Blackjack

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Counting cards in blackjack is a method to increase your chances of winning. If you are very good at it, you may in fact take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters raise their wagers when a deck wealthy in cards that are advantageous to the player comes around. As a general rule, a deck rich in ten’s is better for the player, because the dealer will bust far more generally, and the player will hit a black-jack a lot more often.

Most card counters maintain track of the ratio of good cards, or 10’s, by counting them as a 1 or a minus one, and then provides the opposite one or – 1 to the low cards in the deck. A number of methods use a balanced count where the variety of reduced cards would be the same as the quantity of 10’s.

But the most interesting card to me, mathematically, would be the five. There have been card counting methods back in the day that required doing nothing far more than counting the number of fives that had left the deck, and when the 5’s had been gone, the player had a large benefit and would raise his bets.

A good basic technique player is getting a 99.5 per cent payback percentage from the casino. Each and every 5 that has come out of the deck adds point six seven percent to the player’s expected return. (In an individual deck casino game, anyway.) That means that, all things being equivalent, having one 5 gone from the deck provides a gambler a smaller benefit over the house.

Having 2 or three 5’s gone from the deck will actually give the player a pretty significant advantage more than the casino, and this is when a card counter will typically increase his wager. The problem with counting five’s and absolutely nothing else is that a deck reduced in 5’s happens pretty rarely, so gaining a huge advantage and making a profit from that situation only comes on rare instances.

Any card between two and 8 that comes out of the deck increases the player’s expectation. And all nine’s. 10’s, and aces enhance the casino’s expectation. Except eight’s and nine’s have quite smaller effects on the outcome. (An eight only adds point zero one percent to the player’s expectation, so it’s normally not even counted. A 9 only has 0.15 % affect in the other direction, so it’s not counted either.)

Understanding the effects the lower and great cards have on your expected return on a wager is the first step in understanding to count cards and play blackjack as a winner.