 172 Surrender stiffs versus high up cards 146 B26 Pontoon 7 172 10. Epilogue 147 Appendix C: TC Frequeney Distributions 173image not availableimage not availableimage not availablebecause as your understanding of the theory improves, so will your decision making in all aspects of the game, which will improve your performance. It will also make the memorization process easier and the playing process more enjoyable. For those of you who have never read an authoritative, peer-reviewed book on gaming theory, you will need to completely change the way you think about gambling. Much of what you believe is true about how casino games work is nothing more than superstition and urban myth, If you intend to ultimately become a professional Spanish 21 player, and enjoy superior win rates to Blackjack, you will need to have a solid grasp of the mathematies of the game. If your only desire is to play the best game possible without learning to count cards, skip the chapters on card counting, and when you've finished the book, go back and learn the basic strategy chart for the particular rules offered by your local casino. However, if you want to make long-term profits playing Spanish 21, you will need to carefully work through the entire book. Don’t be intimidated by the concept of card counting; with practice and patience, anyone can lear the technique. If you have heard that you need to be a genius or an MIT graduate to be able to count cards, you have been misled. Counting cards is a robotic process that doesn’t require much intelligence. Notwithstanding, it will take study and work to become a winning player. If it were easy to make a living at casinos, everyone would be doing it, and all the _ money-making opportunities would dry up. If you are lazy but ‘want quick cash, you are barking up the wrong tre. If you already count cards at Blackjack and wish to apply this skill to Spanish 21, this book has been written with you in mind, The Hi-Lo count is the system of choice for most Blackjack advantage players, and for that reason, it is the system chose for this book. I will show you how to adapt the Hi- Lo count 10 Spanish 21 without changing any of the point values assigned to card rank. This will enable you to make the transition to Spanish 21 by the simple act of memorizing another index chart. Obviously, with your existing knowledge base, you will find certain sections of this book somewhat easy and tedious. Be mindful that Spanish 21 has many unique properties that distinguish it from Blackjack. For this reason, 1 recommend that you skim read the entire book, slowing down when you come to a section with information that you're not familiar with. If you iiss sections of the book, even the ones that seem so basic, you could miss out on crucial information. T have endeavored to provide strategy and index charts, data and statistics for every Spanish 21 rule set in the world, with the exception of online casinos, as they cannot be beaten through play alone. If you cannot find the strategies for your rules in this book, email me through the book website, and I will generate them for you and post them on the site, All charts and data contained in this book were obtained from “The Spanish 21 Conquistador,” a suite of computer programs 1 wrote myself that employ the Monte Carlo simulation algorithm, The software will _ be available from the ~— book website: wwwspanishcountess.com,image not availableimage not availableimage not availabledoes have a natural, the round aborts and all remaining hands automatically lose. Otherwise, you then have the opportunity to draw extra cards and improve your total In Pontoon, the dealer does not get a hole card, so you do not know whether he has a natural until the end of the round, when he deals himself a second card. When the desler is showing an Ace, it creates an atmosphere of suspense that builds up until the dealer finally draws. ‘Once playing commences, the object of the game is to beat the dealer’s hand by obtaining a total card count not exceeding twenty-one. If you exceed twenty-one, this is known as a busi, and your eards are collected and placed in the diseard tray and your bet is removed from the box. Face cards count as ten and are subsequently referred to as the card X, the Roman numeral for ten, Aces count as one oF eleven and all other cards count as their face value. Players who achieve twenty-one with three or more cards are paid at appropriate odds before any more cards are drawn, regardless of the dealer's hand. After the dealer has drawn to his own hand, the round is over. If your hand is closer to twenty-one than his, you win and are paid even money. If the dealer busts, you win as long as you haven't busted, regardless of your total. If both you and the dealer bust, the dealer still wins, which is how the casino gets its edge. In the event that you and the dealer have a hand of equal value, you neither win nor lose and your original bet remains in the box. This is known as a push, stand-off, or tie, In addition, there are other ways of winning. in Spanish 21 To play the game, you must bet on the table in ‘one or more boxes, preferably in front of you. Many casinos in North Ameriea do not allow more than two boxes per player and your boxes must be adjacent. If the free box that you wish to play is not adjacent to your current box(es), you may be allowed to request a fellow player to place the bet for you and play according to your instructions. Some venues require you to place double the minimum bet per box for the privilege of playing two boxes. My advice is to do what you want until you are informed otherwise. In Australia, there is no limit on how many boxes you can play or where that are shown in Table 2.1 Table 2.1. Spanish 21 pa Result Payout Natural 32 8 cards totaling 21 32 6 carde totaling 21 2a 7 cards totaling 21 3a 6-7-8 mixed suits 32 6-7-8 same suit 2a 6-7-8 all spades sa 7-7-7 mixed suits 32 7-7-7 sare suit 2a 7-7-7 all spades 3a Allother payouts 14 Super Bonus: 7-7-7 suited Variable plus dealer up card any 7 your boxes are positioned, although in some venues, you are required fo give up multiple boxes if the table is full and @ new player joins in, In addition, you are allowed to make 2 bet on someone else’s hand simply by placing your chips behind his, within the confines of the box. If you do this, you must leave all playing decisions up 10 the person who “owns” the box, unless he expressly asks for your opinion. This is known as “back betting” and, while ubiquitous in Australia, it is not generally allowed in the U.S The cards are dealt face up and you are not permitted to have hand contact with the cards. If you wish to receive another card (hit, draw, or pull), there are two hand signals, depending on the casino. You can either tap the table with your hand or seratch it lightly towards you with your fingers. Hand signals are compulsory and necessary for the video surveillance. To signal that you don’t want another card, move your hand in a horizontal ‘motion, palm down, without touching the table. You ar given the frecdom of drawing or standing on any hend total and can receive as many cards as you wish, provided you don't exceed ‘twenty-one, The dealer, on the other hand, does not have this freedom of choice. He must draw on totals of sixteen or less and stand on totals of seventeen or more, The exception to this is softimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableTable 3.2 Pontoon rule sets Pontoon No. ofdecks OB30 BBH Split pairs Split Aces Not last chance doubling 1 8 Yes No Shands Shands Yes 2 4 Yes Yes 4hands 2 hands Yes a 6 Yes Yes 2hands 2 hands Yes 4 8 Yes Yes hands 2 hands. Yes 5 8 Yes Yes 3hands 2 hands Yes 6 8 No ND Shands 2 hands No. 7 8 Yeo No Shands 3 hands. No. When you've finished your chart, print a few copies out. If you don’t have use of a computes, just write it out neatly by hand, Every time you write out your chart, whether by hand or by keyboard, some portion of it will be automatically memorized without your even being aware of the process. This makes the tedious process of creating and copying your chart very beneficial STRATEGY CHARTS The charts for all cules set are shown in Tables 3.4 to 3.7; the legend for the charts is shown in Table 3.3. The numbers across the top of the charts denote the dealer up card. The numbers down the left-hand side correspond to the player's hand total. An S preceding a two-digit number in the left-hand column denotes a soft hand, eg., S18 is sof eighteen. A pair of numbers separated by a hyphen denotes a pair, e.g,, 2-2. The forfeit (or redouble rescue) section tells you what to do if you double and end up with a total of seventeen or less: S. means “play on” (which is similar to “stand,” hence the S), and F means forfeit If you are allowed to redouble, D means “double again.” Points to note 1. Always stand on hard totals of 18 and above; 2. Always stand on soft 20 in basic strategy: 3. Always hit hard 12 in basic strategy; 4. If you are not allowed to redouble, always hit hard, non-pair totals of 8 or les 5. Never forfeit double totals of 18 and above 6. Never split 5-5, as 101 is always the superior hand; 7. Never take insurance. Kight-deck games: The charts in Tables 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 are for the six-deck game. If you play an eightdeck game, there may be some minor changes required. For HI7, make the following strategy changes: 9 versus 6 is , hard 14 versus 6 is “S5;>, hard 15 versus 6 is , hard 15 versus 6 is , soft 14 versus 3 is Double P spit F Forfeit L Late Surender LH Surrender, but hitif 3or more cards st Stand, but hit f 4 oF more cards ss Stand, but hit # § or more cards se Stand, but hitf 6 or more cards be Double, buthit f 3 or more cards ba Double, buthitf 4 or more cards bs Double, but hit § or more cards D6 Double, buthit 6 or more cards «(period Hiti 6-7-8 possible = (colon) Hiti suted 6-7-8 or 7-7-7 possible x (semicolon) __Hitif spaded 6-7.8 pessible.image not availableimage not availableimage not availableTable 36 Basic strategy for H17 with redoubling H 0s 10 " 03 bs be 0 Ds D5 same strategy as for standard HI7 246 813 14 03 03 S15 s16 st7 st s19 22 3 D3 sé $6 33 44 55 66 1 a8 99 o o KX Forfeit and redouble rescue strategy 12 13-16 7 IF you have doubled, double againimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablepossibility of getting 6-7-8 only if you're hitting a two-card thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, as your hand can be only 6-7, 6-8, or 7-8. If you do have one of these hands, you will have a conditional hit only for thirteen versus six, fourteen versus four, or fifteen versus two when playing HIT, which will happen less than 0.5% of the time, fewer than one out of every 200 hands. As for suited and spaded 6- 7-8 or any 7-7-7, the frequency is a whole order of magnitude less. You can take your time leaming the conditional 6-7-8 plays, because