Card counting in Blackjack is the only way to actually take advantage of the casino's house edge, and increase your odds of winning in the long run. Of course, this requires a lot of training, but knowing the basics is a great start.
Please note
The information in this article is most useful when playing a blackjack game where the dealer stands on a soft 17, and blackjack pays 3-2.
Counting cards only works in a live casino. The reason why you can’t count in online casinos is that every hand is dealt as if it is the first hand of a shuffled shoe.
Today, we’re going to learn about the following topics, and by the time you get to the end of this article, you’ll know how to become a successful card counter:
This one of the many articles in the ‘Blackjack’ series, and now we’re getting into the deep waters of the casino blackjack game.
Please note
This article is not for beginners, so if you don’t know how to play blackjack, or perhaps have played a little and want to learn more, you may want to check out our other articles on blackjack in the Blackjack Academy to get up to speed before you jump into the deep end here.
If you’re a recreational blackjack player, you already know from my guide ‘Learn How to Play Blackjack’ that the casino has set the game up so that they have what’s called ‘the house advantage’ (HA).
On a typical 6-deck shoe, the casino rules will give them an HA of approximately 0.75%.
Doesn’t sound like much, does it?
But they will turn that little advantage into anywhere between 15% and 20% of the money that is in the drop box.
The casino doesn’t care who wins or loses and if the game is run according to the rules, at the end of the year, that’s what they will win.
In order to take that HA away from the casino and give it to you, you need to change the odds in your favor.
And the way you do that is by counting cards.
Card counting is keeping track of the cards that are left in the shoe to see when the shoe becomes favorable for the player, and not the casino.
What does that mean?
High-value cards in the shoe (the 10, J, Q, K, and Ace) are good for the players and the low-value cards (the 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) are good for the casino.
The main reasons are:
- when you get a blackjack, the payout is 150% of your bet, but when the dealer gets a blackjack, you will lose 100% of your bet. So the high value cards favor the player, and
- the player can double down and split, plus take insurance when there a lot of high value cards in the deck, and
- the dealer must hit a stiff hand (anything from 12 through 16) and a 10-value card is going to cause them to bust (which means the player wins) whereas a low card is going to allow the dealer to make their stiff hand. This means the casino often wins. So the low value cards favor the casino.
Card Counting is not illegal. Let me say that again:
Card Counting is NOT illegal.
The casinos don’t like people counting cards because if they’re good at it, it takes the advantage away from the casino and gives it to the player.
But it’s not illegal.
In the mid-1960s, a math professor from MIT called Ed Thorp published a book called ‘Beat the Dealer’.
It was a revelation into how the casino game of blackjack could be beaten by counting cards.
He was the first of several guys who subsequently became famous in the card-counting world. Notable famous (some would say ‘infamous’!) names include Stanford Wong, Lawrence Revere, Arnold Snyder, Don Schlesinger, Peter Griffin, and several more.
Their combined research and publications have been used by many to learn how to beat the casinos for millions of dollars, and also by the casino guys trying to institute measures to stop them and their disciples from gaining the advantage.
No, you don’t. Here is a simple explanation for everyone:
- All the high-value cards (the 10, J, Q, K, and Ace) are assigned a value of (minus) -1.
- All the low-value cards (2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) are assigned a value of (plus) +1.
- And the 7, 8, and 9 have a value of zero. They don’t change your count at all.
And all you need to do is keep track as the cards are exposed, starting the count on a fresh shoe from zero.
This is called ‘The Running Count’.
For example
So let’s say you are dealt a 3, a 5, and then hit it with a 10. You would add +1 for the 3, then another +1 for the 5 (so the Running Count is now +2), and then a -1 for the 10.
The Running Count is now +1. (+1 +1 and -1 = +1 total)
Yes – it’s really that simple!
Then you need to convert that into ‘The True Count’.
The Running Count is the + or – count for the entire shoe.
The True Count is the + or – count for the number of decks of cards that have not been exposed.
How do you know how many decks have not been exposed?
By looking in the discard rack.
As the cards are played, and at the end of each hand, the exposed cards are stored in the discard rack, and you can see how many have been used.
