Online Casino with built in counting

I've been playing Statjack an online 4 deck game with complete counting stats at cantorcasino, Not sure if U.S players are allowed but wonder if anyone else has played this site says:
The theoretical Return To Player percentage (RTP%) of Statjack using optimal strategy is 99.18%.
I signed up with 50 pound deposit and 50 pound bonus said i had to play 2000 pounds to withdraw bonus, Well have won over 1200 pound in 4 days playing 2-50 spread not sure if this is just good variance but rules seem good bar there is no surrender.
Can anyone work out if the 99.18% they quote would be taking into account spread betting using the count?
have copied rules below, removed pics and links

CantorCasino Statjack is a special version of Blackjack that has been enhanced with onscreen tools to assist card-counting. Statjack is played with four 52-card decks. The object of the game is to get more points than the Dealer without getting more than 21 points.
Each Player, including the Dealer, is dealt two cards. The Dealer has one card face up and one card face down (the hole card).
Each card has its face value except the Jack, Queen and King, which have a value of ten, and the Ace which is one or eleven.
If your first two cards total 21, congratulations! You have a Blackjack and will be paid 3 to 2 on your bet. (However, if the dealer also has a Blackjack, the hand is a "Push" - you do not lose and you do not win anything.)
Most of the time, however, your total is going to be less than 21. In that case, you can Hit, Split, Double Down, or Stand.
If you want another card, press Hit and the Dealer will deal you an additional card. You Hit when you feel your hand needs more points to be competitive. But if that next card takes you over 21 points, you lose.
Choosing to Stand means you're satisfied with your cards. Once you have opted to Stand on all of your hands, the Dealer will play out his hand and you will see whether you have won or not. The Dealer must draw when his hand totals of 16 or less. If the total is 17 or more, the Dealer must stand, unless it is a Soft 17, in which case the dealer must hit.
The cards are "cut" after shuffling, and the cut card is placed at a random spot in the shoe. The shoe is reshuffled after the cut card comes up.
There are many nuances of play you'll want to learn as you go along. If you're new to Blackjack, please see the Glossary at the bottom of this page, which will help you to understand the terminology associated with this game.
Special Features of Statjack
Statjack provides a wealth of information about the progress of play, which helps to give you a winning edge over normal Blackjack games.

The Card History (the translucent panel on the left of the game window) displays the cards that have just been dealt. The most recently dealt card is displayed at the top of the screen.
The Dealer's face-down card is displayed as a green "?" until it is revealed.
The Card History is cleared when the deck is shuffled after the cut card appears.
The Hand History (the translucent panel on the right of the game window) displays the results of the most recent hands. The Dealer's hands are under "D", and your hands are under "P". If you play more than one hand at once, each hand is displayed on a separate line.
The most recent hand is displayed at the top of the screen. When the cut card is dealt, it displays as a blue square in each column.
The Card Tally is a strip the runs along the bottom of the screen. It tallies the number of cards of each value along with helpful supporting information.
The cards are listed from Aces to the 10-value cards, from left to right. The number above each card shows the value that your hand would have if you drew a card of that value. The number on the right of each card is the number of cards of that value remaining in the shoe, and percentage below each card is the percentage of cards of that value remaining in the shoe.
Please note that the dealer's face-down card is not counted in this tally, since its value is not known until it is turned over.
When you hold your pointer over one of the betting options such as Hit or Stand, some helpful statistics will appear for that betting option. Based on the number of cards remaining in the shoe, the Player statistics pop-up displays the likelihood of the next card either busting or improving your hand.
In addition, it displays the percentage of other players that have chosen that option in a similar situation. (To be more precise, it displays the percentage of players that have chosen that option given the same player and dealer hand values, where that play option is available. Hard and soft hand values are treated separately for these purposes.)
It's worth noting that these statistics for a Split apply to both new hands at once. So the probability that a Split will improve the hand should be read as the probability that splitting will create two hands that are both better than the current hand.
The Dealer statistics pop-up displays when the cards have been dealt and the Dealer's face-down card has not been revealed. Based on the number of cards remaining in the shoe, it displays the likelihood that the Dealer will draw a 3rd card, as well as the probability of achieving 17, 18, 19 or 20 when the hole card is turned over.
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I saw this a while ago. I've been meaning to check it out.