knowing them will not save you much money. In fact, you will probably find that by referring to your chart over and over again, you will end up memorizing the more complex plays over time without even being aware of it, Note that both unsuited 6-7-8 and five- card twenty-one pay 3 to 2, so you will find that if the hard thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen play is . it will also be . This makes the 6-7-8 unsuited plays easier to remember. Note that the only possible five-card ten is five twos, which is virtually impossible to get against up cards 2-8 because you split twos. The only way you will get 2 five-card ten against 2-8 is if you have already split twos to the maximum allowable number of hands and are dealt four more twos in a row. You will probably never get this in your entire life, so it is safe to say that for hard ten, you can change all the DS plays to D, which will make it easier to remember. It will ease the memorization process if you note that the numbers after the letters D and $ increase as you approach the dealer up card of six from both directions. The reason why the hit numbers don’t exceed six is because the bonus payouts are capped at seven cards. Hitting a six-card hand and getting Table 29 Froquoncy of n card hands No. of cards inhand Frequency 2 73.0% 3 21.0% 4 4.3% 5 0.7% 6 or more 0.1% a seven-card twenty-one is awarded the same payout as hitting a seven-card hand and getting en eight-card twenty-one. Consequently, the two hands have virtually the same odds Most of your plays will be reasonably obvious and, after a while, you will be able to make them very quickly. However, when you are confionted with a tricky play, take your time playing it so that you don’t make an error. I usually say something like, “Should I go for a five-card twenty-one?” This lots the dealer know that I require a moment for reflection USING CASINO VERITE Learning is made quick and easy by the use of Blackjack software containing flashcard drills. The only Spanish 21-friendly product on the market is Casino Vérité Blackjack (CVBJ) by Norm Wattenberger, which is considered the most advanced and accurate Blackjack software available. You can download a two-week free-trial version from wwv.qfit.com. Before you can do your flashcard drills, a great deal of setting up is required, because CVBI is designed for Blackjack rather than Spanish 21. It is a tworpart process; first we set up CVBI to play Spanish 21, and then we enter our Spanish 21 basic strategy into the Blackjack Testing Engine. | will guide you through, step by step, so that it is a painless process. When you first use CVBI, it will ask you to select from a list comprising casinos from all over the world. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose, as it is relevant to Blackjack, not Spanish 21. Choose the first table layout you see, and when asked your playing level, choose “Maven,” which means “expert.” When the table layout appears, select “Options” from the menu along the top, then choose “Settings.” Under the “Basic Rules” tab, under “Decks Penetration,” choose “No. of decks.” Under “Parameters,” choose the number of burn cards in the venue where you play. Under “Common Rules.” choose your hard and soft double down nules and tick “DD after split.” If you are playing Pontoon, tick “No dealer hole card dealt,” and in South Australia, tick “Dealer BI wins all” If HIT, tick “Dealer hits $17” Under theimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableEach win retums 1 extra unit to the player and occurs 00.241 of the time, each tie retums 0 extra units and occurs 0,060 of the time, and each loss returns 1 extra unit and oceurs 0,699 of the time Thus, the EV for hitting a two-card hard sixteen versus nine is (0.241 x 1) + (0.060 x 0) + (0.699 x =) = -0.458. This means that for every one unit bet, we can expect an average loss of 0.458 units if we always hit on this hand. Next, we calculate the EV for standing oa a two-card hard sixteen versus nine. If we stand, we win 22.85% of the time, This is virtually equivalent to the dealer bust rate on a nine, a8 the only way & final hand of less than sevenicen can win is if the dealer busts. A tie will never occur on sixteen, hence a loss will occur 100% ~ 22.85% = 77.15% of the time, Thus, the EY for standing on two-card sixteen versus nine is (02285 x 1) + (O.7715 x -1) = 0.543 For hard sixteen versus nine, splitting is not possible and doubling down is considered only when the EV for hitting is greater than zero, hence we need to compare the expected values for hitting and standing only. Since the EV for hitting, ~0.458, is greater than the EV for standing, -0.543, the best play for two-card hand sixteen versus nine is a hit, and it is this play that appears in the basie strategy chart. Because we played our hand 100-million times for both hit and stand, our results have a high degree of accuracy. The degree of accuracy is measured by the “standard enor” (SE), aka “sampling ermor.” The greater the number of simulations performed, the higher the accuracy of the results obtained and the lower the standard error. The standard error for both of the expected values we obtained is 0.0002, rounded to four decimal places. In general, if we have @ value x with a standard error s, we can be 95% confident that the actual value lies somewhere between x~ 2s and x + 2s, We can write this as x + 2s. Therefore, if we obtain an EV of -9.5430, we can be 95% confident that the true EV is between -0.5434 and 0.5426. Hitting a two-card hard sixteen versus nine has a negative EV: it is a losing play, but the lesser of two evils. If you've got a bad hand, you pick the play that will, on average, make you lose the least. ‘The maximum EV fora given hand is referred to as the “expected win” or EW. EW < 0 favors the house, and if @ tie is not possible and all winning payouts are one to one, a8 is the case with standing on sixteen or less, it is equivalent to having a less than 50% chance of winning. EW > 0 favors the player and is equivalent to having a greater than 50% chance of winning, given no ties and all payouts one to one. EW = 0 means that neither the house nor player has the advantage, which translates into a 50% chance of winning or losing, given no ties and payouts of one to one. Somee players, usually beginners, don’t hit their hard fifteen or sixteen against high up cards because they assume that they will bust and they ‘want to play it safe. The irony is that, overall, the safest play is the one that gives you the highest EV. (Technically speaking, a “safe play” also implies a low variance, but since the variances of hitting and standing on a two-card hand are similar, itis not an issue here. We will discuss variance and standard deviation later this chapter) The only way you can win by standing on fificen or sixteen is if the dealer busts, and the bust rates for high up cards are all less than 25%. However you play it, sixteen versus nine is a losing hand, but for every dollar you bet, you will lose an extra $0.43 ~ $0.458 = $0.085 if ‘you choose fo stand instead of hit. In other words, ‘over the long term, you will lose an extra 8.5% of the combined total of every bet you will ever have on this hand, This is money lost completely unnecessauily. In your playing career, you will get sixteen versus nine thousands of times, and if you stand instead of hit, by the end of your playing life you will have thrown away huncreds, maybe thousands, of dollars that could be in your pocket. Most players erroneously view each play as 2 one- off. Instead, think of each play as being repeated thousands of times and approach your playing career as one long session. A playing style chosen to maximize your EV. which is what basic strategy does, will give you the best possible return over the Jong term. Forget about your “sixth sense”; iff it actually worked, psychies would have no financial problems and wouldn't have to put in so many hours at the call centers,image not availableimage not availableimage not availablePair of sevens If we have a pair of unsuited sevens, there is the chance of getting 7-7-7, which is paid 3 to 2 Similarly, if our sevens are suited or spaded, there is the possibility of a suited or spaded 7-7-7, which pays 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 respectively. ‘Therefore, EV (hit) for a pair of sevens is higher in Spanish 21 than in Blackjack, even more so if they're suited or spaded. Nevertheless, EVisplit) is still greater than EV(hit) against up cards 2-7, so the splitting strategy is the same as for Blackjack DAS. Pair of eights We almost always split eights, as hard sixteen is a diabolical hand. (In Blackjack, sixteen is the worst possible hand, but in Spanish 21, hard seventeen versus Ace has the lowest EV. This is because the ‘Ace bust rate is lower, and your chance of winning by drawing on sixteen is higher.) Against X, it may feel like you are throwing away another bet by splitting your eights, but the mathematics shows that you are slightly better off splitting than hitting, and we already know that you are better off hitting than standing. Even if you win one hand and lose the other, you escape losing on sixteen, which is the most likely outcome from hitting or standing against X. You also have the chance of érawing a tinree and doubling down, Pair of nines A pair of nines gives a total of eighteen, which is a good time to tell you about the “rule of eighteen.” The “eye in the sky” has a few simple, and flawed, techniques for separating the good Blackjack players from the bad, so it can focus on scrutinizing the play of just the good players, First they observe the hard sixteen versus X play. The poor players always stand, the mediocre players always hit, and the good players sometimes hit, sometimes stand, depending on the count. The good American Blackjack player will either split or surrender his eights. Hard sixteen versus X is a very common hand, so it gives the pit an immediate, simple method to roughly determine skill level after just a small amount of play The second criterion they use is the rule of eighteen, Unskilled players believe that eighteen is & winning hand, so they will stand on theit pairs of nines and always stand on soft eighteen, However, the average winning hand, rounded to the nearest whole number, is nineteen, so eighteen is a losing hand. The good players are aware of this and know when to split their nines, and know to hit soft eighteen against a nine or above. High-roller professional Blackjack players _ sometimes camoullage their play by actually making playing errors especially calculated to be low in cost but high in camouflage, to fool the eye in the sky into believing they are hopelessly unskilled. In Spanish 21, we don’t need to worry about that, as the eye in the sky won't know basic strategy. Nevertheless, it is important to know that, contrary 10 what most players believe, nines