Blackjack card counting – it’s that simple

Blackjack card counting – it’s that simple

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Everyone knows that blackjack is the casino game with the smallest house edge. But even if you choose the optimal move in every situation, you won't be able to beat the house in the long run. But as early as the 1960s, resourceful minds invented the strategy of counting cards, with which one was able to make secure profits in the long term. Starting with Edward Thorp's famous book “Beat the Dealer”, through films like Rain Man and of course the film 21 about the MIT Blackjack team. But how does counting cards work in blackjack? Here you can learn how to count cards and the theories behind them.

How does it work in general?

Standard or basic strategy is a requirement! Click here for the strategy tables.

With the Blackjack basic strategy, the player's advantage can be increased to almost 50%. This means the bank still has a small advantage, so you still lose in the long run. By counting cards you can shift the advantage in your favor.

Using the card counting technique, you can get an overview of the remaining cards in the shoe in order to identify potentially advantageous situations with a higher expectation of winning. You take advantage of these opportunities by placing higher bets, which not only offsets previous bets with slightly negative profit expectations, but also enables you to achieve additional profits. The card counting method is primarily used to adjust your bets. Regardless, as already mentioned, it is essential to master basic strategy in order to play each hand optimally and maximize the potential for long-term winnings.

The identification of situations in which higher stakes positively influence the overall winning expectation is based on the presence of high cards such as tens and aces in the deck. These increase the chances of winning significantly. 10s and Aces are advantageous for the player because a blackjack (10 or picture and ace) pays 3:1. With high cards, the probability that the bank will be “busted”, i.e. Have over 21 points and lose, increases. If there are many high cards in play, you should place higher bets. If there are a lot of low cards in play, your bets should be lower or you just watch until there are a lot of high cards in play. In order to get a precise overview, cards are not counted based on quantity, but rather based on the ratio of high to low cards in the bank's remaining deck of cards. As soon as an above-average number of high cards remain in the deck, the ideal time has come to place higher bets.

And this is how the cards are counted

The simplest method of counting cards (there are many different ones, as you will find out at the end of this article) is the so-called Hi-Lo method. Cards 2 to 6 are assigned a value of +1 and all cards with a value of 10 and the ace are assigned a value of -1. The 7, 8 and 9 are neither particularly good nor bad and are considered neutral with a value of 0. As soon as the game starts with a new, freshly shuffled deck in the card shoe, we start with the value 0 and add the value +1 or -1 for each individual card that was revealed.

Depending on which cards come, our count will be either negative or positive. Ultimately, we look for a situation in which the count value is as high as possible in the positive towards the end of the shoe (last third). But before we can determine when and how we can increase the stakes, we first have to calculate the so-called true count.

The True Count – this is how the size of the stakes is determined

A running count of +5 is great, but it doesn't do you much good if only a few cards from the existing deck have been played. Because then there are still so many cards left that the variance is still too large to be used profitably. Only towards the end of the card shoe does a positive count increase our chances of winning significantly enough. To do this, in addition to counting the cards, we also have to constantly calculate the so-called “true count”, with which we can determine the ratio between the count value and the remaining decks. Based on this, we can determine the size of our bets.

When does counting cards not work?

The different counting types show how difficult it is to make a profit by counting. Because in different situations with different rules, the strategies have to be adapted very precisely. But there are also games in which counting no longer works at all, namely when the cards are reshuffled after every single round. This will rarely happen in land-based casinos and only if you have an appropriate shuffling machine. Online, however, the entire deck can be reshuffled within a fraction of a second after every single hand played. Here counting the cards no longer works at all. However, you can make use of the Blackjack bonus offers online. There is an exception the live blackjack games, real cards are used here again and you can count them at your leisure on your PC at home!

Bank countermeasures

Unfortunately, things are no longer quite as simple as just described. Casinos also take into account and see what techniques the players use. I had just written that the bank will certainly not reshuffle the entire shoe for every round. After about half of the cards have been dealt, the bank may reshuffle. The dealer will also watch for players to suddenly increase their bets and then reshuffle.

Of course that's annoying. Another countermeasure the bank takes is lowering the limit. As far as I know, there are none in Philippines Casino, which accepts bets over ₱ 6000in blackjack. What is the players' response? In recent years, countless new strategies have been developed, including so-called “unbalanced” methods that do not require a true count. With systems without True Count, players can adjust their bets at any time. This flexibility comes at the price of less precision and therefore a higher risk. Below is an overview of the most common systems with information as to whether the system is “balanced” or “un-balanced”.

Optimized strategies for counting

The card counting method described is the most popular because of its easy implementation. You can make guaranteed profits with it, but it is far from optimal because the values ​​of the cards were kept very general. But an ace does not have the same value as a 10 or a 2 does not equal a 6. In the many years that card counting itself has existed, many different systems have been developed that further increase the chances of winning and the mathematical expected value of winning.

However, these systems are even more complex and therefore even more difficult to master. But there are also systems that do not calculate the true count at all and only work with the count value. The following overview merely serves to illustrate the differences between the systems; I will not go into the details here.

• Type: The counting types of the different systems including the highest count value (1-4) of a card
• B (balanced): balanced count, requires the true count to be calculated
• U (unbalanced): unbalanced count, the true count is not calculated
• S (suit aware): the count requires different values ​​for red and black cards
• C (comprimised): Compromises on card values ​​for easier counting
• Claim is the subjective level of difficulty of the counting system, 1 stands for very complex and 8 for very simple