Counting cards is a difficult skill to learn, but once you understand the process of allocating different values to cards, it’s all about being able to track the overall value quickly and subtly. After a while, it’ll start coming to you naturally and you’ll probably find that you can do it without even thinking about it too hard.

However, there is one glaring difference here - When you’re playing in casino, you can physically see the cards and you know the dealers are legally obliged to keep the game fair. Playing online is a whole other kettle of fish.

While online casinos are meant to be fair, it can be easy to wonder if the odds aren’t stacked against you when you get binned off on the river every time throughout the tournament. How many losses can you take before you start to wonder whether the deck is working against you? And if the deck is or isn’t fair, does this mean you can reliably count cards online while playing poker?

Can you count cards in online poker?

Fortunately, poker is one of the few online casino games where you know for certain that only one desk is in use. Each deck has 52 cards, which means that each card has a 1.9% (100/52) chance of coming down. This makes it easier to track which cards are already out, guess which hands other people have, and therefore calculate the likelihood of further cards coming down.

This means that counting cards in online poker is exactly the same as it would be counting cards in a land-based casino.

Although, there are a few more things we need to discuss…

How to count cards online while playing poker

If you’re playing in a land-based casino, then you can get in trouble and kicked out of the poker room if you try to use any aids when counting cards while playing poker. But unlike blackjack, it’s quite openly admired if you can talk through the maths of the probability of certain cards coming down without any aids.

But if you’re playing in an online casino, then things are a lot different. Almost all online poker websites will have percentages tracking the likelihood of your outs coming down, as well as card history and other information. You can get third-party software to keep track of card percentages, but this can be frowned upon or even result in you being banned by some platforms.

Is it illegal to card count while playing online poker?

It’s not illegal to count cards while playing online poker, but you can get in trouble if you use certain tracking software. This is because it can go beyond the levels of natural skill and can give an unfair advantage against other players who don’t have access to the same software. We have a full guide on whether it's legal to count cards at all available here.

It’s always best to check if the software you’re planning on using could get you sanctioned or banned at all before you use it.