Cover Betting — Number of Players

How does number of players affect cover betting?

As said earlier, the volatility of counts is an important aspect in the effects of cover betting. That is, the more counts bounce up and down between hands, the worse the effect of cover betting. Number of players greatly affects volatility because the more players at the table, the more cards are used between rounds. In this chart we see the same cover methods as in earlier charts for six decks with no bet reset after a shuffle for 1, 4 and 6 players. As we can see, a full table is very expensive for cover betting.

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

What about single-deck?

It is difficult to make the same comparison for single-deck because varying the number of players in single-deck makes a difference even without cover betting. This is because the number of players affects the number of rounds and single-deck is highly sensitive to the combination of players and rounds.

Here we compare 3 players playing 3 rounds with 2 players playing 4 rounds. The chart indicates that we must be very careful using cover betting in single-deck.

Sim details

• Six decks, S17, DAS, LS, 1, 4 and 6 players, Hi-Lo max indexes, 4.8/6 Penetration
• Single-deck, H17, 2 and 3 players, Hi-Lo max indexes
• Five degrees of cover
• Two billion rounds each