Counting cards in black jack is really a way to increase your chances of winning. If you are great at it, you can actually take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters increase their bets when a deck rich in cards which are beneficial to the gambler comes around. As a general rule of thumb, a deck wealthy in 10’s is much better for the player, because the croupier will bust more usually, and the player will hit a chemin de fer more often.
Most card counters keep track of the ratio of good cards, or 10’s, by counting them as a one or a minus one, and then offers the opposite one or – 1 to the reduced cards in the deck. Some systems use a balanced count where the quantity of very low cards is the same as the amount of ten’s.
Except the most interesting card to me, mathematically, is the five. There have been card counting methods back in the day that required doing nothing a lot more than counting the variety of fives that had left the deck, and when the five’s had been gone, the gambler had a huge advantage and would increase his bets.
A very good basic strategy player is getting a ninety nine point five per cent payback percentage from the gambling den. Each and every five that has come out of the deck adds point six seven per-cent to the player’s anticipated return. (In a single deck casino game, anyway.) That means that, all other things being equal, having one five gone from the deck offers a gambler a modest benefit over the house.
Having 2 or three five’s gone from the deck will actually give the gambler a fairly substantial advantage over the gambling establishment, and this is when a card counter will usually increase his bet. The problem with counting five’s and absolutely nothing else is that a deck reduced in five’s occurs pretty rarely, so gaining a large benefit 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 improve the gambling house’s expectation. But eight’s and nine’s have incredibly little effects on the outcome. (An 8 only adds point zero one per-cent to the player’s expectation, so it’s usually not even counted. A 9 only has point one five per-cent affect in the other direction, so it is not counted either.)
Comprehending the effects the minimal and high cards have on your anticipated return on a bet is the first step in learning to count cards and play blackjack as a winner.
This entry was posted on April 6, 2011, 12:21 pm and is filed under Blackjack. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.