Flirgan Elf

How to count cards in blackjack

The basis of counting cards in blackjack is to look carefully at the cards being dealt in order to adjust your bet according to the current shoe. A shoe which has many high cards is advantageous to the player not for the casino.

Card counting consists of paying attention to certain cards or all of the cards with a specific strategy in order to obtain the ratio of high or low cards waiting to be dealt.

Which is the recommended card counting system?

The simplest card counting system is the one which we recommend namely HI-LO couting or plus/minus, notably used the MIT team. Most of the cards counting systems use positive counting. When the card count is positive, this means that there were more weak cards dealt and the shoe contains from now on a high percentage of high cards.

Counting cards in a group

The film Las Vegas 21 is about the strategy used by the MIT students which consisted of counting cards in a group in order to maximize the profitability of card counting. Different teams were formed to improve the profitability and disguise card counting.

Are there other techniques other than card counting used to obtain an extra advantage?

Logs and shuffle tracking are probably the next evolution of card counting. Based on the fact that high cards (numbers and aces) give the player a considerable advantage. Others observe the piling of the cards in the shoe in order to increase their bets when they appear. Ace steering is the method used to steal aces when ace sequencing is used. These are advanced strategies in blackjack and require one to master card counting.