The old school writers throw around numbers that confuse players. Lets take a look at how they arrived at those numbers and see if they correspond with the game you know.
In order to create their simplistic “basic strategy” approach, a faulty one-size-fits all method, and “card counting” strategies, the old school first “simulated” game data on their computers. The “simulations” (pretend blackjack) were done with their computers’ random number generators.
Random number generators, unlike cards, spew out a nonsensical non-repeating pattern of numbers that result in the creation of pretend blackjack rounds.
There are a number of things wrong with this.
First, what it means was that the old schoolers studied the behavior of random number generators, not cards, which as my shuffling studies have proven do not play out randomly. Even Edward Thorp, author of 1962’s Beat The Dealer, recognized this (belatedly) when, after devising his strategies, he discovered at the casino “the cards have a memory” as he put it. He did not, however, go back to square one to devise a strategy to profit from this knowledge, nor did he (as he should have) recognize the need to collect real card data as the basis of any blackjack study.
(Random number generators can spew out ridiculous strings of cards, by the way, that would only extremely rarely occur at the blackjack table. Shuffling doesn’t tend to reorganize the cards in certain combinations that random number generators easily spew out, not being confined to the physics of shuffling. That’s probably why Thorp believed that seven-card combinations occurred much more frequently than they really do, in a one-deck game. In fact, if I received a 7-card hand in a one-deck game, I’d head for the door. He didn’t realize that on the day he noted receiving a 7-card hand because his data didn’t reflect reality.)
Also, random number generated “simulations” don’t teach you anything about the repeating phenomena I discovered occurred due to the way casinos shuffle the cards. So they could not discover that there’s a way to cut the cards to increase your chances of winning, and that, in watching how others cut the cards, you can know whether good or bad cards are coming when the cards are first dealt.
The simplistic statistical survey they did after amassing millions of “simulations” (one-player simulations largely, without betting variations – two other mistakes) was also wrong-headed. It was taking the easy way out.
To say the dealer’s 2 busts 35 percent of the time and base a strategy on that only works if you can bet on millions of rounds of computer-generated simulations collectively. If we look at the 2 from a 5 or 6 hour playing period (depending on the number of players and speed of the dealer), my research has shown it might bust as little as 16 percent or as much as 48 percent. In other words, dealer busting rates are not constant. And if they’re not constant, the equations the old schoolers used to create “basic strategy” are not valid.
Winning and losing cycles would also be lost on the old schooler, who could not witness how, based upon the repeating phenomena I discovered, betting spots tend to receive many of the same cards from shuffle to shuffle. So they would conclude (as they have) that there’s no such thing as a winning cycle and that you cannot predict anything based upon past experiences (which you can).
The random nature of their pretend data also blinded them to the fact that you can predict what the dealer’s hole card is likely to be, to make very accurate card moves.
And – by the way – while some of the more recent old school books have boasted that they were based on hundreds of millions of simulations, this does not begin to uncover every blackjack card situation possible.
If you look at the number of permutations possible with the dealing of just 44 cards in a single deck game, you’d come up with a number far above that total – two times ten to the 63rd power. In other words, no one can claim to have investigated every card situation.
And that’s just scratching the surface. You want a good blackjack strategy? You have to start with real card data. And the strategy has to be based upon the card realities of the moment, not the collective results of millions of rounds of actions; we don’t get to bet on that.
Richard Harvey is a world renowned blackjack researcher and innovator, expert player, blackjack coach and professor, columnist and bestselling author of Blackjack The SMART Way (the NEW Gold Edition), Cutting Edge Blackjack (the NEW Third Edition), NEW Ways To Win MORE at Blackjack and the audio book Richard Harvey’s Blackjack PowerPrep Session. Have blackjack questions? Send them to rharvey2121@netscape.net. For more info see http://www.blackjacktoday.com.
