FELT-Full

The indexes in FELT are compromise indexes. That is, they are designed for ease of use instead of accuracy. If you wish to add extra performance, you can add real indexes one-by-one or as a group. The real indexes for REKO and the FELT Count can be found in Appendix A.

Generally speaking, the larger the magnitude of the index the less the value of the index. In particular, very negative indexes are of little value since you should avoid playing when the count is very low, and even if you do play these counts, you will have your lowest bets out.

Why FELT?

Those familiar with the Blackjack literature may wonder why I selected FELT, based on Revere Point Count (RPC), as the true-counted strategy in this book. Popular choices might be true-counted REKO or Hi-Lo. I rejected Hi-Lo since it is no more powerful than REKO, and yet more difficult.

There are many people who use a variation of K-O called true-counted K-O (TKO), and it is a powerful strategy. I have never been a fan due to ease of use considerations. Unbalanced strategies like K-O and REKO have an ease of use advantage because there is no need for remaining deck-estimation or true-count calculation. However, they also have a disadvantage in that the running count has a much larger range. You must deal with large negative or positive numbers. If you true count REKO, you must deal with both disadvantages. In my mind, if you are going to use true counts, you are better off with a balanced strategy like the FELT Count or Hi-Lo.

Having decided to go with a balanced strategy for the second strategy, the next step was to select one. I saw no need to create a new set of tag values since tag values have been well researched. I had rejected Hi-Lo as not providing a substantial gain. Strategies with aces counting as zero are not as powerful for most of today’s games. That left RPC and Zen, both excellent strategies, with Zen having an extremely slight advantage in power. However, I find it slightly more difficult to count than RPC because the ace and ten are counted differently. That left RPC as the basis for FELT.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger