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How to count Cards in Blackjack: Card counting? Don't you have to be some sort of mathematical genius or have a photographic memory to count cards? Not really. Even if the casino is using multiple decks, keeping track of the cards is a only a matter of counting. All you really need to count cards is the ability to count up to plus or minus twelve or so... by ones. The first card counting systems were developed by our old friend Dr. Thorp. He determined through mathematical computation that the card that has the most influence on the deck being in a favorable condition (for the player) was the five. When the deck is low in fives, the player has a higher advantage than if it's sparse in any other card. Logic dictated that for a very simple card counting strategy, simply keep track of the abundance (or lack thereof) of fives. This is the basis of his "Five Count" system which was later improved to include tens and renamed the "Ten Count" system. Today, there are many different card counting systems. Typically, the more complex a system is, the better your advantage should you master it. However, the difference between card counting System X and System Y is usually so small that ease of using the system becomes more important than gaining an additional .15 % advantage (or whatever it is). This discussion is restricted to a single card counting system: the high/low (also called the plus/minus) point count. This strategy is very easy to master. Two other methods that I recommend if you're serious are the Advanced Plus/Minus and the "Hi-Opt I" systems. The former is similar to the high/low but assigns fractional values to certain cards as opposed to integer values which are easier to add in your head. The latter method is considered one of the most powerful counting systems of all time. The quick and dirty reason why card counting works is this: The player gains an advantage when a deck has a shortage of cards valued 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. When a deck has a shortage of cards valued 9, 10, Ace; the player has a disadvantage. If you can tell when the deck is rich in 9's, 10's, and Aces you can do one of the following things:
As you may notice, this is a balanced system. There are 20 cards in a deck that are valued +1: two through six. There are 16 ten value cards and 4 Aces in a deck (20 total) that are valued -1. The remaining 12 cards (7, 8, 9) have a value of zero. At the end of a deck the count should be zero. A good drill to practice is to get a deck of cards, turn them over one by one, and keep track of the count. If you enter a game mid-way between the deck or shoe, flat bet until the cards are shuffled. Once the cards are shuffled commence counting from zero. A quick example using ten cards: the following cards are shown in the course of a hand: A, 4, 7, 10, 10, 9, 10, 2, 10, 5. The first value is -1 (the Ace) & the second is +1 (the 4) = 0 (the current total hand count). The next card is the 7 which is zero so disregard it. The next card is a ten so the total count is now -1. The next card is another ten, giving a total count of -2. The next card is a nine which has a value of zero so ignore it, total count is still at -2. Next is a ten, total count is at -3. Next is a two which adds +1 to the minus three yielding a total of -2. A quick look at the next two cards shows that the two will cancel each other out (-1+1=0). So at the end of a hand of ten cards dealt to 2 players and the dealer, the point count is minus two. This provides you with the knowledge that your are at a slight disadvantage. Your next bet should either be the same or a unit or two lower. From this example you see that it would be easier to count cards if you play
in a "cards-up" game. That way you can see all the cards as they are
dealt and count them as they go by. When the dealer deals fast, just count every
two cards. You still count each card but you only add to your total count after
every two cards since many times the two values will cancel each other out to
give a net value of zero, which doesn't need to be added to your total. If you
play in a cards-down game, you may want to consider playing at third base. The
reason being is that in a cards-down game you only see the other players' cards:
When there are other people at a table, all this happens rather quickly and you may miss a few cards here and there, which essentially invalidates your count. You can't control how fast the dealer deals, but you can slow things down when the dealer prompts you for a play decision. For one deck, alter your wager according to the following table:
What if there are four, six, or more decks instead of just one? I recommend that you perform a "true-count" rather than trying to remember different betting strategies for different number of deck games. By doing a true count, the above table can still be used. The True Count is found with the equation below. I provide an example along with it for the case of having a running count of +9 with one and a half decks left unplayed. It doesn't matter how many decks are used, you just have to have a good eye at guesstimating the number of decks that are left in the shoe. I just measured the thickness of a deck of cards to be 5/8 (10/16) of an inch. Hence the thickness of a half deck is 5/16 of an inch. One and a half decks would be 10/16 + 10/16 + 5/16 = 25/16 or a little over an inch and a half. You probably see a relationship here. The number of decks is approximately equal to the height of the cards in inches.