are one of the best splits you can make, If the dealer is showing a nine and draws X or Ace, he will beat you. If instead you split your nines against a nine, you and the dealer have almost an equal chance of winning against each other, Following the same logic, splitting nines against up cards of 2-8 gives you an advantage over the dealer, but splitting nines against X or Ace does not, which is why we don’t split against these up cards, The exception is against a dealer seven where ‘we stand on our total of eighteen, which will win if the dealer draws X, without the risk of the additional split wager For up card two, the bust rate is lower than in Blackjack and your chance of drawing X on either or both of your nines is also lower. For these reasons, while we split nines versus two in Blackjack, we stand in Spanish 21. In standard six-deck H17, for a pair of nines versus two, EV(split) = 0.043 and EV(stand) = 0.063, so ‘you will save 2% of your bet by standing instead of splitting. For up cards of 3-6 and 8, we split. Against these up cards, splitting is offensive but against nine, splitting is slightly defensive, Sacrificial splitting In Australia, you are permitted to bet behind any other player in his box, and since this has long been the convention, no one ever objects, nor doesimage not availableimage not availableimage not available45% 40% 26% 0% 25% 208 2 18 Effective bust rate 2 40 2 8 2 0% Up card Figure 4.1. Effective bust rates forall the up cards Therefore, despite losing our original bet only to a dealer natural, we sill get the highest EV by forfeiting our stiff totals against an Ace up card. We save an average of 22.6% of our original bet The benefit of OBBO and BB+! comes. from halving our double down losses after getting totals of 17-20 against X-up dealer naturals, and 18-20 against Ace-up dealer naturals, rather than from stiff double totals. Ironically, in the NHC OBBO/BB+1 game, it is the up card X which gives the close call between forfeiting and not forfeiting, rather than the Ace. If we don’t forfeit stiff hands against X, we have a 21.2% chance of winning with a dealer bust, and a 1/12 = 8.3% chance of losing just our original bet. Subtracting the sum of these two from 100% gives our chance of losing two units. Therefore, the EV is (2 x 0.212) + (1 x 0083) + (2 x 0.705) = =1.069, so we save only 6.9% of our original bet by forfeiting, which is much less than the 22.6% we save by forfeiting against Ace. However, I've never met a player who thinks twice about forfeiting against X on the grounds of the possibility of a dealer natural. This is because players do not realize just how much lower the bust rate is for Ace compared to X. This also explains why many players believe that they will win against an Ace by standing on soft seventeen. 20 3 4 5 68 7 8 9 xX hee BHT? NaC Forfeiting 17 versus Ace In addition to forfeiting stiff double totals against up cards of 8A, we also need to forfeit double totals of seventeen against Ace. I will examine four different scenarios: HI7 with hole card, S17 with hole card, Pontoon without OBBO/BB+1, and Pontoon with OBBO'BB+1. In each case, | will show why forfeiting seventeen versus Ace is the superior play. HI7, hole card: Given that the dealer doesn’t have a natural, the player with a double-down result of seventeen has a 17.7% chance of winning due to the dealer busting, a 74.7% chance of losing, and a 7.6% chance of a tic. (All data are for six decks. For eight decks, the figures will be very similar.) A. tie will occur if the dealer gets hard seventeen, which is very unlikely as with an Ace, the most likely seventeen is A-6, which is subsequently hit. Therefore, the EV for not forfeiting is (2 x 0.1766) + (2 x 0.7474) + (0 x 0.076) = -1.142. Since EV(forfeit) = -1 for our two-unit bet, we save 14.2% of our original bet by forfeiting. S17, hole card: The chance of a tie increases by 11.6% to 19.2%, as both soft and hard seventeen will result in a tie, The chance of a win is the $17 effective bust rate for Ace, 14.1%. The chance of aimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableAgainst eight, the difference between EV(forfeit) and EV(double) on hard twelve is only 0.005, ice, 0.5% of your total bet, So if you choose to forfeit instead, you reduce your standard deviation at very Tow cost, Standard deviation measures the fluctuation in your performance and is covered later this chapter (pp. 47-49). Against seven, the difference between redoubling snd standing on hard twelve is quite significant, so there is no question as to how you should play it. Of course, while still less than zero, EV(hit) is greater than any of the alternatives, but once we have doubled, we are not permitted to hit. Redoubling can be considered hitting at a cost of your total bet. It is amazing how often I see players make their first or only double on hard twelve. Hard twelve is a stiff hand, ie., a bust hand, and no matter what the up card, all possible plays have a nogative EV. Note how up cards seven and eight mark the borderline between forfeiting and not forfeiting. If we weren't allowed to forfeit, we would redouble on hard twelve against all up cards of seven and above. I call this play a redouble rescue, since a double on hard twelve is never a first double. If our total after doubling is hard 13-16, the risk of busting from doubling again is too high for it to be a feasible altemative to standing or forfeiting Twelve is the only stiff hand where the odds favor a redouble rescue. For hard 13-16, we follow the same standard forfeit strategy as all the other rules. HARD SEVENTEEN From our discussion of forfeit and late surrender, we already know why we should hit hard seventeen against an Ace, unless it is our initial two-card hand, in which ease we surrender if and only if there is a hole card. If you are playing the hole-card game, you will be hitting hard seventeen versus Ace only if you have three or more cards, sinee you will surrender your initial two-card hand. Even though it is a losing hand, no matter how you play it (it is the lowest-EV hand in the entire game), if you stand instead of hit, in the long term it will work out to an additional 2.4% loss of each bet on a taree-card hand (H17). On hands of four or more cards, the penalty is far greater, due to the fact that one out of every twelve hits would have reaped a nice bonus. In the long run, it adds up to & great deal of money. For $17, this error will cost you only 0.3% of your bet ona three-card hand, Neverthelss, on a hand of four or more cards, it will still be costly. If you are playing Pontoon, this ezror is much more expensive than for hole-card H117, because you miss out on the chance of drawing to twenty- one and winning against a dealer natural. You will lose an additional 6.3% of your bet on a two- or tard hard seventeen, if you choose to stand of hit, For a six-card hand, it will cost you 222% of bet. Since you won't be surrendering your initial tvo-eard hand, of losing it to a dealer natural before you can blink, you will need to make this intimidating play a lot more ofien than in the hole-card game. Thus, it is extremely costly to stand instead of hit in Pontoon Hard seventeen versus Ace is a reasonably common hand. Each time I sit down, I play this hand many times and so will you. Do yourself a financial favor and play it correctly, even tho you will get treated like an idiot by the dealer, the staff, and your fellow players. In fact, I have met players who don’t realize that the tens have been removed. For some reason, they believe that the casino gives us all these bonuses and privileges for free. On two separate occasions, after explaining the absence of ten-spot cards to fellow players, they asked me where the casino put them. If you try to explain to everyone why you should hit instead of stand on hard seventeen versus Ace, you will come across as an expert to the staff, which will reduce your card-counting life-span, and the players will think you're a wowser and a know-it-all, so just keep your mouth shut and hope it catches on eventually, When people are extremely rude, I point to the Blackjack table and say, “Stand on seventeen versus Ace? You got the wiong game, pal. Blackjack’s over there.” Throughout my playing career, I have becn ridiculed and insulted from hitting hard seventeen inst Ace, especially when the dealer ends up getting a natural in Pontoon, as it is construed that my drawing on seventeen caused the entire table 0 lose. They forget about the equal nuraber of times that my hitting on seventeen prevented a dealer yourimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableyi(e+y). For insurance to be an even bet, we need a deck where the probability of drawing X, P(X) 1/(2+1) = 1/3, In Spanish 21, P(X) = 3/12 which isn't even close, a8 4/12 = 1/3, Blackjack has 4/13 30.8% X, which is still less than 33% = 1/3, so insurance is not a good bet for the Blackjack basic strategy player, and itis a wagie bet in Spanish 21 STIFF HANDS Anyone who has played Blackjack will notice thet the play for stiff hands versus 2-6 is more complicated in Spanish 21. In Blackjack multiple deck basic strategy, you simply stand on all stiff hands versus 2-6, with the exception of hard twelve against two and three. The play for Spanish 21 is different for two reasons: first of all, there are 1% fewer X's, relative to Blackjack. We obtain this figure by dividing 3/12 by 4/13, expressing it as a percentage, and subtracting from 100% Therefore, there is less chance of busting. Also, if, you hit and get twenty-one, it gives you an unconditional, rather than just a probable, win and you may be cligible for a bonus These characteristics make hitting more attreetive in Spanish 21 Consider the following analogy: You throw a pair of dice 1,000 times. The minimum possible total is two and the maximum is twelve. The median of ovo and twelve, defined as the midpoint, is seven, since there are five values less than seven, and five values greater, You will notice that the median total of seven occurs far mote often than totals near the two extremes. This is because a total of seven can come from (1,6), 2.5) G.4), (4.3). (52), or (6,1), but a total of two can come only from (1,1). Seven is also referred to as the mode, defined as the most commonly occurzing outcome, which is why it gets you out in Craps. With standard dice, the median and the mode are equal, because the frequency distribution of the totals is perfectly symmetric. A similar phenomenon occurs in Blackjack and Spanish 21. If for the purpose of this example, we consider initial wo-card hands only and count Aces 2s one, the minimum possible toral is two and the maximum is twenty. If there were just one X per suit, the mode and median would be eleven. However, there are three X’s per suit, which creates a bimodal distribution, Our new mode is boventy, which was one of the two rarest fotals, but is