I would think that is the Basic Strategy figure. Doesn't 99.18% mean a house edge of +0.82%? The house edge for 4-deck H17 NDAS is +0.70%. And there is a further 0.11% penalty for the ENHC rule, so that just about adds up. (Assuming ENHC and NDAS are actually in force.)

[Edit: I notice that the dealer does have a hole card (though it's still possible to have a rule that says you lose all bets against a BJ, if the dealer doesn't peek). However, the 0.70% figure is actually for double-any-two-cards; if doubling is restricted to 9,10,11 that would have a similar penalty to ENHC.]

The key phase in the rules is -

The few online casinos that don't shuffle every round keep the penetration shallow enough to avoid making it more than marginally profitable for a counter. Global used to shuffle randomly somewhere between about 30% and 50% into the shoe.

Cantor seem to be being coy about this aspect. If it's totally random, then that would be an average penetration of 50% - not very good (unless you actually see where the cut card goes, and so know when you are playing a shoe with deep penetration ???). And I would suspect that it's actually random, but constrained within a range, like it was at Global.

 

Can you say CANDY STORE. My advice is quit your day job so you can play 16 hours per day because this will not last long.

As for penetration, with all the statistics being hand out on a silver platter it shouldn't be hard to do a rough guess at penetration at any given time.

I doubt US players can get into this.

 

I don't understand what you mean.

 

You know that it's a 4 deck shoe which means there are 208 cards. bjmace said (I changed the color of the important part to red): "The cards are listed from Aces to the 10-value cards, from left to right. The number above each card shows the value that your hand would have if you drew a card of that value. The number on the right of each card is the number of cards of that value remaining in the shoe, and percentage below each card is the percentage of cards of that value remaining in the shoe".

Now with this information readily on hand, with a little practice, it's not difficult to determine the penetration at any given time. No need to rush since this is on-line and nobody rushing you to make a decision. If you tried to write down this ongoing information in a Brick & Mortar casino you would be shown the door really really fast.

 

The 'penetration' is the position of the cut card in the shoe, not the current position. It wouldn't be hard to track how many cards have currently been dealt, if the stats don't show it. (Just buy one of those clicker things and click it every time you see a card.) But that's not the issue.

If the cut card never gets placed beyond 50% then there probably isn't much advantage from counting. If it gets placed totally randomly, but you can't see where it's gone, then again there probably isn't much advantage.

Of course there is some advantage, especially since you can Wong out as soon as the true count falls below zero and jump straight back into a new table with a fresh shoe. The overall EV might well be positive, but it's likely to be too much risk for not enough reward.

I used to employ the Wonging-out strategy at Global, whenever I played the real-money tables. I certainly didn't make my fortune. In fact, even with the bonuses, which were the reason I was playing outside of tournaments in the first place, I still lost money overall.

 

You know there are 208 cards to start. Their computer is telling you how many cards are left and it's giving you the card denominations. So you now know the current penetration and the exact makeup of the remaining cards - make your bet accordingly. Of course you don't know where the cut card is but you do know the penetration at the time of your bet and that's what's important.

Disagree. You do gain an advantage because you also know the exact composition of the remaining cards

You don't need to know where the cut card is placed. Knowing the current penetration and the makeup of the remaining cards is what's important for your next bet.

No need for "Wonging". Set your base bet at say 5 units. When things look really bad go to 1 unit - use a 1 to 5 spread when things are negative and say a 6 to 50 spread when things look good. Never overlook the tremendous advantage of a large spread - something you can't get away with at a Brick & Mortar casino.


Now I've talked more about BJ than I normally care to since this is a BJ TOURNAMENT site. So I think you can take it from here. You are an analytically inclined person so give what I said some serious thought. I think you will be well rewarded financially if you adopt the proper strategy. Analyze how you can exploit their weakness.

 

Missing the Point?

Toolman,

Colin's point is, in a multideck shoe, unless you get a routine penetration of at least 75% then you are wasting your time in trying to beat the game. At best, if it truely is a random cut, then you will only average 50% penetration.

It is not at all about the "current" penetration when you make your bet as you describe. You're highest gain on the house in a multideck game occurs deep into the shoe. The deeper the better.

Pill

P.S. And yes I agree this is in the wrong section and probably should have been in the online or other section.

