May 2008

So You Wanna Be A Blackjack Card Counter by Fred Renzey

Sizing up the shoe with lethal cunning, striking fear into the heart of the pit boss, raking in mountains of chips, guzzling champagne in the whirlpool of your hotel suite — it all sounds so glamorous. That’s the image portrayed on TV and in the movies of people who have become successful card counters at blackjack.

Some of them have won millions of dollars doing it. Many more than that have won a lot less, while working at it harder than at their jobs. Still more yet have tried it, failed miserably and given up. What is it that’s so attractive about systematically winning at blackjack? It’s the enviable goal of beating the house at their own game, achieving heroic status as a gamesman, and oh yeah, making money doing it. Who wouldn’t want that? You might want it, but considering everything it takes to make it happen, you might not after all.

So then, exactly what is card counting anyway, and does it really work? First, card counting is a method of keeping track of high and low cards as they’re dealt out of the shoe. Although it sounds like a monumental task that requires the brain of an Einstein, it’s actually far easier than that. The average person, if he or she was so inclined, could learn to count cards at blackjack. For some, it would require maybe a 200-hour learning curve. For an individual who has more on the ball, it might take only 50 hours. But given the desire and the practice, at least half the people reading this article right now could get a winning card counting system down cold.

Secondly, yes, card counting works. That is, it works well enough to erase the disadvantage that most players have at the game and replace it with a player advantage, although a very small one. Still, handled properly, this small advantage can be parlayed into valuable winnings over time. So why doesn’t everybody do it? Fact is, if everybody knew how not-so-hard card counting is, many more people would give it a shot. But just the initial idea of keeping track of a shoe full of hundreds of cards makes the average person’s eyes glaze over with disinterest. Well then, let’s lift the veil of confusion that seems to surround the card counting mystique, and explain what it is, and is not.

BEATING THE GAME. What it is: For starters, all the card counting hype about math geniuses, Rainman, etc. is just that, hype. In truth, a card counter does not remember a single card that has been played. All he does is count them. For example, if I were to hand you my wallet containing a stack of bills, then asked you how much money was in it, what would you do? You’d count up the bills and say something like, you’ve got $127. If I then asked you how many $1s, $5s, $10s and $20s there were, I’m quite sure you wouldn’t have any idea. Well, guess what? That would be perfectly alright, because you’d have the bottom line total, and that’s all you need to know.

It’s the exact same way with card counting. When a card counter gets two or three decks into a six-deck shoe, he doesn’t have the foggiest recollection of how many jacks, or 3s or 5s he saw go by. But he counted every one of them and has a bottom line total in his head. That’s all he remembers, and that’s all he needs. Besides that, a card counter doesn’t even count different low cards such as 3s, or 4s, or 6s separately, but all together as a group. They are all merely part of the low-card group.

It’s the same with high cards. Tens, jacks, queens, kings, and usually aces, are typically counted together in the high-card group. Then, to relieve the counter of the necessity to keep two separate totals, he simply adds a point for each low card that comes out, but subtracts a point for each high card. By doing it that way, he knows with a single running total, be it a plus or a minus number, how many more high cards than low cards came out, or vise versa.

That’s the information he keeps at his fingertips to gain an advantage over the house. Here’s a quick and dirty illustration. Suppose the first four cards out of the shoe were 3, 4, 5, 6. Adding one point for each small card, you’d have a running total of 4. Now if the next two cards were queen, king, you’d subtract a point for each, giving you a running total of 2. No matter whether six cards had been played out or 60, a running total of 2 will always mean that two more low cards have been dealt than high cards. That’s important to know because further on into the shoe, your count will sometimes reach 10 or even 15, which tells you a high card is considerably more likely to come out next, than a low card.

Sound like something you could do? You probably could. Card counting systems have been significantly simplified over the past 10 years or so. Computer simulation programs have enabled system designers to trim away 50% of the complexity from older systems, while retaining over 90% of the effectiveness. Learning one of these later models would be far easier than nailing one of its clumsier forerunners. Next, a card counter has to learn when to bet more money, and when to bet less, or even leave the table. His current running count will always indicate that for him. When the count is high, he bets more. When it’s low, he goes into his shell. That’s because over time, high counts produce profits and low counts produce losses. It’s axiomatic in blackjack and works that way because of the uneven rules of the game. Some examples are: Your $20 blackjack pays you $30, but the dealer just wins your $20 when she has one. You get to double your bet after already seeing your first two cards, the dealer can’t. You can split your pair of aces into two 11s, the dealer must hit a soft 12. You can stand on 12, but the dealer must hit 16, even if she’s already got your 12 beaten.

In addition to knowing the proper basic way to play all his hands, a card counter also has to know when to break form and deviate from those basics. Take the insurance bet for example. More than 90% of the time, it’s a sucker bet. Yet there are indeed times when insurance is a good bet, and it has nothing to do with the hand you have. It only has to do with how many 10s are available for the dealer to have in the hole. That’s something the card counter’s running total will tell him, as well as when to do many other unusual things such as stand on 16 against a 10, double down with 10 against a 10, and even split a pair of 10s. All these dumb looking plays will be advantageous when the count is right.

However, this is just the easy stuff that surrounds card counting. There are other things you’ll need to know that may not be so easy. So let’s run through them next.