now the most frequent total. Our other mode, which we can call the “first mode,” was eleven when we had just one X per suit, but is now greater dun eleven, The two extra X’s per suit have skewed the distribution to the tight, so the first mode is now greater than the median. This is why stiff hands are the most common starting hands. Exen if your starting hand is not stiff, there is a reasonable chance that your hand will end up that way afler hitting, so if you do not know how to play stiff hands correctly, it will cost you a great deal of money. Casinos make most of their Spanish 21 profits from people who “under-hit” their stiff hands. They also make 2 small amount of profit from people who hit stiff hands too often, as “over- hitting” is much less common, If you have a stiff hand against a dealer 7-A, you need to hit. On hands greater than thirteen, you will probably bust, but if you stand, you will win only if the dealer busts. From Table 4.2, we know that the bust rates for up cards of 7-A are all less than 27% and average less than the corresponding bust rates for Blackjack, Your chance of winning, not counting ties and bonuses, is low, but still greater than the up card bust rate, so go against your intuition and always hit. When you start Counting cards, the count will occasionally get high enough to warrant standing on sixteen versus X, but will rarely get high enough to warrant standing on any other stif- hand combination. SUPER BONUS The super bonus is paid out if the player gets three suited sevens against eny seven. The payout schedule is usually $1,000 for bets under $25, and $5,000 for bets of $25 and above. Although my analysis will consider this payout schedule only, the concepts can be equally epplied to any payout schedule. If we are dealt two suited sevens and the dealer is showing a seven, there are six different situations to consider, in terms of probabilities Let's suppose our two sevens are clubs. If we have eight decks (384 cards), there are eight clubbed sevens in the entire shoe. If the up card isimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablewould already know that if you bet $10 per hand, you're not going to walk away with $5,000 after a day of playing; time and time again, your playing results will confirm the notion that your potential winnings and losses are constrained by the standard deviation, Luck can be quantified The conventional symbol for siandard deviation isa, the lower-case Greek letter sigma. (You may be familiar with ¥, which is upper-case sigma.) In algebra, we can eliminate the multiplication sign, In general, the standard deviation for Blackjack, flat betting b units per hand, is 1.[bVn, where = the number of hands. Substituting n = 1, we get the standard deviation for one hand, 6, = 1.1b, so the standard deviation for m hands, 6, ~ oVn. The standard deviation is equal to the single-hand standard deviation multiplied by the square root of the number of hands. This is a property of all casino games. If b ~ 1, i.e, we bet one unit, 0) — 1.1. This figure is sometimes referred to as. the volatility index (VI). Each game has its own VI The volatility index of 1.1 for Blackjack is rounded to one decimal place. If we look at the figures for specific Blackjack rules, we find that it varies. Table 4.11 shows the standard deviation for various Blackjack and Spanish 21 games. Doubling and splitting increase it, because they increase the potential winnings and losses; redoubling inereases it even more, Forfeiting, surrendering, OBBO, BB+, SPLI, SPL2, and last-chance doubling decrease the siandard deviation The standard deviation for Blackjack is slightly less than Norh American Spanish 21, and about the same as Pontoon, In Spanish 21, we double Table 411 Standard deviation for BJ and SP21 Ruloe came Std Dov sir Blackjack 4.13bVa 17, 010 BlacWack 4.1069 S17, DAS. Blackjack 1.1800 HIT + RO Spanish 24 4.29bVn st7, HI7 Spanish 24 1.A7bVa Pontoon 1-5 Spanish 21 4.1859 Pontoon 6 Spanish 21 4.1309 Pontoon 7 ‘Spanish 21 1.14699 more often, since doubling is allowed on any number of cards, and we split 20% more often. However, in Pontoon, this is totally compensated by the many variance-lowering mules: no splitting to more than three hands and, except for Pontoon 1 and 7, no resplitting Aces; no doubling on soft hands; OBBO and BB+1. Pontoon 6 has the lowest standard deviation because we double less often, due to both last-chance doubling and the lack of OBBO or BB+l ‘There is no significant difference in the standard deviations between HI7 and $17, or between the six- and. eight-deck games. When considered individually, NS and NDSA have no significant impact on the standard deviation, Note that all of the standard deviation figures I quote are for basie strategy. Obviously, if someone plays suboptimally by never doubling or splitting, he will get a much lower standard deviation but at a huge cost Let's suppose we play a one-hour session of six- deck HI7 at $15 per bet, playing at a rate of 80 hands per hour. Our expected return, or mean, after one hour is $15 x 80 x 00078 ~ $9.36. Our standard deviation is 1.17 x 180 x $15 = $157. If we played 100,000 such sessions and plotted a histogram of our results from each session rounded to the nearest dollar, and joined the points on our graph together, they would give us a bell-shaped curve known as the normal distribution, shown in Figure 4.2. (A histogram is a graph where the horizontal axis represents events and the vertical axis corresponds to the frequency or number of times that the events occur.) We would find that 68.2% of our results would Pall within one standard deviation of the mean (34.1% each side), 27.2% would fall between one and two standard deviations of the mean (13.6% each side), 4.3% would fall between ovo and. three standard deviations of the mean (2.1% each side, rounded to one decimal place), and 0.3% would fall outside three standard deviations of the mean (0.1% each side, rounded to one decimal place). You should be able to se that the areas under the corresponding sections of the bell curve are proportional to these values. Therefore, if we played 1,000 one-hour sessions, we would expect to win more than $9.36 + (3 x $156.97) = $462 in only one or two sessions (as the figure of 0.1% is rounded down),image not availableimage not availableimage not availableTable 5.1 EORs (%) for Sparish 21 (H17) and Blackack (17, DAS, DOA, SPA, SPL3, LS) 2 39 4 5 Spanish21 0290.40 0.56 0.65, Blackjack 042 0.61 0.69 0.84 the best up card that the dealer can show, because it has the highest bust rate, however, in general, a five is worse; a six can bust the dealers hand, but a five cannot, as drawing a five to a hand of sixteen gives twenty-one, The worst-case scenario for a player of either game is a deck rich in fives. Another interesting phenomenon is the X-valued card, which is less advantageous in Spanish 21 than Blackjack. Gut instinet might suggest that tens are more advantageous in Spanish 21 than Blackjack, however the bonuses on five-or-more- card twenty-ones, 6-7-8, and 7-7-7 lower the EORs of A-8. As the EORs of an entire suit sum to zero, the EORs of nine and X must compensate by being higher. Therefore, nine and X are less valuable to the player in Spanish 21 than in Blackjack. (Reducing the number of decks reduces the house advantage slightly. Removing one card of each rank is equivalent to removing a quarter of a deck, so the EORs will not quite sum to zero. However, this is mot significant to two decimal places.) If you had a mind fike a CPU, you could precisely track how your advantage changes as each card is dealt, but in reality, only an arithmetic savant ean do that, Instead, a card-counting system assigns integers to cach card in such a way that they are very approximately proportional to the advantages in the table. Many card-counting techniques have been devised over the years, and they differ as to how accurate they are in representing the relative advantages of the cards. ‘The most accurate sysiems are the hardest to use at the table, so are much more error prone. The easier systems are less accurate, but have a low error rate at the table, In this book we will use one of the easiest and most popular systems, called the Basic Hi-Lo counting system, which is used by the majority of professional players. All card-counting systems enable you to 6 7 8 9§ xk A 040 0.04 -0.21 049 0.24 -0.04 0.17 0.28 044-073 -060 -0.62 calculate the approximate number of advantageous cards per remaining deck, relative to the number of disadvantageous cards. You can then alter your playing and betting strategy accordingly. If you bet big when the count is high and bet small (preferably nothing) when the count is low, your player edge of between -0.31% and -0.79%, depending on the rules, can be pushed over the zero mark into the positives, giving you, instead of the house, the statistical advantage. Unfortunately, the standard deviation for card counters is higher than for the basic strategy player, so although the counter has a better chance of winning than losing, there will still be times when the counter loses great deal over the short term. If you think that by counting cards you will rarely lose, you are severely mistaken. You will experience a random walk with an upward drift, In the short term, you may lose, but in the long term, you are guaranteed to win (with sufficient capital), In Blackjack, there are five high-valued cards per suit (ten, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace), is., 20 high valued cards per deck and, in an eightdeck game, 160 high cards per shoe. There are an equal number of the low cards 2-6. Therefore, if five decks have already been dealt and 94 high and 106 low cards have been counted, (we would expect an average of 100 high and 100 low cards in five decks), there are six fewer high cards then expected and six more low cards than expected. A. total of twelve more low cards than high have been dealt so far. Therefore, there will be twelve more high cards than low in the remainder of the shoe. It is this relative number of twelve that we are interested in, as removing a low card has a similar effect to adding a high card; if we consider only the absolute high-card excess of six, we are getting only half the story. A relative excess of twelve high cards in the three remaining decks is equivalent to four per remaining deck and is referred to as a trueimage not availableimage not availableimage not availabledesigned to include this extra level of complexity asa way of making the game impervious to card counting. The five-, six-, and seven-card bonuses make low cards vsluable to the player, and as card counters rely on gaining an advantage in situations where there is an excess of high cards remaining in the shoe, it was thought that conventional card- counting methods would he rendered ineffective in Spanish 21. This is not the case as, due to