Thank you all for your informative analysis! Never did I think I would have such an exhaustive answer in 1 day!!
Bad players have absolutely no effect. And why? Because no matter how high or low the count is, it tends to stay the same through the rest of the shoe! This is something that many amateur counters don’t understand, it’s what is confusing Tr8rJake.
The running count tends back towards zero, but the true count does not. In other words, let’s say we take a shoe that has been half played out, and has a true count of +4. If I grab 20 cards off the top and put them aside, and then calculate the true count of the remainder, and then repeat this process 1000 times, I’ll find that the average true count of the remainder is still +4. I can take out 50 cards, and it’ll still be +4, on average.
That bears repeating, because it’s a crucial insight for understanding the math behind the game. Whatever the true count is at any given time, it will tend to stay that way throughout the rest of the shoe. The running count, however, will trend back to 0. The reason the true count doesn’t is because the because the numerator and denominator in the true count formula change at the same rate.
Ironically, it’s not the bad players that will hurt your game - it’s the GOOD ones. If you are playing at a table with another card counter, find another table to play at. Because he’s gong to sit out hands if the count goes bad, making you play more hands at a bad count. And if the table isn’t full, he’ll spread to 2 hands when the count is good, reducing the number of hands you get at the higher counts.
So…
what are “true count” and “running count”? I think I understand the concepts, just short on the terminology.
I agree with Sam Stone (I’ve found that’s usually the case). Further, it seems like a player who hits too much would be a benefit in one respect. If you’re a counter, you’re biding your time, waiting for the shoe to get low so that you can take advantage of the count. Playing with others who hit more will deplete the shoe faster, so there’s less waiting around.
Of course, there are times when an upstream player will take a hit and get exactly the card that you needed. These exactly cancel out the times when he will take a hit and take a card that you didn’t want. I think it’s stupid (and bad manners) to get mad at someone for this - it’s his right to take a card if he wants.
If bad BJ players only took hits when they weren’t needed, and this was the nature of them “being bad” at blackjack…and someone was counting cards (realistically a pro card counter wouldn’t be there)…even casually, and he happened to be dead on in his count…and it’s late it the shoe…and the count favors raising his bet, which he did already, and he is playing his hand…and he watches four dopes take hits when they don’t need them…and they draw four face cards…
boom…that’s four few cards in the shoe to bust the dealer. End of story. Math at it’s simplest from. Those four face cards, late in the shoe were the reason the counter increased his bet…they are part of the +count that makes the counter decide to raise his bet…
and four dopes just took four cards that are better off in the shoe.
Now, mind you, I said a number of times that most schmoes playing BJ - even decent BJ players - over the course of playing hands, various mistakes don’t hurt…
But at least one scenario can develop that does hurt. Yes…it’d be best if the idiots were idiots in all phases of the game so that there stupidity cancelled itself out over time.
billy - I really appreciate the effort/time for that post
Philster-
But aren’t you selectively criticising the “bad” player? By that I mean, the four schmoes who hit “unnecessarily” were just as likely to pull four low cards as face cards. In that case, they’ve just turned the shoe into a card-counter’s dream.
Or what if they pulled a 4, 5, 2, and J. You might get angry at the 4 puller untul you realize that he got the 4, then forgive him for being “lucky”, but then get ticked at the Jack puller for “wasting” a Jack. But overall, you’re better off with all of them having hit unnecessarily than you would have been if none of them had.
By selecting INDIVIDUAL cases in which hits DAMAGE the shoe without also mentioning the same cases that HELP it, you aren’t giving an aggregate impression of the effects of extra hits, thereby dragging the card-counting case to the level of the drunk guy who sees the card he “shoulda had” if the previous player “bet better” regardless of the fact that in the previous hand he’d been saved by a bad bet.
I’ll concede that point.