What it isn’t: Card counting is not something you throw a few dollars together for, then go out and win a fortune. On any given day, Lady Luck will have more to say about your outcome than any amount of skill you’ll be able to apply. That’s just the wild nature of gambling. It takes a real, honest-to-goodness bankroll if you’re going to survive the wicked swings, and there will be some wicked swings.

After 100 hours of counting cards in the blackjack trenches, there are about two chances out of three that you’ll be ahead of the game. But there’s still one chance in three you’ll be behind, maybe way behind. That’s reality. To cover this possibility, you’ll need a bankroll of about 1,000 of your minimum size bets. As time goes on, provided you’ve got the backup loot, Lady Luck will have less influence on your gambling affairs and skill will become the dominating factor. When you’ve put 300 hours of playing time under your belt, your chance to be ahead of the game will have increased to about 75%. After 1,000 hours, it’s over 90%.

What’s it worth? An appropriate question at this point might be, how much do I have to gain by doing all this? Realistically, a counter can expect to earn roughly 1-1/2 of his minimum bets per hour, plus or minus the ever-volatile luck factor. That means if your minimum bet is $20, you can expect to win an average of $30 per hour, but, you’ll need a master bankroll of $20,000 to bet this way (1,000 units). That doesn’t mean you need to have the whole twenty grand in your pocket when you play. It just means that if you have a bad two or three month run, and it does happen, you could find yourself digging down near that $20,000 mark to keep yourself in action. You just need to know that you can get to that much ammo if you want to continue to play at that level.

As for your daily pocket stake, you’ll be over 90% safe from busting out that day if you carry 120 minimum bets with you. For a $20 minimum bettor, that’s about $2,500. Be forewarned though, on about one day out of 12, you’ll blow the whole twenty-five hundred. So how’s it sound now?

If this financial picture doesn’t sit well with you, then you’re probably better off remaining a recreational player and just taking your wins and losses as they come. Do it however, with the full knowledge that the house will eventually grind you down.

On the other hand, if you’re undaunted by the card counting realities spelled out thus far, by all means read on. There are still more hurdles for you to clear, and these are the tougher ones. BEATING THE HOUSE. Let’s suppose you have the psychological tolerance to handle the risk and volatility that comes with card counting. Suppose further that you also have the $20,000 to devote to this pursuit, and that you feel comfortable risking $2,500 of it on any given day. Then you could make those $20 minimum bets and earn a long range profit of $30 per hour, mathematically speaking. Those last two words are key. What hasn’t been explained up to this point, is that in order to achieve a meaningful net advantage over the house, a card counter has to vary the size of his bets widely. In a shoe game, he’ll have to bet about 10 times his minimum during his most advantageous counts. That’s because the shoe will offer him an advantage only about 20% of the time. This means that a $20 minimum bettor will sometimes have to bet $200. That’s why he needs to sit down with $2,500 in his pocket.

Now, the fact is that most typical blackjack players don’t vary the size of their bets by a factor of 10. If you’re one that does, it’s likely to catch the eye of the floorperson, and he or she will probably begin to watch how you play. If you appear to be playing your hands correctly over and over, the pit will eventually become curious about your aggressive betting spread. That’s where your trouble begins.

If a pit person suspects you might be a card counter, he or she is apt to get on the phone to surveillance, and have them monitor your betting patterns vs. the count. Some of the more skillful pit people may even begin to secretly count down the next shoe along with you. The question is, if they finally decide that you’re counting cards and playing skillfully enough to beat the house, what can they do?

Understand that casinos are not in business to lose money. Like any other big company, they have a big nut to cover, and they expect that each customer, in the long term, will help them cover it. Casinos also know that blackjack can be beaten with card counting. Although gambling is a give-and-take game, casinos quite naturally, don’t need customers who systematically take more than they give. Now, to be clear, card counting is perfectly legal, as long as you’re not using any mechanical or electronic aids. Nobody can forbid you to use your brain when playing a game. Nevertheless, in order to protect their bottom line, casinos have indeed been deemed to be within their legal rights to impede the play of a skillful counter.

Depending upon the state laws and casino policies, these impediments can range anywhere from something as simple as shuffling the shoe more frequently, to telling you that you’re not allowed to play blackjack. So in the end, the real test of a card counter becomes not how fast he can count down the cards, and not how skillfully he can determine his correct bet and correct play, but how well he can appear not to be doing any of those things.

This is the hurdle that most otherwise successful card counters trip over. In order to not trip over it yourself, you’ll have to blend in with the other losers. You’ll need to look how they look, react how they react, say what they say and seem to be betting and playing how they bet and play. All the while, you’ll have to keep your count and still get enough extra chips out there when the situation dictates it, or you’ve got no edge. On top of that, you’re going to take some horrendous beats on hands where you were a big favorite and you’ll be dealt some huge losing days, or weeks, or even months.

Oh, and did I mention that on a regular basis, the clueless player next to you will openly blame his losses on your stupid play, usually when you’re losing? You may or may not consider it fun to have to slip around the blackjack tables like a secret agent in search of hidden information. You’ll have the skills to extract a profit, but you cannot allow those skills to be recognized.

Relatively speaking, learning to beat the game itself is honestly not that tough. As for learning to beat the house? That’s an entirely different matter. So now I have to ask you for the third and final time: Do you still want to be a blackjack card counter?

— Fred Renzey is a poker and blackjack expert, author and gaming columnist. For a copy of his 218-page poker manual, 77 Ways to Get the Edge at Casino Poker, send $17.50 to: Fred Renzey, P.O. Box 598, Elk Grove Village, IL 60009.