A deck of casino cards is ¾ of an inch (0.75”) or 1.9 centimeters deep. Look in the discard rack and estimate how many decks have gone. Don’t forget to include those cards that are still on the table, particularly if you’re at a full table – there may be up to half a deck exposed on the table.
In a 6-deck shoe, if you have about 3/4” of cards in the discard rack, you have 1 deck in the discard rack, and therefore, 5 decks still in the shoe.
True Count = Running Count divided by Decks Still In The Shoe.
In the above scenario, let’s say the Running Count is +10, and there are 5 decks still in the shoe, divide +10 by 5, and the True Count is +2.
Let’s say the Running Count is -5, now divide that by 5, and the True Count is -1.
Or perhaps your brain works this way:
A discard rack on a 6-deck shoe table can hold 6 decks. If the discard rack is ½ full, that means that 3 decks have been removed from the shoe. So 3 decks remain. And the True Count then would be +10 divided by 3 = +3.3
Pretty simple, isn’t it?
You don’t need to know how many 5s of Hearts or Queens of Spades are gone. That’s way too complicated. Just a tally of +1 and -1 as the cards are exposed.
There are several different systems to track the cards, and they all have their good points and not-so-good points.
Pro tip
If you can add or subtract by 1 and do simple division, you already have all the skills you need to be able to count cards.
When I got my first Shift Manager job at the Lady Luck casino in downtown Las Vegas, I discovered within ten minutes of my first shift that the cards on our ‘Double Exposure’ blackjack game had been marked.
I knew craps and roulette inside out, but I had plenty to learn about blackjack.
I’d been told about card counting but didn’t really understand what it was, or how it worked.
I knew about Basic Strategy but had never taken the time to learn it.
And I realized I needed to learn them both.
Speaking of perfect strategy, you can always check our Blackjack Basic Strategy chart guide. It’s inspired by the one I used to learn when I was just getting started.
There was no Amazon or even Internet back then, so I went to the Gambler’s Bookstore in Las Vegas to find some books to read.
I was looking for something that was easy for me to understand, and that would show me what I needed to know.
I bought ‘Playing Blackjack As A Business’ by Lawrence Revere. It’s now a classic ‘how to count cards’ book and is still well-regarded even though it was written many years ago.
I knew that the simple +1 / -1 count (also called the Hi-Lo count) and watching the players change their bets with the count was all I would need to have the ability to identify the card counters.
I practiced counting by running through a deck, counting the deck down, and making sure that I ended up with a zero count once I got to the end of the deck (because there are an equal number of low-value and high-value cards in a deck).
Then I started exposing 2 cards at a time and learning how to see them as a pair:
- two faces would be -2;
- a face and a small card would be zero;
- two small cards would be + 2.
And then do it using two decks, to increase the time it took, and to expand my concentration time.
Once I could quickly do two decks straight through with no mistakes, I had to figure out how to do it in the casino, with all the distractions that are there.
Here’s what I learned:
Once you have the basics down, there is no better way to practice counting cards than to watch the video poker players play.
Oh, you’re not looking at the poker hands. Oh no!
You’re counting the cards as they come at you in twos and threes, and fast. Just like in a real blackjack game. It’s the perfect way to practice.
And the Lady Luck had mirrors on the ceiling (but no pink champagne on ice for the Eagles fans!), so I could watch the games without the players realizing that I was watching their game.
And what players we had. Every type of cheat and advantage player would show up, usually every day.
(Oh, and just to confirm - counting cards isn’t illegal, and certainly isn’t cheating)
I played in blackjack tournaments around town and found that several of our players played at the Casino Royale, just opposite the Stardust, across the Strip.
You can learn how good a player is at counting cards and managing his money by playing and counting against him.
And I learned a lot.
And one of the things I learned the quickest was
Just because a guy is counting cards doesn’t mean he’s any good at it, and he certainly doesn’t pose a threat to the casino if he doesn’t have the skills down perfectly.
More on this later.
There are several complicated systems to use, but the best one is the simplest.
