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BlackJack Card Counting

Warning: Counting cards is frowned on by most casinos and is grounds in many cases for being ejected from the casino. That being said, counting always takes place to some extent, perhaps presenting as "intuition" or "a hunch". Blackjack card counting is an advanced technique to win on blackjack. A player must first learn the basic strategies of blackjack before learning “counting”. By learning the technique of counting you will have the odds with you.

The basic concept of blackjack counting is that a deck filled with 10s and aces will be to your advantage. While the deck of the dealer is filled with smaller cards but is to the dealer’s advantage. Simply put, when the deck is in your favor bet to the maximum, when it’s with the dealer’s bet minimum. This changing of bets is what alerts the people watching the cameras watching you that you are counting, so mix it up a bit.

This is because a deck filled with 10 increases the chance of the dealer getting bust. You on the other hand can just opt to stand. In an opposite manner, a deck filled with smaller cards makes the dealers chance to bust less. If you know the deck is filled with 10s or smaller cards, this can give you the advantage of knowing what strategy to use.

The dealer must then always hit until having a soft 17. To hit with a hand of 10 & 6 and knowing the deck is filled with 10s is a bad idea.

If the deck is filled with aces, there is high chance that you’ll hit blackjack. When the player has blackjack, the pay off odds are 3:2. The dealer will only win on the other hand if he also gets a blackjack. That’s why a deck filled with aces is always to the player’s advantage.

Blackjack counting is not done by memorizing each card that has come out of a shoe of cards. To effectively count it is also important to know how many decks makes up the shoe of cards. The shoe is usually made up by 7 decks of cards, but this may differ from casino to casino. If you are able to do that, I'd be in awe: you should be in the world records book or maybe even the loony bin.

Blackjack card counting is done by assigning the different card numbers with different point values. Always remember to pick a system that is easy to remember. This will cause fewer mistakes and you will lose less money.

As stated above, you will assign a point value for each card and you will have to add the value of the cards that have come out. This is called the running count. Based on the plus/minus strategy, here are the values assigned.

2, 3,4,5,6 = +1;
7, 8, 9 = 0;
10, J, Q, K, Ace = -1

To illustrate this more clearly:

The first card dealt is an ace, so we start by having -1. Then 6 is the next card dealt so we add 1. This makes the run count back to zero. Then a 3 and 4 follows, making the run count now 2.

After figuring the run count, you can try to figure the true count. You take the running count you have and divide it with the number of decks remaining from the shoe.

The true counts tell you the appropriate bet size and you can base your strategy from there. Good luck!

Recomended reading: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions "Shy, geeky, amiable" MIT grad Kevin Lewis, was living a double life winning huge sums of cash in Las Vegas casinos. In 1993 when Lewis was 20 years old and feeling aimless, he was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team, organized by a former math instructor, who said, "Blackjack is beatable." Expanding on the "hi-lo" card-counting techniques popularized by Edward Thorp in his 1962 book, Beat the Dealer, the MIT group's more advanced team strategies were legal, yet frowned upon by casinos. Backed by anonymous investors, team members checked into Vegas hotels under assumed names and, pretending not to know each other, communicated in the casinos with gestures and card-count code words. Taking advantage of the statistical nature of blackjack, the team raked in millions before casinos caught on and pursued them.