their infrequency (see Table 53), the benefit of these bonuses is minimal. In fact, an optimal playing strategy at all counts, based on the number of cards in the hand, gives win rates only ~1% greater than win rates using using a simple index chart, without any conditional plays, which is why I decided not to include optimal strategy charts for each count in this. book. COUNTING IN SPANISH 21 Card counting at Blackjack tables has long been the bane of casino management, and in an effort to thwart those players who demonstrate an advantage over the house, and supposedly cost casinos a great deal of revenue, the gaming industry has introduced a variety of “counter- countermeasures” over the past few decades. In addition to good old-fashioned surveillance, the trend over the past decade has been a greater reliance on mechanical and digital technology specifically designed to catch or thwart counters These include the continuous shuflling machine (CSM). I have read books containing claims of profitable CSM play, but they include no data or computer simulations to back up their data. If you want to make a decent profit playing Spanish 21, you will need to play a shoe game, either hand or automatically shuffed. The casinos’ ultimate goal is to be able to replace the game of Blackjack with another game that brings in similar profits but is impermeable to caid-counting. In response to this challenge, Blackjack substitutes have come and gone over the years without making much of a splash, until now. Spanish 21 was designed ten years ago but has proven to be far more popular in Australia than in North America, There are two reasons for this; first, most Australian casinos use the CSM for Blackjack in the main halls but not always for Pontoon. People are suspicious of machines, so choose the shoe game over the CSM game, Second, as Pontoon averages less than two-thirds of the house edge of Australian Blackjack, some of the more astute players would have noticed that they do better at the Pontoon table, I's also more fun due to fewer restrictions and better payouts Word of mouth travels quickly. In Australia, where the state-govemned casino control beards have the interest of the public at heart, it is against the law to ban someone from a casino purely because of skillful play. As @ result, all but the smallest Australian casinos are split into two parts — a private VIP. club requiring membership, and a main, public hall. The VIP clubs can choose to revoke your membership for any reason, Since the CSM is a powerful deterrent to counters and trackers, they are ubiquitous in virtually all our casinos for Blackjack. Conversely, the Australian VIP rooms have shoe Blackjack games that they are able to monitor very closely. In the U.S., continuous shuffling machines are unnecessary and have not proved popular because, outside of Atlantic City, a casino reserves the right to choose its players. Let us return to our game where the first 24 cards of our 6 x 52-card shoe were all the ten-spot cards and we join in once these 24 cards have been dealt. Thus, when we start playing, we have a massively negative running count of —24 and a Spanish deck true count of -24/6 = -4, By the time we get to the very end of the shoe, the count will be zero, however, the dealer cuts at least a deck out of play, so chances are the count will be negative for the whole game. As it is assumed that card counting relies on the count becoming high positive in order for the player to have a statistical advantage, card counting is not nearly as profitable as in Blackjack, right? Wrong. We need a positive advaniage, not a necessarily a positive count, 10 ‘get a win rate greater than zero. Although a Spanish 21 shoe has an average true count of -4 and starts with a very low running count, when using the Hi-Lo system, we know that each increase of +1 in the truc count adds ~0.5% the player advantage. At the start of the game, TC -4, and since the average true count for the entireimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablevacated, This behavior will not seem abnormal as casinos are full of contro! frecks that love to sit at third base under the illusion that they can control the game. It is more common when there is no hole card, When you sit at third base, you can count each person’s hand as he plays it, The only problem with sitting at third base is that you may not get a good angle of view of the discard tray. So shift yourself over to the right a litle bit and make sure there’s no empty seat to your left for someone to usup you fiom third base. That said, third base has the reputation of being. the spot where counters always sit. In Spanish 21, this is not going to be as much of a problem, but just in case, you might want to sit next to third base. One of the many good things about playing by yourself, head-on with the dealer, is that you don’t get pegged as a “third baseman.” You also don’t have to worry about counting everybody celse’s cards If you're new to playing, you may wish to spend half an hour watching normal players trom the same angle as the pit, so you know exactly how to aet, Do this on a Saturday night when you won't ook so obvious. Since there are tables on opposing sides of the pil, you can stand on one side ancl watch the players on the other side, You will notice that normal players are mostly interested in their own hands and the dealer’s up card. So if you start looking at other peoples” hands before you've even looked at your own, you will look very suspicious. You need to get a routine happening that works for you. What I do is sit close to third base and wait Tor my cards to be dealt, @king special care w not ook at anyone else’s cards yet. Once my two cards are dealt, I quickly add them and the dealer's up card to the running count, Thea I casually glance at the cards of the player to my lef, The other players’ cards are not counted until they actually start playing their hands. The dealer will clear the table of any naturals first, so when you see the dealer doing this you know that it’s an automatic subtraction of two from the ruming count, The dealer will immediately start dealing to first base if it is a drawing hand, so you will have to be quick, otherwise first base may bust and get his cards taken away before you manage to count them. Once you become experienced, you can get more sophisticated with your table counting technique. In practice, you'll know how to play the majority of your hands without precise knowledge of the true count. Whatever you do, don’t mouth the count, If you can’t trust yourself not to mouth the count, chew ‘gum or keep your mouth shut at all times when not talking. If you chew gum, don’t start chewing everytime the cards are dealt; either chew randomly or all the time. Do not look as if you are in even the mildest state of concentration. My style is to talk in soundbytes and affect a glazed expression like someone high on Vicodin, or do the complete opposite, and act like my life depends on the next hand. Do not drink or use drugs while counting, as you will make mistakes that could cost you a lot of money. A well-known counter characteristic is sipping Evian all night, so don’t fit the stereotype. Drinking nothing is actually preferable to drinking non-alcoholic drinks in the evening. 1 recommend that you order large amounts of alcoholic drinks at the table that you don’t actually drink. During the shuffle break, take your drink to the bathroom and replace the liquid with water, keeping the ice and gamish, If you order vodka tonics, the water will look similat. If you order scotch and Coke, take sachet of iced tea out of your pocket or handbag and mix it with the water and everyone will think you are still drinking your scorch and Coke. Talk a little bit to look natural but not excessively as, regardless of your level of experience, if you get caught up in a conversation that is emotionally impacting, you may forget the count, Once that happens, you are essentially lost in the woods without a compass, and it’s better to walk away from the game and rejoin for the next shoe. If you're on your own, come back as soon as the cards are shuffled and make sure it never happens again. When I find that my socializing is compromising my playing, I just say, “I lost thousands yesterday ond I’m sure it was because all my talking made me play badly. We'll talk about during the shuffle break, In actual games you will be starting your running count at ~16'-24/-32 in a 4-/6-/8-deck game, respectively, Hence you will need to practiceimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableat the discard tray only when absolutely necessary. Do not look at it when it's your turn and all eyes are on you, Ensure that you know the tray level before it’s your turn. If you must eyeball the discard tray, do it when the dealer discards so it looks like you're merely following the movement of her hand. Don't use quick, subversive, sly- ooking eye movements — make your glance look casual and natural, While you are playing, talk to the people on your table in a natural manner so it does not look like your thoughts are on the math, remembering to file that running count in the back of your head before you start your conversation. Eventually, you will be able to count without thinking and not forget your count, even under duress, ROUNDING THE RAW COUNT For playing decisions, we need true counts that are integers, ie., whole numbers, When calculating the true count in Blackjack, the usual convention is to floor, which means to round down, For example, floor(-3.4) = 4, round(-3.4) = -3. We floor in Blackjack because most programmers use flooring in their index-generation algorithms. Some indes- generation programs give the user a choice of flooring, rounding, or truncating. Truncating is simply chopping off the decimal portion to create a whole number If in doubt, floor for Blackjack. Figure 5.2 demonstrates how rounding and flooring work. Flooring uses the bottom line of arrows, and rounding uses the first and second lines of atrows. To round or Moor, find the number and follow the arrow to the nearest integer. Notice how if round(ww TC) = 0, then the equation is also zero. However, if floor(7C) = 0, the average value of all the possible solutions is just below 0.5. (tis not exacily 0.5 because it is a weighted average of raw true counts between 7e10 and one, and as the count inereases, its frequency decreases.) Therefore, if you are playing Blackjack and the high cards exactly cancel out the low cards, i.e, the running count and true count are exactly zero, you're using the indices for TC = 0, which are actually optimal for TC = 0.5 rather than TC = 0. Rounding gives a far better mapping of advantage and. strategy to index whenever the count is neutral, 1 also find rounding more natural and therefore easier than flooring. For these reasons, combined with the fact that when I wrote