Windows Software by John Auston
Blackjack Risk Manager (BJRM) is a “calculator-type” utility program that automatically and instantly performs several complicated blackjack risk-related statistical calculations, providing you with the facts you need to manage your blackjack “risk.” BJRM can be used to provide the “answers” to many very important blackjack risk-related questions, such as:
What is the Risk-of-Ruin of my trip/session, and my total playing bank?
What is my probability of being ahead by $2,000, sometime during my next 16 hours of play?
Exactly how much bank do I need if I am willing to tolerate a 7.5% risk-of-ruin? What if I change that to 5%?
Within my spread, at which counts do I place the bets in order to maximize the rate of my bankroll growth?
What is the “$ hourly win rate” that a specified game will yield?
How would things change if I got in more “hands per hour”?
OK, I played 6 hours last weekend, and lost $5,000. How rare of an event was that?
Which is the “better” game to play, an H17 DAS 2-deck 70 card penetration game, played “all” with a 1-6 spread, or a back-counted S17 DAS LS 1-8 spread game where 4.5 decks of 6 are dealt?
And many, many more — just as interesting and illuminating.
Most risk questions can be answered with very little text entry, simply by selecting and mouse-clicking on the program’s built-in choices. To perform many of the calculations, Blackjack Risk Manager needs to be supplied with only two values: Win Rate per 100 hands and Standard Deviation (SD) per 100 hands, both expressed in units.
Win Rate and SD values can be readily obtained from several sources, such as: values published in blackjack literature; values from simulations run by blackjack simulator programs on the market; and, perhaps most importantly, from two places within BJRM itself!
First, Tab 3 of BJRM has the Win Rate and SD values of over 100 different blackjack game scenarios, built-in. These feature multiple combinations of decks-in-play, rules, penetration levels, and bet spreads — including back-counting. It is very likely that one of those combinations is close to the game you are interested in. And BJRM’s built-in Win Rate and SD values are very precise, as they were each calculated based on actual simulation runs of over 400,000,000 rounds. The Tab 3 values feature a Hi-Lo player using the “Illustrious 18” and “Fab 4” strategy departures, and are, in fact, the actual results from the simulations run for Chapter 10 of Don Schlesinger’s classic book, Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pros’ Way. [Note: If you are not familiar with Don’s book, you should be! You will find BJRM to be an excellent complement to Blackjack Attack, and vice versa]. However, Tab 3 even goes beyond Chapter 10 data, to include a complete set of data for 8-deck Games!
Second, Tab 4, which I have dubbed the “One-Second Simulator”, is potentially even more valuable to the user than Tab 3. The One-Second Simulator allows you to input your own bet pattern, rather than use the ones detailed in Chapter 10 of BA: PTPW. Additionally, you can use data from counting systems other than the Hi-Lo, as, currently, the K-O and the UBZII are also supported. Future releases of BJRM will likely add support for other systems, as well. Tab 4 also contains a very valuable feature that, when given a specific bet spread (1-4, 1-12, etc), will automatically compute the best placement of those bets – in order to optimize the growth rate of your bankroll. And it does so for both “play-all” and “wonging.”
I have tried very hard to write Blackjack Risk Manager in such a way as to make a traditional, hard-copy User Guide unnecessary. In addition to this Help File, BJRM has very extensive automatic real-time “help,” in that, as the mouse cursor is placed over the text and data on the screen, a “status line” along the bottom displays all the descriptions and/or instructions you will likely need to put the program through its paces. And when you are thoroughly familiar with the program (in no time at all) you can even “turn off” the status help text, if you like.
So “install,” and then dig in, explore, and enjoy — Blackjack Risk Manager. You need never be surprised by the “ups and downs” of blackjack risk, again!
– John Auston 1998
BJRM (c) John M. Auston 1998-2002
Last Update 04/03/05