by Paul Lamford
The testing of Diable with small stakes has been great fun and the power of the program is being revealed all the time. The Infinite Blackjack from Evolution is recommended because you have plenty of time to view and implement recommendation actions. In this example, the recommended stake was 2 units which I placed, and I was please to get 11 against a 6, a classic position where doubling is clearly right.
It is useful to summarise the information on the Console for the benefit of the user. The Hilo count was 0.5591 and the stake equity of 0.0014 indicates an advantage just on the composition of the deck, without taking into account matters like the chance of Blackjack. 137 cards had been dealt (typically 208 from 8 decks by the end of the shoe).
STAND is clearly ridiculous and that is -0.3634. HIT is far too conservative and that is 0.6138 and DOUBLE is correct at 1.2242. That means that you should accept any offer from than 3.2242 (as the cash out offer includes your stake of 2). What was the cash out offer? It was 3.3 as can be seen by the following screenshot. Dealer got 21 but we won.
So, the player gains 007 by accepting £3.30 which is more than £3.23. Well done Bond!