• How To Count Cards Blackjack Rules
• How To Count Cards Blackjack 1 Deck

Card counting in Blackjack is one of the most widely discussed topics on the Internet, where threads about it are popping up everywhere. However, this subject remains one of the most misunderstood in the world of casinos and some “well-informed” people are in a hurry to present their counting theories, without any relevant source or very detailed reflection. Card counting is an advantage-play method that helps you determine when the blackjack odds are in your favor. It involves tracking cards as they come out of the shoe and assigning them point values. The running count helps you figure out when the shoe is rich in aces and 10-value cards.

If you play blackjack, why aren’t you counting cards? It’s a proven mathematical way to eliminate the house edge, and some players are so good at it that they make money in the long run. Is it because you think counting cards is too hard or you have to be a mathematician to do it?

I’ve got good news for everyone who plays blackjack that isn’t counting cards yet. The first thing is that the statement above about using card counting to break even or beat blackjack is true. You can use counting to win playing blackjack.

The next piece of good news is that it’s much easier to get started as a counter than almost everyone believes. You can use one of the simplest counting systems ever designed to break even or better, and I can teach you how to use it in just a few minutes. You don’t have to be a gifted math student or anywhere close to a genius.

If this sounds too good to be true, just take a few minutes to read the rest of this article. I’m getting ready to prove it to you.

1. Simple card counting systems for beginners include the Hi-Lo strategy, the Red Seven count and Knock-Out Blackjack, also known as the KO system. The Hi-Lo strategy is employed by first of all assigning values to each of the cards in the following way; deuces to sixes +1, sevens to nines 0, 10s to aces -1.
2. Counting cards in blackjack is tough, and though not illegal, it's frowned upon and can get you booted from casinos. But if you already have a firm grasp of the game, it's a great way to help you understand when the odds are in your favor.
3. That’s mostly because blackjack becomes more likely, and the player gets paid a 50% bonus on every blackjack and also a dealer holding (12-16) will bust every time if the next card drawn is a 10. Card counting allows players to bet more with less risk when the count gives an advantage as well as minimize losses during an unfavorable count.

The final piece of good news is that, once you start counting cards at any level, it’s easy to keep learning and working until you’re counting at an advanced level and beating blackjack on a regular basis. Everything you need to know to get started is included below.

1 – Ace Five Count

The ace five card counting system is as simple as a card counting system can get. Anyone can learn how to use it in just a few minutes, and once you start using it, you can eliminate the house edge every time you play. It’s easier to learn how to use than basic blackjack strategy.

You can use the ace five count in any blackjack game, but if you want to benefit from it as much as possible, you need to do two things. The first thing is either get a blackjack strategy card and use it or memorize basic strategy.

The other thing you have to do is find blackjack games with good rules. The best games have as many of the following rules as possible. You won’t find games with all of these rules often, but you want games that have most of them.

• Surrender
• Dealer stands on soft 17
• Can double after splitting
• Can split three or more times
• Blackjack pays 3:2 (never play at a table that pays less than 3:2 for a natural blackjack)
• Can double down on any two cards
• Can double down on any hand even after hitting

The ace five blackjack system is based on the fact that the ace is the most valuable card for the player and the five is the worst card for the player. When a five is removed from a deck, it increases the player’s chance to win. This effectively lowers the house edge.

When an ace is removed from the deck of cards, it hurts the player’s chance to win and raises the house edge. Using these two pieces of information, you can track the aces and fives and use the information to alter your bet amounts. This can eliminate the house edge.

Here’s how the ace five card counting system works:

You start with a count of zero. If you don’t like to work with negative numbers, you can start with a count of 10, and adjust the count where you raise your bets by 10. Every time you see a five, you add one to your count, and every time you see an ace, you subtract one from your count.

It doesn’t matter if the ace or five is in your hand, another player’s hand, or in the dealer’s hand. You add or subtract for every five and ace that gets played.

You start with a base bet amount, and when the count reaches +2 (or 12 if you started at 10), you double your bet amount. Every time the count goes up, you double your bet again, and when it goes down, you reduce your bet accordingly. Any time the count is at +1 or below, you bet your base amount.