And that’s the Hi-Lo count described above.
Why is it the best?
Because the more complex the system, the easier it is to make mistakes.
And with the thin margin that makes the difference between winning and losing when counting, mistakes will kill you.
There are 4 skills you must have down cold to be a successful card counter.
And you must be perfect at each one.
And this is the serious part. If you can’t do these four things perfectly, you’re not ready.
- You must play perfect Basic Strategy. Perfect! No excuses, no explanations. Perfect.
- You must NEVER lose the count.
- You must make the correct bet based on the count every time. No exceptions!
- You must know the deviations from Basic Strategy that are based on the count
And you must be able to convert the Running Count to the True Count quickly and accurately.
There are lots of distractions in a casino.
Slot jackpots? Don’t look. Pretty girls? Don’t look.
Dealer asking ‘Where are you from?’. Can you continue that conversation without losing the count?
Beverage server: ‘Can I get you something?’ Can you order without losing the count?
Or the dealer asking ‘Sir, are you splitting those 5s, or doubling down?’ without losing the count.
Because if you can’t, you’re not ready.
All the guys I watched who were successful card counters were really good (and over the years I’ve watched a lot who weren’t).
As in ‘no mistakes and no excuses’ good.
Because if you can’t do that, you may as well just mail your money to the casino and save yourself the travel expenses.
It’s like the ‘I’m not going into the pool until I can swim’ conundrum, isn’t it?
Well – one way is to take your bankroll, go and find a game and give it a go.
And that’s how I did it.
I kept track of the high and low cards by their assigned count value and adjusted my bets as the count fluctuated.
If you would like to try a ‘casino assimilation’ course, there’s an easier way to get started.
You’re going to use a very similar system to an actual +/- Hi Lo count, but much simplified.
Here’s how you do it:
Keep Track of the Aces and the 5s.
After every shuffle, start with zero, and every time a 5 is played, add 1.
Every time an Ace is played, subtract 1.
Take a regular shuffled deck of cards and go through them, practicing adding 1 for a 5 and subtracting 1 for an Ace.
Then once you get to an actual game, when the count is +2 or better, double your starting bet.
For example
Let’s say you’re starting with a $200 bankroll, and your first bet is $5. If the count goes to +2, your next bet would be $10. If it’s at +4, your starting bet would be $20, and so on. This is a good way to ‘dip your toe in the water’ and get a feel for what it’s like.
Why does this help you reduce the house advantage? In a 6-deck shoe, there are 24 Aces and 24 5s.
But why would you want to keep track of those cards particularly?
Well, let’s talk about the Aces. An Ace in the deck is the player’s friend.
Why is that?
Because when the player gets an Ace as their first card, they win 52% of their hands.
And when you get a blackjack, you get paid 3 to 2. But when the dealer gets a blackjack, you only lose even money.
Example for betting $100 per hand (for easy math!)
The first hand you get 19 and the dealer gets a blackjack. You lose $100.
Next hand you bet $100 and get a blackjack and the dealer gets 19.
You get paid $150.
So with two identical hands, you won one and you lost one, and you’re $50 ahead.
Cool – that’s good! I like it!
What about the 5s? Why the 5s too?
Well, a 5 is the casino’s friend
(Note I said casino there, not dealer. The dealer wants you to win because most of the money they make is from tips)
Why is the 5 the casino’s friend?
Because the 5 turns a dealer’s stiff hand into a made hand.
If the dealer has a 12 and hits it with a 5, now they have a ‘made hand’ – i.e. a 17.
If the dealer has a 13 and hits it with a 5, now they have a made hand, an 18.
14? Now it’s 19. 15? Now it’s 20. 16? Now it’s 21 - and we’ve all seen that too many times.
The card counter advantage is completely reliant on you being able to play perfect Basic Strategy.
And perfect means PERFECT! Every time.
Because without perfect Basic as a starting point, you’re simply never going to be able to move the HA to your side.
Please read the second article in this series covering the blackjack basic strategy. It includes the Basic Strategy chart you need to learn to become a perfect blackjack player and be ready to become a good card counter.
