Balanced Side Counts?

[bejammin075]

Disclaimer: I'm bored, drunk, and alone in a hotel room far from home with nothing to do but think deep thoughts about blackjack.

I've read stuff about side counts (e.g. 7) for improving PE, but it strikes me as a pain in the ass to calculate excess or depleted 7's (or whatever) and then make an adjustment.

What I'm curious about is what if the side count is a balanced side count of 2 (or more) cards? Like 2's vs 7's. Or 8's and 9's vs two other cards. Such that the multiple card side count is balanced, like the main count (Zen, in my case).

Has anyone ever looked at balanced side counts like this? I have been reading a lot, but not seen this as an idea (not even as a dismissed, bad idea). The way my brain works, I think it would be easier to have a balanced side count of 2 (or more) cards with their own running count, rather than keeping track of an absolute value of played 7's and computing excess/depleted.

I don't have a problem memorizing, practicing & using lots of index play tables. I'm going to be playing with about 130 indexes (nearly all exact), even though it's overkill for multideck, because I get nerdy satisfaction out of such things. Also, after I peruse index play tables, I have a hard time forgetting the numbers. I tried practicing with fewer indexes and simplified/rounded indexes, but I'd keep on remembering the exact numbers, so to give me the least angst, I found it least bothersome to just learn all the indexes. Partly I'm learning the large number of index plays because Snyder recommends in the ST CB to learn all the indexes, so in my training I'm building in support for future ST action, which will obviously take much practice, expeience and dedication.

I'm curious what the improvement in PE could be with such a balanced type side count overlayed on the main count. And yes, I know most of the gain with multideck is in BC, but the count I'm using is already good at that. Zen has a PE of about 0.63. What if I side counted 8 + 9 vs 3 + 4? What would the MP tables look like, and how high could I boost my PE? Can the index generator in CVData deal with this concept in one run, or can I piece it together somehow with multiple sims?

[Norm]

With a normal multi-parameter count, you side count one or more cards, multiply the count by an MP index and then adjust the RC. I don't think this would be useful with a balanced side count. Instead, you would use the main count for some indexes and the sum of the main count and side count for other indexes as some counts work better than others depending on the index. CVData has code to handle this internally, but it is not available in the user interface. Frankly, the gain is minimal and the effort substantial.

[bejammin075]

You are probably right, but I'd like to do a little bit further analysis.

Does anyone know where I can get Don Schlesinger's BK Attack (3rd Ed)Appendix D, Effects of Removal tables in digital format, like in Excel, or something that could easily be copied into Excel? I want to do some manipulations with the numbers. I have the book, but for what I'd like to do, I need the entire set of tables, which would take a lot of work for me to type into Excel (not to mention the errors I'd introduce).

[Norm]

You can try asking Don at www.advantageplayer.com.