Blackjack card counting
To be a winner of Blackjack is to be well acquainted with one of the advanced Blackjack strategies, namely - Blackjack card counting. Don't even think of card counting before you know your basic Blackjack strategy perfectly. By developing your card counting skills, you will have the odds of the game in your favour and consequently you will be able to beat Blackjack.
The Basic Idea Behind Blackjack Card Counting
The basic idea behind blackjack card counting is that a deck full of 10's & Aces is to the advantage of the player - while a deck full of small cards is to the advantage of the dealer. When the deck is in your favour as the player - that will be the time to increase your bettings and obviously bet the minimum when the deck favours the casino.
Why is that so? - A deck rich with 10 valued cards increases the odds of the dealer being busted - while the player on the other hand can choose to stand. The dealer must always hit until soft 17. Should the dealer Hit a stiff hand like 10,6 it is most likely a very bad idea when the deck is rich of 10's and that will give the blackjack card counter the edge over the casino. On the contrary, a deck full of small cards makes the odds of the dealer busting much less.
Counting the cards and figuring out if the deck is rich with 10's or with small cards - will give you the advantage of adjusting your playing strategy to the situation.
A deck rich of aces is also to the advantage of the player, because it increases the odds of Blackjacks. - A players blackjack pays odds 3:2 - whereas the dealer only wins your bet if he gets a blackjack.
How Is Blackjack Card Counting Done?
You don't have to memorize every single card that has been played from a 6 deck shoe of cards to be able to count cards in blackjack. That ofcourse is the ideal!
Most different blackjack card counting strategies assign all the cards with different point values. Every card counting system has it's advantages and disadvantages - in general you should pick an easy memorable system. This will result in fewer mistakes - and mistakes cost a lot of money when you are counting cards.
The Running Count
Every card is assigned a point value. The card counter only needs to add the value of all the cards that have been dealt from the deck - this is called The Running Count. The Plus/Minus card counting strategy - also called The High/Low card counting strategy, assigns the following cards with these values:
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 = +1
7, 8, 9 = 0
10, J, Q, K, ACE = -1
An example to illustrate the running count:
First an ace is dealt, so we start out with a running count of -1. Then follows a 6, so we add 1 to the running count which is now back at zero. Then a 3 - so we add one point, and the running count is now +1. Then a 4, and the running count is at +2... and so on.
If we stopped here - you would be using a so called "Unbalanced card counting strategy" - Take it one step further and acquaint yourself with a balanced card counting system.
Balanced vs. Unbalanced Card Counting Strategies:
If we take the example from part 1, and imagine that the cards dealt were the very first cards out from a 6 deck shoe - such a count would not be as precise as a count that took into consideration that a large remaining deck of cards can be distributed in your favour or against you. Some would call these factors variance - others would call it good luck or bad luck. Your choice.
Another example: If you have a running count of 5 in the first hand after the shuffle in a single deck game, you can see that this is much more meaningful than if you have the same running count in the first hand after the shuffle in a 6 deck blackjack game.
As the remaining cards in the shoe become less and less, this factor decreases. Card counters do not want to depend on luck, an adjusted strategy that takes this factor into consideration will be more accepted by the serious player. So we use a count that takes into consideration how many decks are left - a count per remaining deck is called The True Count.
True Count
Figuring out the true count is not that difficult to do. You simply take your running count and divide it with the number of decks remaining in the shoe. For example if you have a running count of 6 and approximately 3 decks left in the shoe - your True count is 2.
Another example; If your running count is 5 and there are about 2 decks left - the true count is 2.5.
So as you can see, figuring out the true count is not that hard to do. The difficult part is figuring out how many decks there are left in the shoe. To do that, you have to start practicing by looking at the casinos tray with used cards - practise your eyes to estimate approximately how many decks have been played and how many decks there are remaining in the shoe.
The true count is the backbone of blackjack card counting - this is what tells you the appropriate bet size to make AND when to vary from playing according to basic blackjack strategy due to the remaining contents of the shoe.