Looking at the table of betting units above, the proper wager would be four units. If you have trouble keeping the count straight in your head, you can use your chips as a memory storage device. After every hand tally up the net count and update the running or true count by rearranging your chips. One last thing. There is no law or rule that says a dealer cannot count cards. A dealer may count cards because he or she is bored but more likely is that the casino may encourage counting. The reason being that if the deck is favorable to the player, the house can know this and "shuffle up". This is also called preferential shuffling (a game control measure) and it vaporizes your advantage.
Shuffle Tracking This is a fairly new technique that has not been publicized very much. The best definition I have seen is this one: "'Shuffle-tracking' is the science of following specific cards through the shuffling process for the purpose of either keeping them in play or cutting them out of play." The concept of Shuffle tracking appears to have resulted from bored mathematician's research and computer simulation of shuffling cards. Of course, just because someone shuffles a deck (or decks) of cards does not mean that the cards are "randomized". The methods mentioned in the two previous sections (Basic Strategy and Card Counting) assume a random order of cards. (According to some authors, a single deck of cards must be shuffled twenty to thirty times to ensure a truly random dispersion. If a Casino is using a 6 deck shoe, that's 120 to 180 shuffles!) As in the Card Counting section, I am going to restrict the discussion to the basics of shuffle tracking as the combination of references listed at the end of this section provide a complete discourse of the topic. A beneficial (to the player) shuffle for a one deck game is executed by dividing the deck equally into 26 cards and shuffling them together a minimum of three times. This allows the cards to be sufficiently intermixed to yield a fairly random distribution. An adverse shuffle prevents the cards from mixing completely. The simplest example is the Unbalanced Shuffle. As its name implies, the dealer breaks the deck into two unequal stacks. As an example, let's say you are playing two hands head on with the dealer and the last 10 cards in the deck are dealt. The result of the hand was that both your hands lost to the dealer primarily due to the high percentage of low value cards in the clump. Note that if you were counting, you would have bet a single unit since the deck was unfavorable. The dealer is now ready to shuffle the deck, and separates the deck into 31 cards in one stack and 21 in the other stack. The dealer shuffles the two stacks. If the shuffle is done from the bottom of each stack on up, the top ten cards of the larger stack will remain intact without mixing with any of the other cards. Those ten cards can remain in the order they were just dealt throughout the shuffle if the process of bottom to top shuffling is not altered. You are now asked to cut the deck. If you don't cut the deck, the 10 cards that were dealt last hand will be dealt as your first two hands. The result will be the same as your last and you will lose the two hands. However, if you cut the deck exactly at the end of those ten cards, you have just altered the future to your benefit. Those cards will now be placed at the bottom of the deck. Should the dealer shuffle up early, you will avoid them altogether. In addition, if you were keeping count, you would know that the deck was favorable during the first 3-4 hands since there would be an abundance of tens in the portion of the deck that will be played. You would accordingly increase you bet size to maximize your winnings. Some dealers will unknowingly split the deck into unequal stacks. However, more often than not, they are required to split the deck into unequal stacks. If they are required to do this, they are performing the House Shuffle. The casino has trained the dealer to shuffle a particular way... on purpose! Why? In the long run, the house will benefit from this because most players will not cut any bad clumps out of play. If you have played BlackJack in a casino, how much did you pay attention to the way they shuffled? Like most people you were probably oblivious to it. There are a number of shuffle methods, some of which have been labeled as: the "Zone Shuffle", the "Strip Shuffle", and the "Stutter Shuffle". The Zone Shuffle is particular to shoe games (multiple deck games) and is probably one of the most common shuffle methods. It is accomplished by splitting the shoe into 4 to 8 piles depending on the number of decks in the shoe. Prescribed picks from each pile are made in a very exact way with intermittent shuffles of each pair of half deck sized stacks. The net effect is a simple regrouping of the cards pretty much in the same region of the shoe as they were before, thereby preventing clumps of cards from being randomly mixed. If the dealer won 40 hands and you won 20, this trend is likely to continue until you are broke or until the unfavorable bias is removed through many shuffles. What if the players are winning the 40 hands and the dealer only 20? If the dealer has been mentally keeping track of how many hands each side has won in the shoe, the dealer will probably do one of two things. One is to keep the shuffle the same, but 'strip' the deck. When a dealer strips a deck, he/she strips off one card at a time from the shoe letting them fall on top of one another onto the table. This action causes the order of the cards to be reversed. The main consequence is to dissipate any clumping advantages (a bunch of tens in a clump) that the players may have. The second thing the dealer may do is simply change the way they shuffle to help randomize the cards. |
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