It's essential for a card counter to know everything about deck estimation, including what deck divisors to use, in order to know exactly what to bet.
If you are using a balance count like Hi-Lo, the count we use and teach, then you will have to convert your “Running Count” to the “True Count.” The True Count gives you a “count per deck,” so you know how to bet and when to use playing deviations.EV with Full-Deck, Half Deck Divisor: $41.96/hr; N0: 328 (5% more than Full Deck) So as you can see, a more accurate divisor is more valuable. However, it’s not as much as you might think. Even the difference between using a full deck divisor or a quarter-deck divisor is less than 10% in this scenario.But if you’re staring at the discard tray between every hand, you’re just going to bring unwanted attention onto yourself. There’s a philosophical decision card counters need to make. You could decide that your goal is to choose theoretical edge over anything else. If that’s the case, you should probably learn the most complex card counting system, memorize every deviation possible, and use the most accurate deck estimation possible (I’ve heard of card counters that kept a side-count of the number of cards dealt so they always have the most accurate divisor possible).Before I share my opinion, I’ll just share a bunch of numbers for you. I ran computer simulations of various scenarios to see the impact of using a full deck, half-deck, quarter-deck divisor, or even full-deck for the first half of the shoe and 1/2 deck for the last half of the shoe (I’m calling this full deck, half deck).
