The Illustrious 18 indices refer to the 18 most important plays in terms of providing players with the most gain from varying playing strategy. They have been analyzed in detail by Don Schlesinger in the September 1986 issue of "Blackjack Forum." and have been republished in Don's "Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pros' Way."If one has a java-enabled browser, the basic java program at the bottom of this page cycles through the Illustious 18 plays and allows one to practice using their own strategy indices. No indices have been provided because of the wide variety of counting systems and rules. If you want, you can try the Illustrious 18 Indices as were listed in Don's original "Attacking the Shoe" article.
The program takes a couple of cycles (about 50 hands) for the images to be loaded and for the program flicker to settle down. During this period, weird results will probably be displayed. Maybe a "Real" programmer out there can tell me how to eliminate this problem.
There are seven buttons. The "A", "B", "C", "D", and "E" buttons cause the program to cycle on a random non-repeating basis. They represent a grade for which you can compare your progress as you progress in learning the indices. The "Step" button allows one to manually control the speed and likewise cycles through the 18 indices on a random non-repeating basis. I think the random non-repeating part of the program is kind of neat. The 18 plays are randomized and then are played out in order. Once all 18 have been displayed, then they are re-randomized. This way ensures that you get equal practice on each of the 18 plays.
In addition, you will notice that the cards for each play come up at random. For instance, a player total of 16 can be made up of several card combinations: 5,Ace; 6,Ten; 7,9; 8,8, 9,7; etc. I have ensured that the program only displays valid card combinations for the index number being displayed. For example, when learning the index number to stand on a hard 16 vs Ten, the combinations 8,8; 5,Ace and A,5 will not be displayed. So, although the program looks very simple on the surface, there has been a certain amount of thinking that has gone into it's development.
The "Stop" button halts the cycling.
[Note: It takes a few rounds for the images to load. This is why the Flashcards do strange things like disappear for the first several rounds].
Enjoy!!