my code, T was not aware of the flooring convention, I used rounding in my index generation and simulations, so you will need to round when playing Spanish 21. If you are a Blackjack player, it will be annoying at first to remember to round for Spanish 21 and floor for Blackjack, but with practice, you'll find it easy 0 switch between the two games. If you didn't realize that flooring is usually the convention in Blackjack, you've leamed something new COUNTING ACCURACY Try to make a concerted effort to keep an accurate running count. If you're off by only +1 per deck dealt, you could be off by +6 after six decks, if your errors are all in the same direction. (If you're lucky, your errors will average out to zero.) The impact of being off by +1 after only one deck of play in an eight-deck game will mean that you will be out by a minuscule +1/7 = 40.14 in the raw true average value of all the possible solutions to this count, as there are seven decks remaining. Rounding > > > > > > coe ee | 4 | | 25 2 45 1 05 0 O05 1 #15 2 25 3 Flooring Figure 5.2 Flooring and roundingimage not availableimage not availableimage not available‘There are others problems associated with wonging, that need consideration. Casinos don't like people who play only selected hands, By the time you wish to join in, there may not be a free box on the table, so you will either have to find another table or back “bet someone else (as is permitted in Australia), and rely on his uninformed play. Unlike at Blackjack, most people on the Spanish 21 tables play a game that beats little resemblance to basic strategy. However, the average punter plays with a disadvantage of 2-3% so you can safely bet behind an average player at TC > 0, and behind a poor player at TC 2 +2. Bet behind someone who plays Spanish 21 like Blackjack in the really high counts and you'll get results almost as good as if you were playing yourself. If you're on a full table with an extremely high count, bet behind as many people as you can get away with, as long as their playing isn't completely suicidal. At a count of #3, it would take an extremely bad player not to have an advantage, The problem with back betting an “average Joe” is that you will end up playing only a tiny percentage of the time, your hourly win rate will be pitiful, and you will die of boredom. I play only when I can get my own box(es), but if the count gets asironomically high, 1 will back bet other boxes as well as my own. Theoretically, you should back bet every hand if the advantage is above 34%, but if you bet all seven boxes, you will probably look suspicious When you are back betting, you must accept the playing decisions of the person in front, without question. It is extremely poor etiquette to tell other people how to play and criticize their decisions after a loss. If they ask you, by all means tell them what to do, but only if you are asked and only if you have a bet on the hand you're being asked about. If your bet is much larger than theirs, they will often ask for your opinion out of courtesy on what they consider to be borderline plays. These are what normal players refer to as “calls.” For ‘example, they consider fourteen versus two a call because they believe that there is no correct play for this hand in Spanish 21 and that the best thing to do is to use your intuition. If you get the play ‘correet,” i.c., you hit, and get twenty-one, they will sey, “Good call,” and you will say, “Thank you.” They don’t realize that even if you had busted, it was still the correct play, and there is nothing you can say to enlighten them. ‘One of the problems with Spanish 21 is that, like Blackjack, the most common hands are stiff but, unlike Blackjack, the play for these hands ranges beween the two extremes of always hitting at TC = -13 10 always standing at counts above +6, You will never find someone who will play these hands properly for you, so if you can't live with that, don’t back bet, However, when you are a beginner, it is challenging to simultaneously keep count and play your hand, so by back betting, you don’t have to worry about forgeiting the count while you're trying to figure out the correct play. If you manage to get your own fice box every time you want to wong in, you will often get abused by other players for adding another box and destroying the mythical “flow of cards.” I got abused so much for this when I first started playing that I got a stress-induced cold sore and a mild panic attack every time 1 approached the table; 1 hhad to take time out from playing Now | am a lot more thick-skinned. You have every right to pley any box you wish and you must never let other players push you around and dictate what boxes you can and can’t play. Some dealers will eriticize you for poor etiquette if you open a box mid-shoe because they believe that it will decrease the other players’ chances of winning. This is hogwash; regardless of how many boxes are in play, there is zo significant difference in the house advantage per hand. However, the irony is that your inclusion causes the other punters to play slightly fewer hands per hour so, on average, they will lose less money. There is no use telling this to the recreational players and the dealer on your table, for when it comes to gambling, they are irrational Moreover, nobody walks into a casino 10 “lose less money.” They are there to win. Occasionally you will find knowledgeable dealers, but they are a rare breed If you are playing in off-peak hours, when the casino is not busy and the scrutiny is high, you may aitract a lot of heat by wonging, Instead, you can do wiat 1 call “partial wonging.” There “are some ordinary players, usually Asian, who join in afier consecutive wins, drop out after consecutive losses, and then look on and wait until the cards getimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableTable 6.6 Optimal bet size for simultaneous hands, relatve to the optimal ane-box bet 2 100% Te tbox 2boxes boxes 76% 61% “1 100% 18% 61% ° 100% 76% er. 1 100% 75% 60% 2 100% 78% 60% 3 100% 75% 60% 4 14% 59% 5 74% 50% 6 74% 58% guise of wanting to “change the (mythical) flow of cards.” (As we already know, doubling the number of boxes is not as profitable as doubling your bet size.) Even if you are not betting optimally in your fone box and wish (© spread fiom one 1 two or more boxes, because other people have joined in, you should still optimally size your multi-box bets relative to your one-box bet. Table 67 shows the optimal bet at advantageous count for standard six-deck H17, using all indices, for a bankroll of $10,000. These values are rounded to the nearest dollar, but at the table, you will have to round your bets to at least the nearest $5. 1 recommend memorizing your optimal bet at each count, If we examine the difference between the bet sizes from TC ~-2 to TC ~ 6, incrementally, one each ‘boxes Sboxes 6boxes 7 boxes 51% 44% 39% A% 51%: 44% 38% a% 51%. 44% 28% 2% 50% 43% 38% 34% 50% 43% 38% 23% 50% 43% 37% 33% 49% 42% 37% 29% 49% 1% 26% 22% 48% 41% 36% 32% TC ata time, playing one box, they vary between $43 and $49. For ease of play, we can round and average that out to S45. The bet size at TC = -2 can be rounded to $30. Hence, if we are playing fone box, we can start with $30 at TC = -2 and increase our bets by $45. increments. betting in two boxes, we start with $20 in each box at TC = -2 and increment by $35 in each box. If we are betting in three boxes, we start with $15 in each box at TC = ~2 and increment by $25, Don’t get optimal bet sizing and optimal playing strategy confused; they mean two different things. One refers to your bet sizing and the other refers 10 how you play your hands. Note that the above bet sizings are optimal for 2 $10,000 bankroll; your personal bankroll will probably be a different amount If we are Table 6.7_ Optimal bet sizing for std. 6-deck H17_ ($10,000 bankroll, fll index chert) te adv Kopt,a 1 box 2 038% = 0.73 S28 “1 100% 0.72 s72 ° 162% 072 Stt7 1 220% 0.72 S108 2 297% 0.72 $213 3 364% 0.71 $260 4 430% 0.71 $904 5 499% 070 Sad 6 580% 068 $996 Kopiz 2boxes Kopts 3 boxes oss s2t oss SIT oss ss 04S. ose se8 04s S71 a a oss = S160, 0438128 053 S194 0.438155 053 $226 «028180 05i $287 Oat 8203 050 © $202, 040828image not availableimage not availableimage not availablewill reduce your DI. However, if you are playing a low house-edge Blackjack game with eight decks, Poor penetration, and limited indices, it may not tum out to be very expensive. Most. Blackjack players use a constant “big bet” because the literature tells them to, without a thought as to how much it is costing them. 1 urge all Blackjack players who cap their bets to run a simulation and determine just how costly it is. In Spanish 21, 1 do not need to cap my bets for reasons of camouilage. This gives me a higher win rate and DI, and a more exciting game The ratio of your maximum bet to your minimum bet is referted to as your “spread.” The higher your spread, the better your win rate, As I don’t cap with a “big bet,” the term is a little meaningless for me, 2s, theoretically, it would be equal to the ratio of the table maximum to the table minimum. If someone asks me what my spread is, tell them how much I increase my bet for each TC increment of +1. Sometimes I use the term “effective spread” that, for a penetration of around 80%, ean be taken as the ratio of your bet at six above neutral count (TC = +2), to your lowest bet. Throughout this book I will be using a benchmark betting and playing scenario t0 compare the performance of the different rule categories. This benchmark will be as follows: + one box, head-on + static full-Kelly with a $10,000 bankroll (bets rounded to the nearest SI) + penetration equivalent to 6.5 decks from 8 (81.25%) * back count + 100 total hands seen In practice, you could not play this way, as bets need (0 be rounded to the nearest $5 or $25, the full-Kelly ROR is too high, and there won't always be somebody to play the one box at dis- advantageous counts for you. However, it does give an upper bound for how well you cen expect to do playing 100 hands at a particular game with a $10,000 bankroll, and it is effective for the purpose of comparing different rule sets. For your personal pleying, you can consider the benchmark win rates in this book as the upper bound on the 100-hand win rate you can expect from a $15,000 bankroll with a 5% ROR or a $20,000 bankroll with a 2% ROR. MAXIMIZING YOUR WIN RATE What playing environment will give you the highest hourly win rate? Consider the following analysis. The average penetration practiced by Spanish 21 dealers is around 80%, which, on a six- deck shoe, yields 0,80 x 6 x 48 = 230.4 cards. Each player, including the dealer, uses an average approximately 2.9 cards per box, which is more than the 2.7 cards per box for Blackjack, as we draw more often in Spanish 21. Hence, playing one box alone with the dealer will use 2 x 2.9 = 