Wong seems to be fairly accurate in most of his information and he doesn't
specify that there should be a different strategy for a single deck rather
than a multideck 6-card Charlie in his book Basic Blackjack. Therefore, I
doubt if the strategy is significantly different. Wong's strategy is
different than the one posted on the Wizard of Odds, I think. I didn't take
the time to go into the details of the differences. I go by Wong as the
Wizard defers to Wong in this case.
If you look at the beginning of the Wizard's estimates of gain/loss for
various rules, you see that his estimate is based on the following rules: "8
decks, dealer stands on soft 17, player may double on any first two cards,
player can double after splitting, player may split to 4 hands." Therefore,
any different set of rules can potentially give different numerical benefits
than the ones in the Wizard's web site.
In Griffin's The Theory of Blackjack. Griffin says that the 6-card Charlie
is worth .15% in the four-deck game but only 0.10% in a single-deck game.
The Wizard gives this rule variation a value of +0.16%
The Wizard also says that late surrender against a ten is worth .07%.
Griffin says that late surrender against a 10 is worth 0.063% in a four-deck
game, but only 0.020 in a single-deck game.
In both cases, the Wizard's values are accurate for multi-deck games, which
he states they are for. Now I would like to know what the rule variation
value is for paying off as a blackjack when catching a ten on a split ace
is worth in the singe-deck game and what the value for the rule variation is
when the dealer must stop at six cards in the single-deck game. (The Wizard
gives a value of 0.19% for paying off as a blackjack on a split ace plus a
10 and a value of 0.00% for the rule variation that requires the dealer to
stop at 6 cards) Ideas anyone?
Rick
···
From: vpFREE_Reno@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vpFREE_R…@…com] On
Behalf Of fivespot
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 9:34 AM
To: vpFREE_Reno@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [vpFREE_Reno] Re: Two Questions
On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 8:01 AM, Bob Bartop <bobbartop@yahoo.com <mailto:bobbartop%40yahoo.com> > wrote:
I just looked again at Wizard's page and I notice he says to "defer to
Wong's charlie strategy" when there are slight differences.
wizard's charlie page is flat-out wrong, and not by "slight
differences" caused by six decks vs infinite decks as he suggests.
it's frustrating because he's usually quite reliable. to quote what i
wrote in the wizardofvegas forum:
"The easiest way to see that something is wrong is to look at 16 vs 6,
one card away from a Charlie. Wizard's chart says hit. With an
infinite deck, your chance of winning by hitting is 5/13 ~= 38.5%.
Your expectation on a hit is 5/13 - 8/13 = -3/13 ~= -0.23. Now look at
Appendix 1, where he gives the expected return for standing 16 vs 6 in
an infinite-deck S17 game as -0.15. Standing is better. The same
analysis shows that hitting 16 vs 4-5 and 17 vs 2-3 is wrong."
his strategy is *very* wrong for a single-deck game, like the game
king blackjack, because by the time you get to five cards the deck has
become heavy on big cards that will bust both you and the dealer.
stand with 16 vs 2-6, 15 vs 3-6, and 14 vs 6 in that game. hard 17 is
always a stand, unless you want to learn composition-specific
exceptions vs dealer ace.
for the same reason, i expect that the EV gain from the six-card
charlie rule in single-deck is less than the 0.16% that wizard quotes.
you just get six babies in a row less often in single-deck.
best wishes,
five
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