Card Counting

	Basic strategy is the very foundation of card counting

Imagine you’re psychic. Make the mental leap that you have the ability to ‘see’ the value of a card before it’s turned over. With this kind of power you could do a lot worse than become a professional blackjack player. You’d never bust, and you’d only lose when your hand couldn’t match the dealer’s. You’d have a huge advantage over the house and make a load of money.

In the real world, where it’s safe to assume you’re not equipped with a supernatural sense of prescience, you’ll have to make informed guesses as to what the next card will be and play your hand accordingly. This is at the very core of skilled blackjack play.

What if, although you couldn’t predict exactly what the next card might be, you could say with a lot more certainty that it was going to an Ace or a ten? For instance, in a fresh deck of cards you know you have a 16 out of 52 chance of drawing a card with a value of ten in blackjack. In statistical terms you have a 30.7 per cent chance of hitting a ten. Now imagine that same deck is half dealt, but you’ve seen only five tens face up so far. With this deck you’d have an 11 out of 28 chance of hitting a ten on the draw. Your odds of hitting a ten are now 39.2 per cent. Equipped with this info, a smart blackjack player would modify their play, perhaps sticking on a 15 against a dealer upcard ten. The wise player might also choose to increase their opening stake, as a deck rich in tens favours the player not the dealer – we’ll see why later.

This is the essence of card counting. The smart blackjack player will modify their stake and their play depending on the ratio of favourable to unfavourable cards left to be dealt in the deck. The good news is that this will give the player enough of an edge to deliver a consistent profit. The bad news is that card counting is fiendishly difficult. Casinos have also spent many years making life as difficult as possible for the card counter or ‘advantage player’, as they’re known in Vegas.

Okay, count me in

Let’s start with the basics. Before you even begin to think about card counting, you need to have really mastered basic blackjack strategy. Basic strategy was covered in detail in last month’s InsideEdge and you can find the same article online at inside-edge-mag.co.uk. Mastering basic strategy means you should know exactly what play to make when presented with your hand and a dealer upcard. You should know without thinking whether to hit, stick, double down or split.

Basic strategy is the very foundation of card counting. If you still have to think about the correct basic play, you have no chance of keeping a running count of the cards as well.

Next up, you need to know why card counting works. In summary, high cards are good for you and low cards are good for the dealer. Remember, you can stick at any point, but the dealer must hit 16s and below. With more tens around, the dealer busts more often, which is good for you. Also blackjacks (sometime called naturals) are worth more to you than the dealer, as they pay out 3/2 on your bet. With more low cards, the dealer is more likely to stay in the game, which means the hands you’ve stood against low upcards – say, 15 stood against an upcard 5 – are more likely to be beaten.

You use this information to your advantage in two ways. First, you vary the stake you wager. You increase your bet if the count is with you and decrease to a minimum when it’s not. Second, you modify the hits, stands, doubles and splits you play according to the count you have.

By the numbers

The way you actually keep a running count of the cards on a blackjack table (either in a casino or online) isn’t as straightforward as it seems. To begin with, there are dozens of counting strategies, all of which claim to be the most accurate and effective. If you don’t believe me, take a look at www.qfit.com/card-counting.htm. This lists no fewer than 17 systems, all taken from the plethora of books that claim to hold the secrets to winning at blackjack. The site also mathematically compares the different systems against single and multiple deck games, as well as rating their simplicity or ease of use.

In essence, all of these systems perform the same job – keeping a track of the cards that confer advantage to the player and the cards that favour the dealer. In most systems, every card you see either adds one, subtracts one or makes no change to your running count, to give you a score. Such a system is described as a Level One card counting system, as you never modify the count by more than one point. Level Two systems have counts that can add or subtract two or more points in one card. Level Three systems can add between zero and three points on any one card. Clearly, the maths gets more complex at this point. Level Four systems are for Vulcans and the dangerously bright.

My advice is to stick with a Level One count. Level Two and above counts are slightly more accurate, but they’re a damn sight more difficult to use. They’re systems that should only be tried once you’ve mastered everything that a Level One count has to offer. You’re better off starting with the Hi-Lo counting system: it’s arguably the easiest to use and effective against the multiple deck games you’ll find in UK casinos. The Hi-Lo count is featured in Stanford Wong’s Professional Blackjack book (ISBN number 0-935926-21-6), which although somewhat dry, is the definitive work on card counting. The Hi-Lo count is straightforward to use. Each time you see a card face up on the blackjack table, you modify the count with the following values.

