Someone set me straight - party bj

[btape]

I've wasted quite a bit of time thinking about party poker's blackjack game after I happened to read the rules for it and noticed they don't shuffle after every hand like I thought. Now I know almost nothing about card counting, so the amount of edge a player can get is a mystery to me. Using an online calculator I found that the house edge on the PP BJ game is .645%. This seems pretty high. At the low limit tables you can bet anywhere between $1-$200. PP uses eight decks and shuffles after 20% of the cards are used. The rules and the shuffling are probably much worse than live casinos, but here are some of the things that I've been thinking about:

1. Although penetration is lower, even I know some crazy things can happen in the short run so you should occasionally get some pretty favorable decks.

2. The spread between the betting limits is very high.

3. You can presumably reset the deck at any time by closing the table and opening a new one.

4. The hands are dealt much faster than at a live casino.

5. PP is a very big company and may not notice or care when players are card counting and I doubt you would have any trouble withdrawing.

Now what I am wondering is, how big of an edge can you get when card counting in the most favorable situations? Maybe the edge gained is so small that you really can't overcome the house edge by much. Part of the reason I'm dwelling on this is because I keep thinking about playing a bunch of hands at $1 each where the loss to house edge is negligible until this situation arises where I am able to play several $200 hands with an edge of like 10% or more.

[jba]

if they are penetrating 20%, you are going to get 83 cards so the best count you will get is +83, or a true count of about +11-12. so the highest edge you are going to get is <3% and this situtation will be exceedingly rare.

"You can presumably reset the deck at any time by closing the table and opening a new one."

that is a big presumption.

[Metal_Rat]

For the average game, the true count needs to be +1 to offset the house edge. It's probably closer to +1.5 for Party BJ. For every +1 in true count your advantage increases about 0.5% (and vice-versa). You'll never come close to a 10% player edge.

An 8 deck shoe with only 20% penetration will rarely give a high true count (+3 or greater). Even if it does, you'll only get to play a few hands before the reshuffle.

Closing the table might be ok if the count immediately heads in the wrong direction.

Might want to see if there's simulation software that can analyze your strategy. I have and old version of Masque and don't think the setup will allow me to put in all of the Party and bet strategy variables needed to run this simulation.

[Thremp]

But a 1-200 spread is insane at the same time.


This looks like it'll need a huge bankroll.

[Metal_Rat]

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But a 1-200 spread is insane at the same time.
This looks like it'll need a huge bankroll.

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I agree. I would think that an 8-10K bankroll would be necessary.

What makes it more difficult is that unless you have some type of "BJ bot" running, you can only single table (slow, long grind).

Really hard to multi-table AND keep an accurate true count for each table.
(not even sure if multi-tabling is possible for Party BJ)

You also need to play optimal strategy based on the true count. With a 200x betting spread, one or two errors (counting, strategy) could wipe out many hours worth of flawless play.

[Thremp]

What about spreading more hands?

[Yaboosh]

Does it even tell you when it is shuffling? I assume not. How would you know?

[cardcounter0]

[ QUOTE ]
I would think that an 8-10K bankroll would be necessary.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that an 800k - 1000k bankroll would be necessary.

FYP

[jman220]

[ QUOTE ]
Does it even tell you when it is shuffling? I assume not. How would you know?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if you believe that it really is 20 percent deck penetration, you'd have to keep a count going on how many cards had been dealt out (is it 6 decks or 8?) and when 20 percent of those decks had been dealt, I guess you'd assume they just reshuffled and reset the count. Doesn't sound very practical to me.