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Hard 12 vs. Dealer's Up Card 4 I Miss Zen Before leaving the forum I was recently chatting in the "Zengrifter" asked me to run him a few tests. He mentioned the Hard 12 vs. the Dealer's 4. He didn't mention the rest of the rules like House Rules, Number of Decks Used, Penetration Points, Players at the Table, Strategy or a Counting Method. These are some of the things the Playing 21 Program allows you to change when testing. Changing any one of these things would mean an entire new book for those book writers, for these changes change the outcome of the game. Some more than others of course.
The House Rules I used were an eight deck game, Dealer Standing on Soft 17, peaking, surrender, insurance, splitting up to three times, aces split once, doubling after split of non aces and free drink comps. I ran 50 Million Rounds for 7 players. All players played the same with the exception of 2, 4 & 6 hit the Hard 12 vs. 4 at all counts in both the First Hit Rules and the Additional Hit Rules (although the Additional Hit Rules have nothing to do with the results below). Here were the results from the Hand Breakdown vs. Dealer's Up Card for each player for the Hard 12 vs. 4.
This test was a lot of fun. The question is what did we learn for sure? Well the player who plays this hand right from the top to the bottom will win around $100,000 more than the player who plays this hand wrong top to bottom (more precisely they are losing $100,000 less). Remember, this is just one small test to 50 Million Rounds and using the mentioned House Rules and Set Ups and for a specific, and somewhat different, counting method. I will run a more popular test with a popular counting method for the fun of it seeing as this was somewhat close in many areas. The green highlight is for the best 2, 3 or 4 results for that particular count. The red is the worse results for that count. 50 Million Rounds is a big test in the sense that you can never play that many hands in a lifetime, but it is a small test for certain hands, in trying to determine the best play at every count. I think I'd run a Billion Rounds before I make a call on the best way to play at a few of these counts. Even overall it is not decisive. What is clear is that counting this method we get a lot of hands at the Plus and Minus Ten counts.
Every player in the test received this starting hand, a Hard 12 vs. the Dealer's 4, 0.64% of the total hands played. So you will receive this hand 64 times per 10,000 hands (with 8 decks). From the chart above, Standing at the high Plus counts is clearly the best play. Players Standing at Plus 10 are losing about $0.45 less per occurrence ($10 bet) or in our test about $40,000 less at just this one count. Hitting at the Minus 10 count is the correct play and doing so is resulting in about losing $0.40 less per occurrence ($10 bet) or in our test about $40,000 less at just this one count. So the player that is playing these two counts correctly is losing $80,000 less than the player playing both these counts incorrectly in the overall game. Now each and every other of the 19 counts can save another $1,000 or more per count if played correctly. More Testing Required If this was the way you were going to count, this hand needs a bigger test. The more hands we play, the more the math all falls into place. A billion hands will be 20 times more accurate than the test we ran of 50 Million Hands. Some hands will require more testing but you will see a decision becomes clear at some point. I was easily able to beat the casinos for this counting method, using my Win/Loss Report but I still might want to tweak it if this was my preferred method of play. Maybe I want to count the Ace and give weight of Plus 2 to the two. Well I would change my count and run a new test. Coming back into the Hand Breakdown vs. Dealer Up Card we will receive different results on how to play this hand at each of the 21 counts. The reason of course is the composition of the cards at each count changes. We could dedicate an entire web site, a thousand times bigger than this one, for this one counting method and how it affects each and every hand at every single count. We allow you to decide how you want to count. Once you decide how you want to count, the tests become easy. Maybe you just want to count the 5's vs. the Faces for a two deck game. Go wild. Check out another test for this same hand only using a different count and see how things change. See You At The Tables, |
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I
decided to have a little fun and came up with a different card counting
strategy for this test. I counted the 3456 as Plus Two, the 2789
as Plus One and the Faces as Minus Three. You may even set up
different players in the same game to count differently if you desire
(just like first and third base could count differently but play at the
same table). There are 25 billion counting methods offered with
the Playing 21 Program, so I haven't gotten to them all yet, but I'm
still young!!! It is fun in-putting the counting methods you like
best and running a new test. Once you find a result you like, now
you can start fine tuning your game in the

