Card counting is perfectly legal in Casinos. However, it is heavily frowned upon by all casinos due to the fact that if everyone who played blackjack card counted, they would be bankrupt. Card counting is a SURE way to win the Casino’s money. There is no doubt in that because you’re turning the tables on the casinos and making the odds in your favor.
If done perfectly, card counting can yield you almost 5% advantage over the casinos. This means that if you wager $18,000 in an hour (this is possible assuming each game last 20secs, you wager $50 every game, in a span of an hour = 50x3x60 = $18,000) you would earn an average of $900 per hour! You’ll be making more money than a team of doctors combined! So waste no time and let’s jump right in.
Firstly, the most important foundation before you Card Count is to learn and completely master Blackjack Basic Strategy (Please refer to resource box below if you have not learnt it yet). Blackjack Basic strategy teaches you how to play Blackjack optimally. Meaning every game, the decisions you make will be the least advantageous to the house. Some excellent examples of basic strategy are:
Standing on 12, 13 ,14 when are dealer’s face up card is 4, 5 or 6.
Doubling when your initial cards are a value of 11
Always Split Double Aces/Aces.
So now, let’s start to learn how to card count. The system I’m going to teach you is called the High/Low system. All cards in this system is given a value.
2-6 are given +1
10 value cards and Ace are given -1
7, 8, 9 are neutral cards given a value of 0
So now the cards will be dealt and the count starts. 3, 5, 8, Jack, Queen, 4, 6, 4. The count respectively is +1, +2, +2, +1, 0, +1, +2, +3. The higher the count the ‘hotter’ the deck. A full deck would give a neutral count of 0. That’s right, you should practice flipping the cards over of a full deck until you master how to track the running count.
The running count also is insufficient for you to make decisions on how much you should wager. So we have to convert the running count into the ‘true’ count. This is done by dividing your running count by the number of decks. For example, your running count is +16, and you are playing in a 6 deck game with 4 decks unseen. So 16/4 = 4. Using this true count value, you know how much you should bet each game. The ‘hotter’ the deck, meaning the higher the count, the more units you should wager. The table below serves as a guide on how much you should wager depending on your ‘true count’. You may alter this table to suit your risk appetite and as well as how subtle you want to be.