For a 2,3,4,5 or 6 = add one point (+1)
For a 7,8,9 = the count stays the same (0)
For a 10, J, Q, K, A = subtract one point (-1).

For example, you’re sat at the table with two other players and the following cards are dealt. Seat one is dealt A,10 for blackjack, you’re dealt 10, 7 for 17 and seat three is dealt Q,3 for 13. The dealer upcard is a 4. The running count on this table is now -2. You stick the 17, the player in the end box foolishly hits the 13 and catches a 6 for 19. The count is now -1. The dealer hits an 8 then a 10 to bust. The count is now -2 again.

A negative count is bad news for the player, as it means that a greater-than-average number of Aces and tens have been seen so far. In our example, the count of -2 means the deck is slightly against you. What blackjack players should always be on the lookout for are decks with very high counts (+6 and above), as this means the deck is rich in tens and Aces.

The true count

There’s more to winning at blackjack than just keeping an eye on the running count. In the previous example, the count had been formed from just ten cards. Even in a single deck game, this would only be 20 per cent of the deck. If you’re playing with six decks, as is the norm in a UK casino, you’d have only seen a shade over 3 per cent of the cards left in the shoe (the shoe is the container that holds the remaining decks of cards to be dealt). Making a significant betting decision based on such a small percentage of the deck would be folly indeed. To make a card counting system work, you need to convert the running count (or total positive or negative number) in to a true count. To create a true count you need to divide the running count by the estimated number of decks left.

For instance, if you calculate the current running count to be +12, you’d figure that the cards left in the shoe would be chocker with Aces and tens. But out of the six decks being dealt, a glance at the discard pile shows you that approximately three decks are remaining. You must then divide the running count of +12 by the number of decks remaining; for example, 12 divided by three gives a true count of +4.

The same applies if you’re lucky enough to be playing a one- or two-deck game of blackjack. If you reckon there’s only half a deck to play, you still need to divide the running count by the number of decks. In the above example, you’d divide +12 by 0.5 to give you a true count of +24. Remember, a +24 count is a rare opportunity to make some serious money from the house, as the deck is massively in your favour.

Estimating the number of decks left to play to calculate the true count is a vital skill. Luckily, you can see both the shoe and the discard pile in a casino (though not always online). During play, the minimum you should worry about is a half deck; don’t even think about trying to measure a quarter deck of cards, let alone divide the running count by it. With practice, you can quickly guess what remains and what’s left to play. To ensure you’re starting with the right number of decks, casinos should have a sign telling you how many decks are in play.

The last factor you should be aware of is how long the decks are played before a shuffle takes place. This is referred to as penetration in card counting terms. The higher the penetration the better, as it means you’re statistically more likely to see the benefit of a high true count. Most UK casinos will shuffle when around 70-80 per cent of the cards have been dealt. If a casino suspects card counting, one of the first countermeasures a dealer will make is to shuffle more regularly, often when the shoe is only half dealt. This will all but kill any advantage that card counting gives the player.

Using your edge

So what kind of advantage does a positive true count confer to the blackjack player in a UK casino? If you play by-the-book basic strategy with six decks in a UK casino – where blackjacks are revealed at the end rather than at the beginning of a hand – you can expect to give away a shade under 1 per cent to the house (0.8 per cent in typical games). In context, for each £100 you spend in the casino, you’d lose 80p if the odds were averaged out.

However, with a positive count, the odds swing back in your favour. As a rule of thumb, you can add 0.5 per cent to your advantage for each positive point of the true count. At a true count of +2, you have a tiny advantage over the house. At +4 you have over a 1 per cent advantage and so on. Of course, a count of -4 is bad news, as you play at an almost 3 per cent disadvantage to the house.

To make the most of the insight you gain from counting cards, you need to change two factors in the way you play. First and by far the most important, you need to vary your initial bet stake, increasing it anywhere up to four times your usual bet when the true count is really in your favour. The actual amount will vary depending on the stake you’re playing for, but if your stake is £5, you should be prepared to bet up to £20 on one hand if the true count is +4 or above. At a true count of +3, you should be comfortable with betting double your stake or £10. If the count drops to +1 or below, make sure you drop back to your original betting stake of £5. Don’t hang around when this happens, as playing for large bets when the count is against you can cost you dearly.

