Teaching Yourself To Count Cards

The first rule of gambling is the house always wins. Casinos wouldn’t be such moneymaking machines if this were not true. The cold, hard fact is every table game in every casino in America is specifically engineered to make you a loser. Short of cheating or improbable good fortune, you have very little hope of overcoming the house advantage and winning over the long run. That’s the bad news. The good news is there is one table game that offers you a fighting chance. The game is blackjack, and the way to beat the odds is by counting cards. How does card counting help you win?

Players use it to figure out when the cards in the deck are more likely to be the most favorable to the player and least favorable to the dealer. When the deck is favorable, you bet. When it is unfavorable, you sit out. If you can’t sit out, then you bet the minimum amount when the deck is stacked against you and make larger bets when the cards are more likely to help you. You don’t have to be a genius or have a photographic memory to count cards, but it does take some skill and a lot of practice to master. There are more than a dozen popular card-counting systems. The best system to start with is one that is powerful yet simple enough for you to use without making mistakes. Once you have mastered an easy system, then you can consider changing to a more complex system. Remember, you will make more money using a simple system perfectly, than by using a complex system poorly.

One good card-counting system for beginners is the Hi-Lo system. The Hi-Lo system works under the principle that a deck with a lot of high cards is favorable to the player, and a deck with a lot of low cards is better for the dealer. Why is this true? For one, the dealer has to keep taking cards until he or she reaches 17 or more. If there are a lot of high cards in the deck, then it’s more likely the dealer will bust out. You, on the other hand, will be less likely to bust out because you can stand with a lower hand than the dealer can. In addition, with a lot of high cards in the deck, more pat hands are dealt -- that is, hands totaling 17 through 21. The dealer will have to take a hit in order to try to beat these hands and will likely bust. Also, when there are more high cards, then blackjacks are more likely. Blackjacks pay 1.5-to-1 for players but only 1-to-1 for the dealer, so blackjacks are more profitable for players than for the dealer. Doubling down also becomes more profitable in a high-card-rich deck because players can double on hands totaling 9, 10 or 11 with a good chance of winning. Dealers don’t have the option of doubling down, so they can’t take advantage of this.

Counting cards with the Hi-Lo system is relatively easy. Every card dealt is assigned a point value of +1, 0 or -1. The high cards -- aces and the 10-point cards –- count as -1. The middle cards -- 7, 8 and 9 –- count as 0. The low cards –- 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 -– count as +1. Therefore, if the first player has K-7, the count would be -1. If the second player has 5-4, the count is now +1 -- that is, -1 for the first player’s cards plus +2 for the second player. Continue adding every card dealt in this fashion to create the running count. The higher the count, then the more high cards are left in the deck. That means that you should bet big when your count is high and bet small or don’t bet at all when your count is low or negative.

To maximize your card-counting advantage, sit at the third-base position at the table if you can. In this position, you are the last to be dealt cards, so your count will be more accurate than it would be in an earlier position at the table. Using the running count to decide how much to bet is the most basic form of card counting. To make your count more accurate, you should take into consideration how many cards are left in the deck, or shoe. This is called the true count. It’s important to obtain a true count because a running count of +10 is a lot better if there is only one deck left in the shoe than if there are five decks left. It takes a bit more math to figure out the true count, so if you have trouble dividing in your head, you may have to stop at the running count. There are several methods for determining the true count. One easy way is to estimate the number of decks left and divide your running count by this number. For example, if you have five decks left in the shoe and your running count is +10, then your true count is +2 -- that is, 10 divided by 5. Sometimes you can estimate how many cards are left in the shoe by eyeballing the deck. However, if the undealt cards are hidden from view, you can estimate the number of cards left based on how many rounds you’ve played. For example, if there are 4 players plus the dealer and everyone has averaged approximately 3 cards per hand, then you can estimate that 15 cards are played per round. Thus, if you’ve played 7 rounds, then 105 cards have been used, or about two decks. If you’re playing with a six-deck shoe, then there are approximately four decks left. If you can keep an accurate true count, you have the basic tools you need to succeed as a card counter.

The key is to make sure you practice your card-counting techniques prior to actually using them at the casino. It will probably take you hundreds -- if not thousands -- of hands to be as fast and accurate as you’ll need to be at the table. One helpful technique is to look for card combinations that add up to zero. The more card combinations and patterns you can recognize quickly, the more successful you will be. Another thing to keep in mind when counting cards is that casinos will not be happy if they figure out what you’re doing. In Atlantic City, the casinos are not allowed to bother you if you count cards because it is considered just another skill -- as long as you don’t use any mechanical device to help you count. In Las Vegas, however, casinos are allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason. So, if they don’t like the way you play, they can bar you from their casino and charge you with trespassing if you don’t leave. Therefore, you will need to mask what you are doing as much as possible. How much of an edge can you expect from counting cards? It depends on your good you are and the house rules, but basically you can expect a one or two percent advantage. This comes out to one or two dollars won per $100 bet. For many skillful card counters, blackjack is an enjoyable way to spend an evening while picking up some extra spending money. But for a select few, it’s big business. Indeed, with a large enough bankroll and enough hours at the table, the best players can earn several thousand dollars a day.

Casinos are aware of the damage card counters can do to their bottom line and have tried to do everything in their power to regain the edge. For this reason, you might have to search harder to find that perfect game, but with a bunch of work and a bit of luck, you can still come out a big winner.