There is an explanation there of how to learn the correct Basic Strategy plays for every situation.
Important
The 4 things you must do perfectly account for approx. 75% of your potential winnings when counting cards. The remaining 25% comes from using the count to adjust your correct Basic Strategy plays into ‘count adjusted deviations’ territory.
That’s a great question, and the answer is ‘It depends’.
A typical bet spread to use on a 6-deck shoe is from 1 unit to 12 units. In a ‘Go For The Throat’ situation where you may get backed off and want to win as much as possible as quickly as possible, you should put your bankroll out there sooner rather than later (remembering of course to make sure you’re bet spread is backed by the count).
If you want to be more conservative and make sure you limit your Risk of Ruin* (ROR), plus don’t attract any negative attention, then increase your bets more slowly as the count goes positive, and you should go for a betting spread of 1 unit to 8 units.
*ROR is the chance that a player will lose her entire bankroll while playing blackjack (or any other gambling endeavor). It is expressed as a percentage. Typically, professional players want to limit their ROR to <2%.
Pro Tip You Need To Know
Every time the number of high-value cards vs. low-value cards increases by 1, it changes the HA in your favor by approximately 0.5%. So you need to get to a True Count of at least +2 before you start increasing your bets.
As you get comfortable in the casino environment and can make all the Basic Strategy plays perfectly, it’s time to start using the Hi Lo count system to bring the HA over to your side.
Once the True Count is +2, you can start increasing your bet to match the count.
The table below is based upon ‘the Kelly Strategy’ which is a technique developed in the 1950s by J. L. Kelly, a Bell Labs scientist, to maximize wins and minimize losses in the stock market, while keeping the investments at a small percentage of the available bankroll.
It just happens to work perfectly for card counting, too.
| True Count (TC) | Units to bet for 1 - 12 spread | Units to bet for 1 - 8 spread |
| 0 or negative | 1 | 1 |
| +1 | 1 | 1 |
| +2 | 2 | 2 |
| +3 | 4 | 4 |
| +4 | 8 | 6 |
| +5 and up | 12 | 8 |
One thing that many players do is they bet the minimum bet of their preferred spread at the start of the shoe. Let’s say you’re going to spread between $10 and $120. Many players start at $10, and then if the count goes up, they will increase their bet accordingly. If the count goes from +2 to + 15 in the first couple of hands, they will go from a $10 bet to a $120 bet.
However, if you come romping out with a 1 unit to 12 unit bet spread, from the casino’s point of view you may as well be holding a neon sign that says ‘I’m counting cards now’ because that increase in the bet spread will certainly attract some attention from any Floor person in the vicinity of the section you’re playing in.
If the count goes from +2 to + 15, and you go from $10 to $120, this is an aggressive stance to take and may attract a lot of attention, particularly in a small casino – so choose your bet spread carefully.
No point in getting backed off before you’ve had a chance to make some money.
If you find yourself getting to the top end of your bet spread over a few hands, don’t be bashful about going there.
Nothing unusual about that at all – players routinely double their bets. It happens all the time. But now, you’ve bet the top end of your spread and gone up to $120.
No red flag here – just a minor Floor person response of ‘oh, $100 bet’. And sometimes you might bet 2 hands at $60 each to spread it out.
Key takeaway
The whole point is to bet big when you have the advantage and bet small when you don’t.
And when the count goes back down to even, or +2, you reduce the bet to one hand at $10. Nothing unusual there either.
So don’t make a huge jump which will attract the wrong kind of attention.
The following table is two tables merged into one. They were developed by Blackjack Hall of Famer Don Schlesinger and tell you the correct ‘count adjusted deviations’ to take based on the count. They come from his book ‘Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pro’s Way’.
They’re often referred to as ‘The Illustrious 18’ and ‘The Fab 4’.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say you have 15 vs the dealer’s up card of 10. Basic Strategy says you should hit. But with a True Count of +4 or more, you should stand, because the deck is rich in 10-value cards and you’re more likely to bust if you hit.
Please note
The lower part of the table is what ‘count adjusted deviations’ you should make on the ‘Surrender’ Basic Strategy plays.