58 cards per round, and playing one box on a full table with six other players plus the dealer will use 8 x 2.9 = 23.2 cards per round. This gives 39.7 and 9.9 rounds per shoe for head-on and full table, respectively, On average, the cut card will come out halfway through the last round, so we get en exira 0.5 rounds per shoe. This gives 40.2 and 104 rounds per shoe for head-on and full table, respectively. Hence, the lone player will get 40.2 hands per shoe and the player on a full table will get 104 hands per shoa, If the average six-deck shoe takes twelve minutes to play with a two minute shuffle, the lone player will take fourteen minutes to play 40.2 hands (172.3 hands per hour), and the full table player will take fourteen minutes to play 104 rounds (44.6 hands per hour). This gives @ solo win rate of 3.9 times our full-table win rat This figure does not account for the fuet that a shoe you play alone will go a lot faster than a shoe played by a table full of unsure players. When you are on your own, you have a lot of control over the speed of the game. You can request the dealer to go as fast as he can and he will oblige you. Obviously, the faster you play, the more hands you will play per hour, and the higher your win rate will be. Your speed will rapidly improve with constant playing, and it is possible to bump up your solo win rate from four to eight times the full table win rate merely from fast playing, Even if you are wonging, the increase in hourly win rate fom not playing disadvantageous rounds will usually be less than the increase in hourly winimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablefor 8-8 versus X, (There is an index, but it is greater than +6, so is not shown.) If the dealer is showing X, and does not have a natural, the chance ‘of X in the hole is much less in Spanish 21 than in Blackjack, so the X up card is less threatening. This is why we always split eights versus X in the hole-card game, Index charts are a very efficient way of learning all of the play variations and have been used for decades by professional Blackjack players. For Spanish 21, the limitation of an index chart is that it does not cover play variations that depend on the number of cards in the hand or whether they are 6- 7-8 hands. However, the resultant loss is only ~1% of the total win rate, which can be almost fully recovered with an index-adjustment table. MIGRATION FROM BLACKJACK If you are a Blackjack card counter, it will be reasonably straightforward to leam your new Spanish 21 index chast. You cannot cut corners by using your Blackjack indices for Spanish 2i, because even at the same count, Blackjack and Spanist 21 have significant differences in strategy. There are three reasons for this: (1) the true count is calculated using 48-card decks instead of 52: (2) the rules are different; (3) the high cards consist of 83 10 | ratio of X to Ace rather than 4 to 1, so even at the same count, Blackjack has more X’s and Spanish 21 has more Aces. Table 6.9 shows the percentage of X's, Aces, and naturals at each count for both Blackjack and Spanish 21, and Figure 6.5 shows this information graphically. You can see in the graph of Figure 6.5 that if we extrapolate the curve, the percentage of X°s in Spanish 21 reaches 1/3 at a true count of +7, whieh would make insuran That is when we lake insurance. However, the chance of the count getting that high and the dealer showing an Ace is so slim that you could play a lifetime without ever taking insurance in Spanish 21. The reduction in X’s compared to Blackjack at the same count also explains why we still hit hard ovelve at TC = 0. What Spanish 21 lacks in X’s it makes up for in Aces; at high counts, Spanish 21 is more Ace-rich and less X-rich then Blackjack at high counts. This n even bet ‘Ace-tichness lends itself to the possibility of using an Ace side count, something that I will present in my next, more advanced, Spanish 21 book. The Ace-richness is a byproduet of taking out the ten- spot cards, which makes the Ace to X ratio higher. Peter Giffin, in his masterpiece The Theory of Blackjack, found that Aces are four tis valuable to the player than X, even though Aces do not make the dealer bust on their own, There are a number of reasons for this: since there are already four times as many X’s as Aces, the extra Aces markeilly increase the frequency of naturals; there may be the possibility of « double on a soft hand; 2 pair of Aces is one of the most desirsble hands. In Spanish 21, the Ace is even more valuable, relative to X, because a natural always wins at 3 to 2; in the US. we can split Aces to four hands then usually draw and double down; and in Pontoon, a dealer ‘Ace is less threatening, because we can draw 10 ‘twenty-one and win against a dealer natural At neutral count (TC = -4 for Spanish 21 and TC = 0 for Blackjack), we get dealt a natural approximately once out of every twenty-four hands in Spanish 21 and once in every twenty-one in Blackjack. However, because Spanish 21 is Ace- rich, at the same count, we get a higher frequency of naturals than in Blackjack. As there are alwa fewer Aces than X’s, regardless of the game, it is the Ace proportion that has the most effect on the ‘frequency of naturals, rather than the X proportion, PLAYING LEVEL COMPARISON If you are going to count cards at Spanish 21, you have the choice of playing level 1 (basie strategy and varying your bet with the count), level 2 (simplified basic strategy plus the 18 most profitable nor-neutral indices), or level 3. (basic stiategy plus a completz set of indices). This necessitates a comparison among the three differ- ent levels, Table 6.10 gives the advantages at each count for standard six-deck HI7 for all three levels of playing. (Similar tables for the other rule sets can be found in Appendix B.) Figure 6.5 shows this information graphically. All rule sets display a similar relative advantage between playing levels. ‘Those of you who are very astute might notice howimage not availableimage not availableTable 6.10. Std. 6-deck H17 advantages (with std. erors) al each count for the 3 playing levels (10-bilion-hand simuation, blended penetration 75-80%). Te Level4:BS SE Level2:18 S.E_Level3:Allindices SE “14 737% 0.034 6.28% 0.033 343% 0.024 “13 6.50% 0.025 6.06% 0.028 342% 0.020 12 “873% 0.017 8.36% oor 3.36% 0.015 1 4.94% 0.013 4.84% 0.013 -3:19% 0.010 -10 4.23% oon 401% 0.010 “3.01% 0.009 9 3.56% 0.008 2.30% 0.008 2.75% 0.008 8 2.94% 0.006 2.83% 0.008 “2.44% 0.008 7 2.33% 0.005 2.28% 0.005 “2.06% 0.005 6 178% 0.004 “1.79% 0.008 “1.58% 0.003 a “1.25% 0.003 “127% 0.003 1.28% 0.003 4 073% 0.002 0.75% 0.002 0.73% .002 “3 0.22% 0.002 0.23% 0.003 0.22% 0.003 2 0.31% 0.004 0.36% 0.008 0.39% 0.004 a 0.80% 0.008 0.97% 0.008 1.00% 0.008 ° 1.27% 0.006 1.87% 0.008 1.62% 0.007 1 112% 0.008 2.18% 0.008 2.29% 0.008 2 2.17% 0.010 217% 0.010 287% 0.010 3 2.60% 0.012 3.34% 0.013 3.64% 0.015 4 3.01% 0.015 3.88% 0.016 4.30% 0.019 5 3.38% 0.022 4.35% 0.022 4.90% 0.027 6 3.83% 0.035 4.90% 0.032 5.80% 0.037 Table 6.12 shows win rate, advantage, and SCORE for a 1-12 spread, play-all, in increasing order of level 3 SCORE. (A “I-12 spread” means betting 1 unit at disadvantageous counts, then spreading to a maximum of 12 units at advantageous counts.) All bets in between one and twelve units are optimal for a $10,000 bankroll. The dollar value of one unit is chosen to give the maximum possible SCORE and ranges from just below $3 to just below $20, depending on the rules. “I-12 spread, play-all” is a common way of playing multi-deck Blackjack and even though, in Spanish 21, you don’t need the camoutlage effect that comes from capping your bets, I include these results for the purpose of comparison with Blackjack, Notice how the order of Table 6.12 is quite different than in Table 6.11 where we back counted. When we play at all counts, if the house edge is greater than 0.5%, TC = -3 is disadvantageous instead of advantageous, with the result that we play many more disadvantageous hands. Therefore, the house edge has a much greater impact in play-all than back counting. You will also notice how much lower the 1-12 play-all SCOREs are than the uncapped back-counting SCORES. There are two reasons for this: first, we lose a lot of money playing at all of the disadvantageous counts, It also inereases the standard deviation. Second, we are capping our bets at twelve times our lowest bet, which is costly in terms of win rete and SCORE. On average, playing with all indices gives you around double the SCORE from playing with no indices, and =20% more SCORE than playing with the lustriows 18. Both Tables 6.11 and 6.12 show just how much of a negative effect inereasing the number of decks has, particularly when we back count, We ean see‘cvantage (0) 14-49 42-11 40 Bs \ Alina | Figure 6.5 Graph of std. 6-deck H17 advantages at each count forthe three playing levels (1C-billon-hand simuiation, blondes ponotraton 75-80%) here that despite a higher house edge, the six-deck SIT game in North America kas a higher win rate and SCORE than eight-deck Pontoon 1. Don’t let the house edge fool you; decreasing the number of decks has a greater effect on your win rate, especially when we back count. This is due to the change in the true-count frequency distribution, resulting in a much higher proportion of high-count hands in the six-deck game. (There is an even greater proportion of high-count hands in the four- dock game; check out the win rate for Pontoon 2! Unfortunately, the only venue offering Pontoon 2 has recently changed to continuous shufiling, but we can pray that one day they change their mind.) From both tables we see that for a given number of decks, the redoubling game has the highest win rate and SCORE out of all the American lnole-card games, even though the house edge is slightly higher (and the variance is a lot higher), than the SI7 game, Masque Publishing, the owners of Spanish 21, maintains a list of American venues that offer redoubling at their Spanish 21 website, ‘www.spanish21,com/gaodiocations.php. EFFECT OF PENETRATION Penetration has a profound effect on a card counter’s win rate and SCORE. Table 6.13 shows the benchmark win rates per 100 hands of playing standard six-deck HI7, all indices, penetrations Note how the win rate per 100 hands with 90% penetration is four and a half times as high as with 65% penetration, and the SCORE is five times as high, These figures are for back counting; however, if | am playing on a table by myself, and itis the only table in the house, I will usually play all counts above ~7 @ below neutral). As the penetration decreases, the proportion of hands with at variousTable 6.12 SCORES ‘or the 3 playing levels using a 1~12 spread (1.25% penetration, 600- mmilion-hand simulation, SCORE values rounded to 2 significant figures.) Rules Decks HA7, NDSA HZ, S17, NDSA HI7+RO, NOSA Pontoon 6 HI7.NS. S17, NDSA, NS. HI HI7+ RD, NOSA, NS Pontoon 7 S17. NS HI7+ RO, NS S17, NDSA si7 HA7+ RO HI7+ RD, NOSA Pontoon 4 Pontoon 5 Pontoon t HI7, A-X after spit pays 32 S17, NS HI7+ RD, NS Pontoon 3 si7 HI7+RD Pontoon 2, round, therefore, we need to add 0.5 rounds. Therefore, the number of rounds per shoe = 49.7p + 0.5. Let each head-on round take ¢ minutes. Shufiling, cutting, and loading time is around 3 minutes for a six-deck shoe and is independent of penetration. Therefore, total time per shoe, 7 = (rounds per shoe x time per round) + shuitling time = 49.7pr-+ 3 + 0.5 minutes. The number of shoes per hour = 60/T= 60(49.7p1 + 3 + 0.51), The number of rounds per hour, r = number of shoes per hour x number of rounds per shoe = (2979p + 30)(49.Ipi + 3 + 0.50). If f= 1/3 minutes, x = (2979p + 30)(16.6p + 3.17). Bs ng All Indices: 052 34 53 20 48 70 30 65 79 40 76 9.0 38 2.0 10 40 88 12 54 2 14 49 1“ 14 6g 3 16 ez 15 16 97 15 16 7 15 16 56 B "7 ory 16 19 2 "7 19 87 15 19 1" 16 19 2 19 24 16 22. 