The only downside to the ace five card counting system is that it’s a relatively weak system compared to more advanced systems. It will help you overcome the house edge, but it’s not going to do much better than allow you to play a breakeven game. Of course, playing breakeven blackjack is better than losing.

2 – Speed Count

The next system is the speed count, which was developed by Frank Scoblete and is included in a couple of his blackjack books. The basic way to use the speed count is to track low cards and compare the volume of them to the number of hands that are dealt on each round.

The reason I include it in this article is because it’s an easy system to learn. It’s not quite as easy to learn as the ace five count, but it’s easier than most advanced counting systems.

I’m not going to spend a great deal of time with the speed count here, because it’s also a weak system compared to many others.

In other words, most blackjack players should go directly from the ace five count system to a more advanced system like the KO, Red 7, or Hi Lo. I cover the KO in the next section.

If you want to learn more about the speed count system, you can follow this link. Here are the basics of the system before you move on to the next section.

You track all of the cards valued two to six that are dealt every round and subtract the number of hands that are dealt on the round. You then use this number to adjust your overall count and adjust your bet size based on the running count, just like in the ace five system.

3 – KO or Knock Out

How To Count Cards Blackjack Rules

If you understand how to use the ace five and speed count systems, you’re ready to learn the KO system. This isn’t a system you find on most pages designed for normal blackjack players, but it’s not much harder than learning how to use basic strategy. In my experience, most regular blackjack players can quickly learn how to use it.

If you look over the KO system and don’t care for it, the Red 7 and Hi Lo systems are also good systems you can learn how to use. Any of these three systems teach you how to make money playing blackjack.

The difference between simple systems like the first two on this page and advanced systems is the number of cards you track. In the ace five system, you track two cards. In the speed count, you track five cards. In the KO system, you track 11 cards. Every time you see any card from a two to seven, you add one to your count and every time you see a 10 to ace, you subtract one from your count.

Once you learn how to track a few cards, it only takes a little bit of practice to learn how to track more. You don’t need to memorize the cards. You simply subtract or add one at a time to your count.

The main advantage that the KO system, and the Red 7 system, has over the popular Hi Lo system is you don’t have to calculate your count based on the number of decks remaining during play. This is handled by starting your count at a set number based on the number of decks before you start counting.

Don’t worry about all of this right now, because you don’t have to worry about it unless you learn how to use the Hi Lo system.

In a single deck game, you start your count at 0. In a double deck game, you start your count at -4. In a six-deck shoe game, you start your count at -20, and in an eight-deck shoe game, you start at -28.

When the count is at 0 or negative, you make your minimum bet. When the count gets to +1, you double your bet. You keep doubling your bet as the count goes up until you reach your maximum bet amount.

Conclusion

You can start using the ace five system today. It’s an easy way to play a breakeven blackjack game against the casino, and anyone can learn how to use it. Once you’re comfortable using the ace five, start learning how to use the KO system. If you want to take it slow, you can learn the speed count before using the KO. But if you can use the speed count, you can use the KO, and it’s a better overall system.

Who didn’t want to be the smart genius kid from movies like „21“, making a fortune by fooling casinos with his math skills? ♠️ 💰

Today we will show you how to win big when it comes to Blackjack!

Blackjack is a classic card game that for many years has seen gamblers across the world come to the card table trying to win big. Whether it’s in films like Ocean’s Eleven, Rainman, or 21, the suave and sophisticated come to the casino to try to stake their claims and win the money.

Like any card game, there’s always risk involved, as you never quite know which cards will come up – but there are ways you can mitigate the risk.

You just need to be good with numbers. It’s not about being a math genius, but about having a knowledge of patterns and rules that help you get under the skin of the game and give you an advantage. The house might always seem to have an edge – but it’s actually the numbers that rule.

And in this article, we’re going to show you how to work those numbers.

How To Count Cards Blackjack 1 Deck

So How Is Blackjack Played?

♠️ Unlike most card games, Blackjack is played against the dealer, not other players. That’s the first thing that’s a bit different.

♥️ At the start, the dealer deals two cards to each player and themselves.

♣️ All of the cards are revealed – turned face up – other than one of the dealer’s cards. Simply, each card is worth the number value attached to it — 2 is worth 2, 3 is worth 3, 4 is worth 4, etc., and face cards (Jack, Queen, King) are worth 10.

