Card counting at the blackjack table is a way to acquire a long-term statistical advantage over the casino. Counting cards is difficult in blackjack and not as rewarding as it sometimes appears on television and in movies. Everyone would do it if making money was so easy.
In order to become a successful card counter in blackjack, you must be able to count a deck fast and memorize large numbers of figures and also look as if you were an amateur player. Furthermore, with today's rules, the actual advantage over the house is only 0.5% to 1.5%. You will not win money slowly and surely, but your bankroll will go up and down like a roller coaster in the short term. You can only expect to win money in the long term, after practicing card counting for hundreds of hours.
In 1962, Edward O’Thorpe wrote the book "Beat the Dealer", in which he proved through a number of data series that some cards were more favorable for the player while others were less favorable for the dealer (the banker).
Why are the low cards better for the dealer?
The underlying principle behind card counting in blackjack is that a deck which contains many tens and aces is good for the player and a deck which contains many small cards is good for the dealer. The explanation is rather complex, but here are two examples for you to understand it better:
1) Blackjacks are more common in a deck full of tens and aces, which increases the player’s advantage over the dealer.
2) The probability of getting busted, i.e. exceeding 21, is greater with a stiff hand (stiff hand = your first cards have a total of 12-16). The dealer must draw (hit) while the player must not.
Card counting allows you to figure out if there are more high cards left in the deck than low cards and therefore, it determines your odds and gives you an advantage over the house.
Plain card counting system in blackjack
Here is a common way to count cards depending on the value to the cards:
Twos through sixes have a value of +1;
Tens through aces have a value of -1;
Sevens, eights and nines have a value of zero.
As shown above, there are five cards with a value of +1 and five cards with a value of -1, so if you count a whole deck of cards, your total will be zero.
The player adds the values ??of these cards when he sees them. He starts at zero and then fluctuates between negative and positive values. For example, if the first hand from a deck of cards is a two (+1), a nine (0), a king (-1), an ace (-1) and a jack (-1), then the total value is – 2.
Example
The point with this system is to bet when the deck is more advantageous to the player. Use the basic Blackjack strategy during the game. You will spend more money when the cards are in your favor and less money when the cards are in the casino's advantage, thus alternating your bets, which results in larger amounts of money won than lost!
You decide what the size of your bet is. If your first bet is 10 USD and the value is +2, then you should raise the bet to 20 USD (double as compared to your first bet).
If more than one deck is used, then card counting helps to determine how much you should invest. All you need to do is divide your current count by the number of decks left. So if there is one and a half deck left, then you divide the current count by 1.5.
Other card counting systems
There are many different card counting systems and not all of them start at zero with a freshly prepared deck. Some systems are balanced, which means that if you take an entire deck of cards and work through it, your final count is zero. An unbalanced counting system does not return a value of zero after counting through the deck.