 

I'll leave this one rest. I'll just close out by saying that yes, using conventional play as is touted in "the books" will probably get you nowhere. However, this on-line BJ site is very unconventional and if one adapts to it with unconventional play it can be a cash machine, in my opinion. But you have to go beyond "the books", use your knowledge to create a "custom" way to beat that game, be creative, get out of "the box". They are giving you all the data on a silver plate - much more than you could ever keep track of in you mind. So use it, don't close you eyes.

That's all folks.

 

Toolman,

I can't let that rest. You are talking utter nonsense.

The stats displayed by the site may be a convenience, but they don't provide any information you couldn't record yourself, if you had a mind to. After all, when you play online you are sitting at a computer; there's nothing to stop you entering each card you see into some software which can then give you perfect betting and strategy advice. Thus you can obtain 100% of the theoretical advantage available to you, rather than the 90% or so that you might be able to achieve using your brain power alone. With the aid of a 'bot', you could even go the whole hog, and get the computer to play for you, while you lie on a beach somewhere.

Forget the stats. They are nothing more than a gimmick. The only novelty of any real consequence is the fact that they do not shuffle every round. They are not alone in that; e.g., Littlewoods Casino has an 8-deck game in which "the deck is reshuffled after approximately one third of the shoe has been dealt".

No amount of thinking outside the box will return you more than 100% of what's available. And if the game is so poor that you have to raise your bet spread to an excessive level in order to make a modest hourly return, then you do so at a cost - RISK OF RUIN. Potentially enormous amounts of risk, just to achieve an hourly expectation of a dollar or two.

Yes there is the potential to do marginally better online than in a bricks-and-mortar casino operating similar rules, but you are into the realms of voodoo if you truly believe this is a candy store. You certainly shouldn't be advising people to give up their day jobs, not even as a joke.

Ultimately the profitability of the game will depend on the penetration. Almost certainly, the casino will be well aware of this and will set the level of the penetration accordingly.

 

Jeez, pretty strong words - but of course you're wrong.


Now I'll give you 2 hints which make the game in question beatable, both of which you touched on but chose to discard:

1):

2):

Now I don't have the time to write reams of detailed information going into great detail on this subject nor do I have the inclination to do so. So let's just say you now have the 2 keys to make yourself some bucks (Pounds if you will) - if you care to pursue the matter. However, like unlocking a door, you need to know how to use a key effectively. If you don't see that then both your time and mine is being wasted. Depending on how thorough your knowledge of the game is, you may need to make extensive use of a good simulator to see the light. Keep in mind that card counting, as it evolved, is designed for B&M casino play. That is not what you are doing here. Remember, books only take you so far. THINK, THINK, THINK. And when you're tired of thinking - THINK SOME MORE.

THE END - I hope!

 

The question of value is added expected value versus actual dollar per hour given the additional time it will take to manually input the information.

 

That's it in a nutshell. The gains to be made form perfect play, Wonging out, etc. will mean that a level of penetration that is too low in a bricks-and-mortar casino may well be acceptable online, but there still comes a point where it just isn't enough. Maybe 50% of 4 decks is enough, in which case then Cantor, like Littlewoods and their 8-deck 33%, will almost certainly provide a lower level.

Moreover, all the gains associated with online play are available at all online casinos that don't shuffle every round, so long as you have eyes in your head and a keyboard at your fingertips with which to note down what you see. There's absolutely no reason to get more excited about this online casino than any other of the same type, unless it turns out that they offer better penetration.

Indeed. Thanks for the intervention, Ken. Sorry if my previous comment was a little close to the edge of what's acceptable around here, but I truly am rather offended by Toolman's attitude in this thread for a few reasons.

1. He seems to be willfully misunderstanding every single word I say. If you and MrPill can understand me, then I'm at a loss to see why he can't. Surely my English isn't that bad?
2. Blithely recommending that people risk large amounts of money is somewhat irresponsible, in my view. It would be one thing to tentatively suggest that the game might be worthy of study, but to boldly assert that it's a candy store, based on such dubious reasoning, is a bit much.
3. The assumption that the only way someone can come to a different view about something is to not have thought about it enough rather than, just possibly, to have thought about it extensively!

P.S. Sorry BJmace if I've derailed your original query somewhat. Please do report back what you can learn about the actual penetration in use. I'd be interested to know.

 

Yes, that's got to be a consideration. But, even if you assume it takes no additional time, can we estimate the likely upper limit for the additional expected value?