You might wonder why you can’t just sit out of hands when the count is against you. In a perfect world, you’d do exactly that, but the fact is that varying your bet stakes is the most obvious sign of a card counter to a casino. Most of them have seen every system played and know all the signs. Dropping your bet for several hands while still keeping your seat warm at the table is the most obvious ‘tell’ of all. If you’re a successful card counter and you want to avoid being barred, make sure you look at our boxout to read about camouflaging your count.

The second factor to change is the way you play your basic strategy and hands. This is where card counting systems sometimes become overbearingly complex. Remember, you’re counting cards, measuring decks, making quick mental divisions, yet you still need to memorise an additional table. That’s a tough shout. You can find exhaustive tables on how to modify basic strategy in most good blackjack books. Indeed, Stanford Wong’s Professional Blackjack contains pages of them relating to the Hi-Lo system. This includes advice on how to modify your insurance bets, splits and double downs too.

For simplicity and maximum effect, here are two key changes you should make to your play, depending on the count. Against a dealer upcard of ten, stand hard 16s if the true count is zero or above and stand hard 15s if the true count is +4 or above. This is a big change from correct basic strategy.

To estimate the amount of money you can make using a counting system, complete with changing bet stakes, check out cardcounter.com and follow the links. Here you’ll find an online calculator for estimating the return over a huge number of games. Unlike real life, the calculator shows the result of thousands of hands of blackjack in seconds.

Practice makes perfect

So how do you learn to count cards accurately? Your first lesson is that you don’t learn how to count cards in a casino. Your first step is far less glamorous. Set aside an hour or two and sit down with a single pack of cards, shuffle them thoroughly and proceed to turn them over one by one. As each card turns, you should keep a running count. To begin with, you’ll do this very slowly. Worry about keeping the right count, rather than the speed of turning at the moment.

At the end of the deck, and if you’ve counted correctly, the running count will always be zero. Do this over and over until you can accurately count a whole deck in under 30 seconds.

You next step is to add a second deck of cards into the shuffle. Now keep a running count, but work out the true count as well. You’ll now need some agile mental arithmetic to keep the count, estimate the level of the decks and, crucially, divide the former by the latter to give you the true count. At this point, like many before you, you’ll want to give up. Don’t. All that has happened is that you’ve worked out why most people just play blackjack, rather than try to beat it. Quite simply, card counting isn’t for the faint hearted.

With practice, you’ll be able to keep a true count on two decks of cards and count them all out under 60 seconds. When you can do this five times out of five, with no mistakes, you’re ready for the next stage. Now try turning over two cards at a time and keeping the true count. This will take days to master.

The final stage is to add another two decks and keep turning two cards at a time. You should also occasionally distort the number of tens in the front or back half of the decks. This will get you used to dealing with bigger counts. After all, you don’t want to fluff the maths when you’re sat in a casino facing the most exciting positive count of your life.

Your last lesson should be taken online. Many online casinos will allow you to play for free if you like, and although card counting doesn’t necessarily work online, it will give you a good feel for the pace and pressure of a real casino. This is valuable practice, but it can’t prepare you for the distractions of a casino environment. Sat in front of your PC, a waitress isn’t going to ask you if you want another Diet Coke and your fellow players certainly aren’t going to chat to you. The only way to simulate that is to add a few distractions of your own. Stick a TV on in the background or have music playing on your PC.

If you’re serious about learning to card count like the pros, you’d be wise to invest in a piece of practice software. The Casino Verite software is well worth a look. This not only simulates a casino environment and pace well, but gives you tools for altering the rules being played and can adapt to a number of common counting strategies. It will even provide pertinent data on request, such as the number of cards to be dealt. At around $100 it isn’t cheap, but is a worthwhile investment if you mean to take card counting seriously. Take a look at qfit.com/cvroad.htm for more info. You can also download a limited trial version, which replaces all the 5s in the deck with Jacks. This will make counting pointless, but it does show you what the software can do, so you can decide how useful (or not) the software is to you.

Countdown to cash

In this article is pretty much all you need to give yourself an edge at the blackjack table. To win you will need to practice counting and practice religiously. Good luck, and no matter how hot the count at the table, don’t lose your head!