Another look today at why the Hi-Lo card counting method invented in 1963 by Harvey Dubner and used by the famed MIT teams is such a horrible way to identify card mixes that benefit or hurt the player. (FYI: All old school card counting methods suffer from the same inadequacies and ineffectiveness.)
Look at the card situation graphic above before you read on and answer these questions:
1. What is the Hi-Lo count (the Hi-Lo counts 2s-6s as +1 and 10s and Aces as -1; 7s-9s are ignored)?
2. A positive count with the Hi-Lo system is supposed to mean Aces and 10s are overdue; is this true here?
3. Are any cards out of balance in this example and if so which ones? And are these ones the Hi-Lo wants to identify?
Answers
1. The Hi-Lo count is +2. In other words, it’s identified a case where the low cards, as the system defines them, outnumber the high cards, as the system defines them, by two, on the table. Often players are urged to raise their bets by twice the normal amount with a Hi-Lo count of +2.
2. The answer is no. I’ve run this card situation through my Probability Calculator (available at http://www.blackjacktoday.com) to show you the proportion of each of the cards left in the undealt mix. (See the graphic below which represents just a portion of the Calculator’s readout.) As you can see, the 10s account for 30.77 percent of the remaining cards. That’s exactly what they represent in a complete deck and so the 10s are balanced, precisely. Also, the Aces account for 7.69 percent of the remaining cards. That too is precisely their proportion in a complete deck, so they, too, are balanced. So the answer is: this is NOT true. The Hi-Lo count did NOT indicate what it’s supposed to indicate. Positive counts are supposed to identify when 10s and Aces are overdue (because its creator thought that was a good situation – also a mistake!!!). Yet it failed here to do so. (And the truth is that it most often does fail to indicate what it’s supposed to indicate.)
3. Two 3s were dealt, one more than should have been dealt (according to my research); the Calculator reveals the 3s are below the 7.69 percent balance level in the undealt mix. No 7s were dealt; the Calculator reveals 7s are above the 7.69 percent balance level in the undealt mix. The 3s are considered important by Hi-Lo; the 7s not. In fact, my research shows the 7s are, in fact, much more important to your future than the 3s and the Hi-Lo completely ignores them and does not pick up on their significance.
P.S. Because of demand, I will be doing an Advanced Winning Blackjack Strategies Seminar in Denver on April 16. Early bird discounted tickets will soon.
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Richard Harvey is the acclaimed blackjack strategies innovator, expert player, blackjack coach 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.