In the multi-deck game, strategy variations count for very little. When they do come into play, it tends to be deep into the shoe, when the TC has had the chance to drift far away from zero. So again, it comes down to penetration. If it is too shallow, there'll be hardly any gain to be made from strategy variations. Perfect knowledge will be of no real benefit.

So the vast majority of the gains would have to come from betting variations. The betting corelation of the HiLo count is apparently .97, which seems to suggest that there is ony another 3% to be gained. However, this is where I perhaps begin to get out of my mathematical depth. A few random thoughts occur to me -

• The .97 is the correlation with a linear estimate of the advantage, not with the actual advantage that can be gleaned from combinatorial analysis.
• However, jumping back on my penetration hobby-horse, the early part of a multi-deck shoe is the time when that linear estimate will be closest to reality, unlike the single deck game where particular subsets of cards can have a radically different advantage to that which the linear estimate would suggest.
• Perhaps much of the potential gain would come from the many occasions when the advantage has swung just marginally in the player's favour, but not so much that the course measure provided by a truncated True Count would be able to detect it. Thus there could be quite a large number of additonal hands in which you raise your bet above your minimum. But having a tiny EV, these may still not contribute much overall, and maybe there are reasons to be wary of raising your bets for these cases, connected with the variance???

 

I do understand every word you said in this thread. But I think the problem is on my part. If we were face to face I could would gladly spend an hour or two explaining in detail my position. However, that's not practical in a discussion group environment. So I purposely just threw out a few hints hoping they would take root. That obviously did not work. I also tried to end my involvement on this thread twice but that didn't work either.

So let me just try again to close this out. I respect you very much London Colin and look forward to other discussions in the future. You add a lot to this site and inspire some deep thought from me - both from your posts that I respond to and those that I remain an observer. However, written communication on the subject of this thread has shown to be fruitless let alone create animosity. I certainly did not mean to demean or imply any disrespect to anyone - I was only discussing a subject that really had no business being on a site intended for tournaments.

THE END - for the third time

 

There's slightly more to it than that, though.

I'm sure everyone is getting sick of this, and Toolman certainly need not feel compelled to comment any further if he does not wish to. But Ken, I'd appreciate it if perhaps you could just, as a dispassionate and knowledgable voice, comment on whether the following is sound logic -

1. Whatever the exact amount of extra value that can be gained from perfect play, it must always be the case that this can be nullified by reducing the penetration. This seems to me to be self-evident. As you move the cut-card forward you get less and less opportunities to play hands with an advantage, until ultimately you only get one round and there can never be any such opportunities.
2. So there exists a point where it is impossible to beat a game due to the shallowness of the penetration, and then, deeper into the shoe, you enter a grey area where with a sufficiently large bet spread it begins to be feasible in theory, but is still unattractive due to the excessive risk and poor reward. Go deeper still and you get into worthwhile territory.
3. Without knowledge of the typical penetration, it is impossible to evaluate a game, whether you intend to attack it using straightforward card-counting or more complete knowledge.
4. Since we do not yet have that information about this online game, to describe it as a golden opportunity, which we should all be exploiting while it lasts, is at best a little premature.

 

I tried it out

Thanks for that response, Ken.

I've done a little research ....

That was my initial thought, but then my suspicious nature took over.

I tried out the game in 'play for fun' mode, on the assumption that any differences that might exist between 'fun' and real-money mode would certainly be weighted to make the game seem more attractive, rather than less.

It would appear that my cynicism was justified. I played through 22 shoes and recorded the approximate position of the cut card in each. On average, just slightly over one deck of the four was dealt (c. 55 cards). Only once was more than 50% dealt.

22 is obviously not a large sample, but I was also struck by the fact that most of the 'high' penetrations occured in my first session.

Approx. cut card positions (no. of cards out of 208) :-

Session #1: 100, 80, 50, 130, 60, 100, 100, 100
Session #2: 40, 40 ,50, 30, 40, 20, 30, 20, 40, 40, 40, 50, 40, 30

Another sneaky feature of the game is that it has been made impossible to 'Wong out'; you must play each shoe through to completion. Even if you close down the casino software and restart it, you will find yourself back at the same point in the shoe at which you left. So you have no choice but to make all those unfavourable waiting bets (albeit for the £1 minimum).

 

LONDON,

Why do you think there is a large discrepancy in cut card placement between sessions 1 and 2? It seems as if the 2nd session is more deliberate and meant to distract any counters.