Whether you’re a rookie player or a casino veteran, you’ve probably heard of card counting by now. Not only is it the basis of most winning blackjack strategies, but several poker ones too. This is because the best casino strategies are all based on maths, which is what card counting is all about.
Some of the most popular casino films have also featured card counting, including 21, The Card Counter, Rain Man and The Last Casino. These catapulted card counting into mainstream popularity, and suddenly everyone wanted to brush up on mental maths before they hit the biggest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.
If you want to learn how to count cards to 'up' your casino experience, then it might also be worth brushing up on popular blackjack slang and terms to make sure that you understand everything at the table.
What is card counting?
Card counting is the act of, well, counting the cards as they come down. It’s not a simple case of counting one, two, three cards on the felt though. You’re counting which cards come down and keeping a mental note of them, so you know which ones are less likely to come out.
So if there are three aces on the board, you know that it’s less likely for another ace to come down.
This is the most basic form of card counting and is best for single-deck games like poker where there are less cards to keep track of.
Card counting in poker
Learning how to count cards in poker is easy, thanks to the game only using a single deck. This means that there are only four of each number in play. So, if four Kings come down, you know it’s impossible for a fifth.
Each deck has 52 cards, which means that each card has a 1.9% (100/52) chance of coming down.
The odds of getting an Ace are 1 in 13, or 7.7%, while getting a heart in as your first card is 1 in 4, or 25%. Get it?
Card counting in blackjack
However, once you start to introduce more decks to the tables, card counting can get more difficult.
Learning how to count cards in Blackjack is all about assigning a positive, negative, or zero value to each card - depending on whether it benefits the player or the banker.
Statistically, higher cards benefit the player, so they’d get assigned a negative score (less likely for more of them to come out); while low cards get a positive score (more likely for higher cards to come out).
This means that rather than tracking which cards are down, like in poker, it’s all about adjusting the value of the hands on the table.
The most basic form of card counting assigns +1 score to cards 2-6, while a -1 score to cards 10, J, Q, K, A.
Is card counting illegal?
Card counting isn’t illegal, after all, it’s only mental maths. However, you can certainly get in trouble if you use additional resources, such as apps or notepads to track the cards as they come down.
If a casino suspects you of card counting, then they may ask you to leave the property, which they’re allowed to do. A casino is allowed to ask anyone to leave, no matter what they’re doing.
So if you’re planning on card counting, then it’s probably best to keep it as subtle as you can if you don’t plan on leaving early!
