Blackjack Card Counting

The Folly Of Card Counting

Card counting is an advanced method of playing blackjack, which can switch the odds from the house to the player.

The principle of Blackjack card counting is to bet more when the player knows the deck is rich in tens & aces. By doing this correctly the player can get an edge over the house between 0.5-1.5%.

The reasons for this are, when the deck is rich in tens & aces there is more chance of a blackjack, which pays 2.5x the stake. The dealer also has a higher chance of going bust as the house cannot stand on anything less than 17, where as the player is able to stand on a low hand.

The method of keeping track of the cards is to -1 every time a ten or higher card is played and +1 every time a 6 or lower card is played. If the overall score after several games is '+' then bet more.

BUT!!

Many online casinos are wiping away this 'loophole' by re-shuffling after each game. Not that they make a great effort to point this out, you may even see the animated casino dealer shuffle the deck on a rare occasion to give the illusion the deck is only re-shuffled periodically.

The only time you may be able to use card counting is in multi-player tournaments, however we have yet to come across casino to offer a multi-player game playing with single decks. Hence while it is possible, it's not realistic.

On The Other Hand...

Since the deck is reshuffled every game, this makes each game independent of the previous. This opens up many betting strategies such as:

Martingale - 'Double or Nothing'

D'Alembert - 'Pyramid'

You may have avoided these strategies as you would have expected to periodically go through good/bad patches in Blackjack (depending on which cards remained in the deck), but now it can be played like Roulette with the added bonus of a lower house advantage.