If you’ve ever done any reading around the subject of casino gaming, you have probably stumbled across the term ‘house edge’ – that is, the effective profit margin that games like blackjack and roulette have built into them.
Knowing that the odds are against them when they take their seat at the table, it’s little wonder that plenty of casino enthusiasts over the years have sought out ways to lower the house’s edge and increase their own chances of winning.
One of the more questionable tactics to that end is card counting, which is deployed typically in blackjack to determine which card (or at least, roughly what value of card) will be draw next.
Clearly, if you are sat on 16 then knowing what the next card will be is a very handy piece of information indeed, and the best card counters are thought to be so effective at their craft that they can turn a game with a house edge of 2% into something in which they hold all of the metaphorical aces.
So what is card counting, how do you do it and is counting cards illegal….these questions and more are answered below.
What Is Card Counting?
It would be very difficult for the average Joe or Jane to perfectly memorise the sequence of 52 cards in a deck.
But by assigning a value to a group of cards, e.g. low numbered, medium and high, blackjack and poker players are able to create a mind map that gives a rough estimation of the next card to be drawn – helping them to decide whether to hit, stand, split or double down.
Card counting also helps a player to figure out what card(s) the dealer will hand themselves, with most blackjack games dictating that they have to stand on 16 or more. So, this is an effective strategy for seeing into the future.
Counting cards should not be confused with edge sorting, which is another technique for minimising the house’s edge. However, this only works with decks of cards that have some kind of physical defect or marking that enables players to track their progress through the deck.
How Do You Count Cards?
The good news is that you don’t need to be Rain Man’s Raymond Bobbitt or even Alan from The Hangover to be able to count cards.
But what you will need is to deploy a system and be consistent in your application of it – the Hi-Lo strategy is perhaps the best known of the card counting techniques.
This is a running count that assigns a numerical value to each group of cards, and when each of these is dealt – and therefore then placed at the bottom of the deck – we can figure out roughly where we stand.
So, you might start with a count of ten. For every high value card that is drawn (10 through to ace), you subtract one from your running tally. For every low value card drawn (say two through to five), you add a point to your count. Mid-ranking cards, let’s say six through to nine, score zero in your charts.
We can then use our running score to determine how the deck of cards is shaping up. If your score is, say, 15 or above, then you know that a series of low value cards have been dealt….boosting the chances of 10-A being dealt in the next set. Conversely, a score of 7 or lower might just indicate that low value cards have a higher probability of being drawn, as a number of high value cards have evidently already been dished out by the dealer.
There are other card counting systems like Zen Count and Wong Halves that assign different scores per card to the tally, but there are advanced concepts and really do require an outstanding level of recall and memory….they are certainly not for the faint of heart or sore of head.
Can You Count Cards Online?
The success of your card counting endeavours are predicated on a general rule that cards dealt in the previous hand are put on the bottom of the deck, with shuffling only taking place periodically.
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but is the general rule of thumb in most casinos around the world. Notably, some have instructed their dealers to shuffle more regularly to combat card counting.
All of which brings us to online blackjack and poker variants such as Casino Hold’em. To ensure these games are completely fair and unpredictable, software developers implement a random number generator into their code – the problem for card counters is that this effectively resets their count after every single hand.
We should say that we neither promote nor condone card counting for reasons that will become clear later in this article, but if you do want to count cards online there is a potential alternative. Live dealer games are filmed and streamed in real time from a working casino, and so they are like playing blackjack, poker and co in the casino environment….but without you needing to step outside.
Again, the crucial thing here is how often will the dealer shuffle the cards to nullify your count – some will deploy the ‘traditional’ method of only periodic shuffling, whereas others will use a CSM (Continuous Shuffling Machine) to take counters out of the game.
The idea would be to find online blackjack games that fall into the former category….
Is Card Counting Illegal?
Here’s the rub.
Card counting isn’t, technically speaking, illegal, although you’re prohibited from using any artificial counting device – or an extra set of eyes – on the casino floor.
However, a casino does have the right to expel you from the property if you are suspected of card counting, and you can be banned from frequenting that particular brand’s establishments in the future.
There is just one exception to the rule. In New Jersey, the courts declared that card counters – or ‘skilled players’, as complainant Ken Uston called them – should not be banned from casinos in Atlantic City. The use of a count is not considered to be unlawful or immoral and instead an act of skill in this jurisdiction, and it’s a surprise that similar lawsuits haven’t been brought in Las Vegas and other prominent gambling cities.
So illegal? No. Immoral? Perhaps, but some would simply argue that card counters are going the extra mile to turn the house’s edge against them using nothing more than the power of their mind.
How Do Casinos Spot Card Counters?
In theory, it would be difficult to spot a card counter – assuming they aren’t saying their counting calculation out loud at the table, that is.
Your dealer will be well versed in identifying counters, however. They will know when a winning streak is simply a player experiencing a stroke or two of luck, and which wins are ‘manufactured’ as a product of their counting. They will also keep an eye on staking patterns – a player that, out of the blue, increases their stake considerably is perhaps giving the game away that they think a card that greatly improves their hand is incoming.
Casinos also employ floor managers, also known as ‘pit bosses’, to watch over their tables, and these individuals have a great ability to spot counters without players even know they are being monitored.
Many of the larger casino brands will also deploy the famous ‘eyes in the sky’ – that is, counter-fraud staff who watch on from CCTV cameras located around the gaming floor.
Incredibly, there have been companies set up who collect data on card counters and offer a database of these individuals to casinos – firms like Griffin Investigations prided themselves on catching ‘advantage players’ in the act before they went bankrupt in 2005.
Once a player is in such a database it can be very difficult to get out, and obvious tactics – like raising and decreasing stakes per hand or walking away from the table when the deck is shuffled – is simply asking for trouble.
A Brief History of Card Counting
It’s likely that card counting has been around in some form for centuries – the French first started playing blackjack, for example, in the 1800s.
But it wasn’t a tactic that was publicly known until the 1950s, when a classic text – ‘Playing Blackjack to Win’ – was released by the so-called ‘Four Horsemen’ of the game in James McDermott, Herbert Maisel, Wilbert Cantey and Roger Baldwin.
Other publications, including Edward O. Thorp’s timeless ‘Beat the Dealer’, outlined specific card counting techniques, while the likes of Ken Uston and Joe Bernstein have also been revealed publicly as prolific counters and winners at the blackjack table.
There was also the scandal of the counting ‘teams’ that did the rounds in the middle of the twentieth century. These groups would sit at tables counting, and would then signal to the designated player when they were about to gain the advantage. On the flipside, the ‘spotters’ would gesture to the player when to quit as the count went in favour of the dealer.
While beating the casino has often been the subject of Hollywood films, it is rare for card counting to cross over into the mainstream – but it did in 2014 when movie star Ben Affleck was kicked out of the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas for alleged card counting.
Even the most famous faces on the planet can’t get away with counting cards!