Blackjack SCOREs — Cover Betting

How does cover betting affect SCOREs?

Here we will look at the SCOREs for the same methods of cover on the previous page to get a feel for the overall impact of the effects of cover. The green bars provide results assuming that you reset the bet to one unit after a shuffle. The red bars provide results if you follow the cover rules even after a shuffle. Reviewing the cover methods:

1 – No Increase after a Loss
2 – No Decrease after a Win
3 – Same Bet after a Push
4 – No Large Increases or Decreases

Remember that these are cumulative. Cover 4 in the charts is the effect of all four cover methods. This chart shows the dramatic effect on overall results of religiously following all cover methods for the given decks, rules, penetration, players and spread. In particular, limits on bet increases are very painful. We can also see that resetting the bet to one unit at the start of a shoe helps.

What about single-deck?

This chart contains the same data points but for single-deck with two players and four rounds betting 1-3 units. We start at a higher SCORE. However, we drop much more quickly. This is not surprising as the count is much more volatile in single-deck. That is, the count changes much more from one hand to the next, but we are unable to react by changing the bet as much as we would like with cover play in effect.

Clearly full cover is not acceptable in single-deck.

Sim details

• Six decks, S17, DAS, LS, 4 players, Hi-Lo max indexes, 4.8/6 Penetration
• Single-deck, H17, 2 players, 4 rounds, Hi-Lo max indexes
• Eight degrees of cover
• Two billion rounds each