23. 2 24 26 18 25 28 7 26 29. 18 25 30 16 ar 30 19 29 34 49 58 cy ‘Table 6.14 shows the number of rounds per hour, calculated using this equation, for each penetration, p, in Table 6.13. Column three lists the win rates of Table 6.13, but expressed per hand instead of por 100 hands. Column four lists the win rate per hour, which equals the product of rounds per hour and ‘win rate per hand. Figure 6.6 is a graph of win rate per hour versus penetration, using the figures in Table 6.14. Observe how the shape of the graph is, hyperbolic rather than linear. I have played shoes with penetration at both extremes of this graph; fortunately, the lower has happened only once andTable 6.13. Win rate and std. dev. per 100 hands, and SCORE as a function of penetration. (Std. 6-deck H17, benchmark play. all indices.) Pen w(100hands) SD(100hands) SCORE 65% siT S419 16 70% $22 $492 20 75% $29 S046 28 80% $39 S616 39 85% $53 $721 54 90% 876 $843, a1 the upper has happened several times. Don’t be afraid to ask for good penetration, unless you suspect that your playing is being monitored, and use the subtle approach. YOUR INDEX CHART To play using indices, use basic strategy at the start of the shoe and when the count diverges from the neutral ("off the top”) count of -4, you adjust your play accordingly using your index chart, Extremely rarely, the TC = 4 indices will conflict with basic strategy; when this happens, if you are at the start of the shoe, basic strategy is correct, otherwise the index is correct. You will need to put together your index chart just like you had to do for your basic sttategy chart in Chapter 3. Everything can be found in Appendix A. Copy your chart into your spreadsheet program: if your game is not standard, you will need to go through each rule variation and make the prescribed changes in your chart, which is a very straightforward process. Once your chart is complete, make a copy of it, so you can abridge your index chart to the Illustrious 18, as you should learn these indices first. Once you've learned the 118, you can leam the rest THE “ILLUSTRIOUS 18” To abridge your chart to the Illustrious 18, follow these steps 1. Only indices from —6 to +1 inclusive are used, so delete all indices cutside this range. 2. Delete all indices for splitting pairs. Delete all indices for soft hands. 4, For hands of 11 or less, delete all indices less than 3. 5. For hands of 9 or less, delete all indices greater than —1 6. If redoubling is allowed, delete all indices for hands of 5 and 6. Delete all late surrender indices less than —4 or greater than —1 You will be left with about 18 main indices plus a couple extra for surrendering. In Blackjack, the four most profitable surrender indices are called the “Fab Four.” Table 6.15 shows the performance of the [18 relative to using all indices for each nule set for two different styles of optimal betting, with 81.25% penetration back counting (uncapped), and “play-all with a 1-12 spread.” Each figure in the table is the ratio of the SCORE using 118 to the SCORE using all indices, expressed asa percentage. Observe how the performance of the 118 relative to using all indices depends on which game you Table 6.14 Rounds per hour (9-minute shuffles, 20 sec. per round) as function of penetration Win rates of Table 6.13 expressed per hand and per hour Per hand win rate Per hour win rate Pen,p Rounds per hour, r 65% 1414 70% 1ass 75% 1452 80% 1470 85% 1485 90% 150.0 30.17 $24 90.22 $32 $0.29 $42 $0.39 ser $0.53 $79 sid $0.76Table 6.16 index adjustient table Hand Hand type 12-46 hard 13-45 W hard ° 10 " 13-417 soft (Nth. America only) 18 soft (Pontoon) 19 soft (Pontoon) rt sulted or spaded The relative indices in Table 6.16, while only generalized approximations, will give you most of the benefits of using an optimal strategy at each count. If you don’t want to memorize Table 6.16, just remember “2, 4, 7° for four, five-, and ‘card. iif hands, “I” for doubling on three-card hands, “2, 3, 4” for hitting 6.7-8 hands. For hard seventeen, I haven't quoted any relative indices; instead we always hit six-card hands of hard seventeen against 8-X regardless of the count, For pairs of sevens, if they are suited or spaded, we just add +1 to the index for an unsuited 7-7. Ifa hand is unspecified in the table (eg., five-card hard seventeen), it is because the strategy is the same as for two-card hands. LEARNING INDICES WITH CV ust as for basie strategy, the best way to lear your indices is by using the Casino Vérité Blackjack No. of cards Rolative index Wso Wes 2 HIS 4 HS7 HS 2, Surender 3 HIS 9, Surender 4 HIS 4, Surender 4 Hit against 8X at all counts 4 1 1 35 1 8 13 1 6 " 15 BS at all counis, BS at all counts 1 Testing Machine (BTM). To do this, you will use two entirely separate charts that you will create chart A will be basic strategy, and chart B will be your index chart. When you test yourself on basic Strategy, you will first need to go into “ inside the BTM and select chart A. When you test yourself on indices, you chart B. In Chapter 3, I showed you how to enter your basic strategy into the BTM, so hopefully, it will already be done. First of all, you'll need a printout of your index chart, pieced together from Appendix A, so you can enter it into the BTM; call this chart “Indices” (prefix it with the venue or rules). You enter your chart exactly the same way as you entered your basic strategy chart, but instead of eniering the basic strategy plays, you enter the indices. For the hit/stand charts, right-elick on the squares in question, select “Hit < Valve” (light blue square) and then enter the index into the square. will need toDo this for every square that has an index and, for every other square, enter either “hit” or “stand.” For tie double-down charts, select “DD >= Value, for the split charts, select “Split >= Valuo,” and for the surrender charts, select “Surrender >= Value.” You can also use the “Mask” facility to restrict your index table 10 the Hlustrious 18, ‘Once you've entered your index chart into the system, you can start drilling yourself on your indices. I find that the most effective way to do this is by doing entire rounds in the following zig-zag true-count pattern: 4, 3, -4, -3, -2, -3, 4, 3, 2,-1, -2, 3, -4, ... and so on, all the way up to +6, then back down again to -4, and then ~4, -5, -4, -5, -6, -5, -4, 5, ~6, -5, 4. This up-and- down movement is similar to what happens in a real game. (Once you know 6 to +6, go to progressively lower indices.) Under “Hands,” select “Hands With Indices,” under “Count,” select “Set ior,” entering the true count at the start of each round, and under “Cards,” set it to “Two.” Once you've leamed your indices, you can set the number of cards to “Two Five” and use the index adjustment table to figure out the correct play for multi-card hands. (However, many of these plays will be flagged as errors as there is no way to incorporate the index-adjustment table into. the testing machine, so under “Testing Mode,” select “Brrors At End,” so you're not bothered by the error buzz all the way through.) In Pontoon, surrendering is done only at high counts, and the dealers either forget to offer it, or close the surrender option before you even have the chanee to inspect your cards, So it is easy to forget to surrender. Never forget to surrender! It’s the obscure plays that are done at high counts only that are the hardest to remember, like doubling down on soft twenty against a six at TC +4. Splitting X-X at TC > 4 immediately identifies you as a card counter, if you are playing Blackjack, but in Spanish 21, you can get away with it, although you will probably get abused by your fellow players. X-X is quite a common hand to be dealt at high counts as the X proportion increases with the count, so it is handy to know when to split X-X. Once you've memorized your indices, you should practice playing Spanish 21 with your indices on CVBJ. Before you start playing, go into “Strategies” (in the menu along the top of the screen) and click on “Playing Strategy (Simple).” Open up “User Strategies,” select the index table you entered earlier, then click OK. The system will now pick up any playing errors you make. At any time, you can check to see whether you're keeping the correct running count by running your mouse Which is one of the items at the over “Tray,” bottom right of the screen. “Tray” includes “decks Remaining” and “TC,” so you can check to see whether your deck estimation and true count division are sufficiently accurate. For your interest, there is also an itemized listing of the tally of each card value. WIN RATE CALCULATION If you are going to play professionally, you need to have, at the very least, ball-park figures of your hourly win rate, advantage, and standard deviation, so you are emotionally and financially prepared for the worst case scenario, and have some idea of what your long-term income will be. Knowledge of standard deviation means that when you lose, you will know that it is within the bounds of expectation; you will know how much you can expect to lose and how often it will happen. The most accurate way of getting these figures is by computer simulation (using my simulator, which will be available from www-spanishcountess.com). If you don’t have this software, you can do a manual calculation, but it is not quite as accurate. This section explains how to do it using a spreadsheet program or, more tediously, a couple of sheets of paper and a calculator. The following example shows how to calculate hourly win rate, advantage, and one-hour standard deviation for standard sixdeck H17, using all indices, playing at 100 hands per hour with 81.25% penetration, with optimal bets rounded to the nearest five dollars, and five-dollar bets at all disadvantageous counts, It will be a simple exercise to repeat for your own rules, table conditions, and bet sizing. You will need: the true- count frequency

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