Even though card counting isn’t illegal, the casinos aren’t very happy to have people who are good at it in their casino, because you’re going to change the odds of the game in your favor.
And you will cut into their profits, possibly in a major way.
If you’re not very good at counting cards (and most people who try aren’t very good, because they haven’t spent the time to get good), the casino loves you. Because you’re helping them make their budget numbers.
The casino starts looking at whether you’re counting cards or not at a bet spread of 4 or 5 times your minimum bet – assuming that is an amount they’re going to be concerned about. It may be that they don’t start looking at your bet spreads until you’re betting $100 or more.
Only the smaller casinos are going to bother looking at you from a ‘counting or not counting’ point of view until you’re winning more than $200 or $300 unless you’re holding the neon sign (see above!).
Starting from a $10 bet, in theory they may start taking an interest in anything of $40 or $50. So going from $10 to $120 is going to be a red flag, because you’re way over the $40 ‘4 times’ threshold.
Of course, very few casinos have the staff or inclination to waste their time on such a small amount.
What some successful players do is they don’t start at the minimum of their bet spread.
They may start with their bet at a ¼ or even ½ of their bet spread. Instead of starting at the entry level $10, they start at $30, or $50.
If the count goes down to zero or negative, then you go to your minimum $10 bet or even don’t bet at all. But not betting at all is likely to attract attention.
Starting in the middle of your bet spread is a good disguise, and even though the first hand of a shoe has a tiny advantage for the casino, I’ve seen it work and I believe it may be worth it from the camouflage point of view.
Here are 6 pro tips to disguise what you’re doing, so you don’t get heat from the Floorman or Pit Manager:
- Start the shoe at ¼ of your betting spread and go up or down to the limits in smaller increments.
- If you start winning, discreetly put some of the higher denomination chips in your pocket. The dealer must get an okay from the Floor person to send out black chips ($100) or higher, so request getting paid in green ($25) chips. The Floor probably won’t even notice them gone from the chip tray.
- This may be hard to believe, but I’ve seen some counters using their fingers to keep track of the count. I’ve also seen some mouthing the numbers as they’re counting. Neither of these are recommended!
- There are natural pauses in the game where there will only be one or two cards coming out. Get those cards and then look away from the game, making sure you don’t miss any. It’s easier to be spotted if the Floor can see you watching all the cards closely.
- Buy in for a mixed bag of notes. A couple of hundreds, a fifty, some twenties, two tens and some singles. Most ‘players’ come to the table with all hundreds, or all twenties.
- Ask the dealer for advice on a hand you know you should double down on such as 11 against a dealer 6 for example.
Of course, none of this matters much if you don’t have the four skills down cold.
There is a concept used by card counters called ‘Risk of Ruin’. Knowing this is crucial if you want to win at blackjack.
It refers to the possibility of losing your entire bankroll based on how much you start with, how much you bet and how much you’re willing to win before you stop playing and head for the cage.
Below are some suggestions to give you a landscape of those numbers, and you can decide what you’re comfortable with.
Generally, the professional card counters (i.e. the guys who are really good at it, and make a living doing it) want to keep their Risk of Ruin (ROR) under 2%.
The other side of that is that to be really successful, you have to be aggressive and play at the top end of your spread as soon and as often as the count will allow you to.
A typical bankroll for a $5 per unit bettor with a 1 to 12 spread is $500 for a 35% to 45% ROR, $1,500 with a 10% ROR, and $2,500 with a 2% ROR.
This is scalable of course
So $25 per unit is $2,500 for 35% to 45% ROR, $7,500 with a 10% ROR, and $12,500 with a 2% ROR etc.
Final Thoughts
There you have it – how to be a card counter. There are a great many books and videos out there, some written and produced by true experts in the field.
There are lots of people who try to make a living at it.
My experience with card counting is that there are very few players who are experts at it, who represent a real threat to the casino.
Most guys who try to count simply haven’t put in the time necessary to get the skills down to where they really know what they’re doing.
So good luck, and hopefully Lady Luck will accompany you on your next visit to the casino.
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