Trip Planner

Take twelve hours in Vegas with $5,000. Even with an edge, one trip is a coin flip with a slight lean. This page turns your table rules, spread, and trip length into three numbers: how likely you are to come home a winner, how likely you are to go broke before the trip ends, and the range where nine trips in ten land.

Counting systemTrip bankroll ($)money for this trip — not your career bankrollHours of playHow crowded?Hands per houroverride if you know your paceWalk-away goal ($)the profit at which you'd happily quit

Table rules

Table entryDecksSoft 17PenetrationDealer hole cardDoublingBlackjack paysDouble after splitLate surrenderResplit aces

Playing deviations (Illustrious 18 + Fab 4, insurance at +3)

Bet spread (units)

Wong out of negative counts

TC −1 and belowTC 0TC +1TC +2TC +3TC +4TC +5TC +6 and up

Same table setup as the betting calculator — edits here show up there, and vice versa.

Expected result+$205over 1,200 hands

Chance of profit54%ending the trip up any amount

Chance of losing half8.9%ending down $2,500 or worse

Trip ruin1.0%going completely broke at some point mid-trip

Chance of hitting goal65%touching +$1,000 at some point mid-trip

The realistic range — 9 trips in 10 end in here

worst realistic: −$3,094▲ $0 · ▮ expected +$205best realistic: +$3,505

How to read these numbers

Trip ruin is the chance your trip bankroll touches zero at any point mid-trip, not only the chance of ending there. Once you're felted you can't keep playing, so the mid-trip number is the one that matters, and it is always higher than the end-of-trip version. Chance of losing half is an end-of-trip number: the flight home with half your roll or less. Chance of hitting goal is for the leave-when-ahead plan: the probability your profit touches your walk-away goal at some point, whether or not you stand up when it does. If trip ruin is uncomfortable, bring more money for the same stakes, or shrink your unit. Those are the only two levers.

One trip means nothing

The expected result above is real, but it is a long-run average sliced thin: over a single trip, luck dwarfs skill. A perfect counter loses trips regularly; a tourist wins them. The edge shows up over many trips, which is why the realistic-range bar, not the expected result, is the number to plan around. If the worst-realistic number would hurt beyond the money, bet smaller or bring less.

Methodology

Your spread's per-hand EV and variance come from the same measured data as the betting calculator (20,000,000 simulated rounds per rule configuration). Trip outcomes use the normal approximation over your total hands; trip ruin and goal probability are first-passage (barrier) probabilities, not terminal ones. The goal number is a single barrier: it counts a few paths that bust before reaching the goal, so it reads slightly high when your trip ruin is large. One assumption to know about: the math holds your spread fixed for the whole trip, even as the roll shrinks. Real players resize downward when losing, which lowers both ruin and EV slightly. Percentile band is P5–P95.

Tune the spread itself on the betting calculator, and practice the counting it assumes on the training table.