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Card counting in Blackjack

During the course of a blackjack game, the dealer progressively exposes cards which are dealt to his own and the players’ hands. Careful observation of the exposed cards allows a player to make inferences about the cards which remain to be dealt, and use these inferences in one of two ways:

• The player can make larger bets when he has the advantage. For example, the player can increase the starting bet if there are many aces and tens left in the deck, in the hope of hitting a blackjack.
• The player can deviate from basic strategy according to the composition of his or her undealt cards. For example, with many tens left in the deck, the player may double down in more situations since there is a better chance of getting a good hand.

A typical card-counting system applies a point score for each rank of card (e.g. 1 point for 2-6 , 0 points for 7-9 and -1 point for 10-A). Whenever a card is exposed, a counter adds the score of that card to his running total score, which is used to make betting and playing decisions according to a table which he has learned. The count starts at 0 for a freshly shuffled deck for “balanced” counting systems. Unbalanced counts are often started at a number which reflects the total number of decks.

Depending on the particular blackjack rules in a given casino, basic strategy reduces the house advantage to less than 1%. Card-counting, if done correctly, can give the player an advantage, typically ranging from 0 to 2% over the house.

Card-counting mentally is legal and is not considered cheating. However, most casinos have the right to ban players, with or without cause, and card-counting is frequently a reason for banning a player. Usually, the casino will inform the player that he is no longer welcome to play blackjack at that casino and he or she may be banned from the property. Players must be careful not to signal the fact that they are counting, and the use of electronic or other counting devices is usually illegal.

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Blackjack Card Counting

The concept of counting cards is simple. Each rank of card is assigned a point value and the card counter adds or subtracts those points to get a “running count” to determine if the deck is positive or negative. There are many different card counting systems used by the players. Some are more complex than others but they all are designed to keep track of the high and low cards left in the deck.

The values assigned to the cards determine whether a counting system is balanced or unbalanced. A balanced card counting method such as the popular Hi/Lo values a complete 52 card deck as zero. When you use a balanced counting system you keep a running count of the cards as they are played but you then have to divide running count by the number of decks not yet played to get the true count.

With an unbalanced method such as Speed Count or Knock Out (KO) the total of the 52 card deck does not add up to zero. You start with a predetermined number to tell you when the deck is positive or negative instead of using zero as a starting point. The advantage to using an unbalanced method is that it is simpler because you don’t have to estimate the remaining decks and convert to the true count.

Tags: card, Card Counting, card deck, count, counting cards, deck, decks, ko, method, point, true count