↓ Card counting

Card counting is an advanced and important Blackjack playing technique, but lets get one thing straight: in online casinos, card counting does not really work because the software likes to reshuffle the decks evenly after every game which makes card counting largely useless

Card counting is exactly what it seems to be: counting cards. The idea belongs to all famous professor Thorp. Card counting is a system that evaluates cards on the table to estimate which cards are left in the deck and consequently whether the deck is in favourable or infavourable position towards the player.

As it is generally impossible for an average person to remember which cards were on the table in past games, card counting schemes implement a score-based measure. A fair example would be the classic High-Low card counting system.

High Low lives on mathematical assertion that the deck is favourable to the player when the deck is short on cards from 2 to 8. Shortage on the rest of cards (9, Tens and Aces) is a disadvantage to the player. When the deck is favourable, you should wager larger bets, otherwise, wager smaller ones. This becomes especially powerful if you combine it with some progressive betting strategies. Even if you don't resort to a full blown card counting scheme you can still modify your Basic strategy table to consider the favourabilities of the deck and get better results.

The score in a card counting system reflects the situation in the deck. Consequently, low cards are given a positive influence on the score and high cards are negative. The deck starts with a zero score immediately after the shuffle (notice that this is not essentially true in other systems which may give a positive or negative initial score to the deck). In High/Low, low cards are given +1 score and high cards are given -1 score. 7, 8 and 9 have no influence and their score is zero.

As soon as you have a system to predict the state of the deck you will want to connect it to your wagering. High-Low recommends the following betting strategy:

• Place your minimal bet (not essentially the table bet but in consideration with your bank roll) if the score is less than two
• Place 2 bet units on 2 and 3
• Place 3 on 4 and 5
• Place 4 on 6 and 7
• Place 5 on 8 and more