Card Counting Strategies

Card counting strategies are offered by various books, articles, and the internet. Basic strategies deal with the feasible number of decks the deck is subjected to, while card counting methods address multideck and cylinder card counting. Card counting is a strategy that can be applied to begin with, and the techniques can be further complicated in post-flop play.

Although there is no “secret” card counting technique, its construction is not that hard to understand. It is based, rather, on a simple fact: when the deck is fresh, the player has a greater chance of winning than when the deck is ideology. This may be obvious, but it is also a fact all of the casinos know: when the deck is fresh, the player will inherently have a bigger edge.

When a card is dealt from the shoe (from the cold deck), the player has a larger number of cards in play compared to when the card is part of the cold deck. The shoe is a device designed to shake the cards together very slightly, and that certain decks have a bigger surface area (vinyl) which allows cards to splash more. These conditions make it easier to count. You don’t need special skills or be a genius; you just need to know that the deck is not as fresh as you think it is.

Theorically, card counting began in the 1970’s. The first true card counting efforts were by Stanford Wong and Andrew Gracie in their book computerizable entry strategies for limit hold ’em. Prior to the days of card counting, players were required to deal the cards and keep track of the play. Wong and Gracie described card counting as a technique for playing even-money blackjack (the pokerlounge99 is adjusted to charge a one or two percent commission on the true odds, depending on the casino). The two proved that it was possible to track the cards and bet accordingly.

In 1978 the first published application of card counting was published by McDermott,iu,and Arnold Snyder in their book Beat the Dealer. Their method relied on keeping track of the cards played from one shuffle to the next, and bet accordingly. It was a big successes, and brands such as Crystal Palace and Binion’s are testimonies to the method’s success. However, it was erroneous to conclude that card counting was an optimal method to win; card counting overlooks, among other things, the cards themselves.

In 2006 Ken Uston wrote and published Winning Big Blackjack. This book outlined a strategy that used card counting and progressed betting according to probabilities. The book prompted a flurry of excitement among players, and was advertised widely by game experts. However, just as with many other “winning blackjack systems”, the system published in Winning Big Blackjack appears to be no more than a deception promoted by Uston to cash in on the current craze for blackjack.

Many other card counting strategies exist that are offered to players. Some are even extremely complex, and heavily fact filled. Despite all of these claims the fact remains that card counting is an optimal strategy for a blackjack game due to the optimal performance of the deck.

Online casinos are a wonderful resource when it comes to blackjack. You can play at any point in the day and get a chance to see if you make any progress or not. If you’re still betting, you may as well get used to counting in real time. When playing online, you can get a sound analysis of your betting from your fellow players and even get advice from experts about what your next move should be.