♦️ Aces can be worth either 1 or 11 and the dealer announces whether Aces are high – worth 11, or low – only worth 1.

♠️ Each player looks at their cards and has the option to ‘hit’ – which means going for another card, or ‘standing’, which means sticking with what they have.

♥️ The aim is for the sum of the cards to be as close to 21 as possible, but never going over, as that means you go ‘bust.’

♣️ The winner is the person who is closest to 21 – so a 10 and a 9 would win against a Jack and a 6, for example.

The House Edge

The one big edge the casino has is that players can bust and lose before the dealer even plays their hand.

The house edge is a term used to show the mathematical advantage the casino has over the players.

Blackjack is unique in this way, as players are not combating a fixed house edge. In roulette, for example, the casino’s advantage remains a constant no matter what you bet on, but in Blackjack, the house edge varies throughout the course of the game.

Having said that, casinos assume a 2% edge over the aggregate of players that play Blackjack. This means that the house stands to win, on average, 2% of all the money that a player places on their wager. And when bets are high, that can be an awful lot of money.

How Math Can Help

Blackjack games are played with a finite set of cards – one or many decks. By remembering which cards have already been dealt, it’s possible to calculate which cards are still to come, by keeping a mental log of what has already been played.

You can also predict the actions of the dealer. They will always hit anything below 17. Knowing this means that it’s possible to build a system that ascribes a value to cards as either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

There are certain ‘good’ cards (high cards, such as Aces and face cards) and certain ‘bad’ cards that you don’t want dealt (low cards, such as 6s). This is how a strategy is constructed using conditional probability.

There are two things you need to know:

♦️ The player should bet higher if more bad cards have been removed – which means more good cards remain.

♠️ Bet lower if more good cards have been played already as that means more bad cards remain.

Bad cards – bet high. Good cards – bet low. This is the basis of how card counting works…

Crash Course On The Hi-Lo System

The Hi-Lo system was first introduced in 1963 by Harvey Dubner, and has been used by a number of Blackjack experts. It’s a strategy of card counting based on simple addition and is used to determine whether a high or low card is likely to come next. This mathematical theory is based on the sum of the cards that have passed, and gives us a clue as to which cards are left in the deck.

In the Hi-Lo card-counting system, each card has one of the three following points: -1, 0, and 1: It’s simple – cards numbered 2–6 are worth +1, cards numbered 7–9 are worth 0, and 10s, face cards, and Aces are worth -1. What you need to do is ‘keep the count’ by adding up all of the cards that have been dealt using the point system detailed.

The larger the sum becomes, the more large cards remain in the deck. If the count is negative then the player knows that many of the Aces or cards valued at 10 have already been dealt, meaning many cards with smaller values remain in the deck.

Generally speaking, the player should bet heavily if the count is higher, but the lower the ‘count,’ the better the odds for the dealer, so the player should bet lightly or not at all.

For example, if a 10, 7, 3, & Q have been dealt, the points value (or ‘the count’) would be (-1)+(0)+(+1)+(-1) = -1 – which means you should bet low. If the running count increases, the advantage shifts to the player, but when the running count goes negative, the casino’s advantage increases.

And this is not what we want to hear. We’re the better player, and we want to win.

Think it sounds easy? It is a simple process. Maybe deceptively so. The Hi-Lo system works because it’s based on pure probability. However, to say it’s easy would be to overlook two points of complexity:

♥️ Blackjack is played with likely up to six decks

♣️ Blackjack is almost never two-handed (only player vs. dealer)

Once you start playing with a few people, it doesn’t matter how simple the math is – it’s all about speed and precision. You can be a math genius, but you also need to be smart, speedy, and have a brilliant memory. Card counting involves simple addition and subtraction, a great memory, and a clear head under pressure.

Have you got what it takes?

Want To Be Smarter Than Others?

Why not be smarter also with your business and leverage math and numbers to increase your investment returns or multiply your revenue?

RetentionX is an out-of-the-box solution that uses AI-driven data analysis. CEOs and companies that use RetentionX also gain an advantage, just like with card counting in Blackjack. It’s all about using maths and predict future outcomes to gain an advantage over those not making use of the technique.

Sources:
Jesus Najera, „How To Count Cards“