Card Counting for Sweet 16

   About Us
   Bonanza Pai Gow
   Game Analysis
   New Games
   Beatable Games
   Client List
   Play Games
   Contact Us

Card Counting For Sweet 16

By Stanley Ko

The Las Vegas Club casino installed a new table game in April 2001. It was regular blackjack with a side bet called "Sweet Sixteen." Here were the rules:

Each player can place two bets of equal value, one on the Sweet 16 and one on the blackjack. Each player's two-card hand comprises both their Sweet 16 hand and their starting blackjack hand. The Sweet 16 bet is optional.

All players who have a bet on Sweet 16 will win or lose on their original two cards as follows:

2-card Combinations	Payout
1) 2 card totals of 16 or more	1 to 1
2) Any 2 card hand containing an Ace	1 to 1
3) Any pair of Aces	2 to 1
4) Any pair of 7s, 6s, 5s, 4s, 3s or 2s	Push

The blackjack rules were as follows:
6D, H17, DOA, DAS, Re-split Aces up to 3 times and split Aces receive 1 card only.

Deck penetration was 5/6 with 1 card burned off the top. Table limits were $5 - $500. There were six betting spots.

An analysis I performed based on the above rules and conditions revealed that the game was exploitable by card counting. The house edge off the top of the shoe is 2.5723%, but more than 27% of the time the Sweet 16 bet favors the player. The player expectation is 1.38% per round with perfect play and flat betting. The best thing is that one can kill two birds with one stone. One can beat the game by simply using the Hi-Low count because all favorable opportunities coincide almost perfectly with those for Hi-Low. All one needs to do is bet Sweet 16 when the Hi-Low true count is +1 or above. The counter's EV for Sweet 16 alone is 1.17% by flat betting.

One can use a separate counting system for the Sweet 16 bet:

Card	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Point	-4	3	3	3	3	1	0	0	-1	-2

Using the above system one should bet Sweet 16 when true count is +3 or above. Although the betting correlation for the above count is 0.992 and the EV is higher (1.36%), Hi-Low is darn good for Sweet 16 (I haven't tried other counting systems) as can be seen from the following true count distribution and EV generated from a 700-million hand computer simulation (1 player using Hi-Low and playing basic strategy only):

TC … True Count
Freq … Frequency of occurrence

TC	Freq (%)	EV (%)
0:	42.9277	-2.6252
1:	11.2339	0.6836
2:	6.5741	2.9546
3:	3.8691	5.2345
4:	2.4246	7.5250
5:	1.4644	9.8450
6:	0.9175	12.1618
7:	0.5563	14.4762
8:	0.3581	16.8086
9:	0.2094	19.1612
10:	0.1310	21.5053
11:	0.0744	23.8476
12:	0.0426	26.1145
13:	0.0284	28.4599
14:	0.0143	30.9597
15:	0.0074	33.3109
16:	0.0040	35.5706
17:	0.0024	38.0021
18:	0.0010	40.5584
19:	0.0005	42.9617
20:	0.0002	44.9131
21:	0.0001	47.5045

27.92% of the time the Sweet 16 bet would be favorable with an average EV of 1.1678% per round. Plugging in your bet spread you'll get a much higher EV. In case 3 decks are cut out of play to deter card counting, the Sweet 16 bet will still be favorable more than 20% of the time with an EV of 0.46% per round.

The game at the Las Vegas Club was shuffled by hand the first two days. It was closed down for a week after someone tipped them off about its vulnerability to card counting. It was reopened with the use of a continuous shuffling machine, which rendered card counting futile. A new version of Sweet 16 debuted at Slots-a-Fun in March 2002 and was shuffled by hand. It was pulled off on 04/03/02 after card counters beat it.