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Blackjack Card Counting

card counting in blackjackIf you can become proficient enough at BlackJack Card Counting you will have an edge over the Casino, this is not a system. The secret behind Card Counting is knowing whether the deck or decks are loaded in your favour or the Dealers, if their are lots of 10 value cards then its big bet time, if their are few 10 value cards then be cautious with your bets. This is the basic concept of Card Counting and all that's left is to learn how to do it.

Do you have to be a whizz at maths? No! What we are going to learn here is called the Plus/Minus count, remember that you must have a firm grasp of Basic Strategy practise until you do not need to think about it, if you are there already lets go back to Card Counting in black jack.

We are going to beat the house by spreading our bets, what I mean by that is when the Pack or Shoe is rich in Tens we will bet high and when it is rich in low cards we will bet low. The first thing to memorise are cards 2,3,4,5,6 they are worth +1. Cards 7,8,9 we ignore and cards 10,J,Q,K,A are worth -1. We want to join a table after the cards have been shuffled, at this point we can effectively start our count. We start with a running count of zero, as the cards are dealt we add a point for any card from 2 to 6, we take a point away for cards 10 to Ace and ignore 7 to 9.

I need to point out at this time you will not be able to read this article, walk into a Casino and start counting at a Blackjack table, it will require some practise. I will provide you with some techniques to make this process as easy as possible. If you practise for an Hour every day for 2 or 3 weeks you may be ready, but do not worry you will not have to guess if you are ready, we will have some tests for that too. If you are not sure if it is worth spending the time on this let me tell you, if you do it right you will have a mathematical advantage over the dealer and that can mean only one thing...

I was very lucky I was taught BJ Card Counting hands on by my good friend John Sykes, I learnt how to do it in a repetitive way and I am going to teach you the same way. Start by getting a pack of cards, take out the Jokers and turn over the cards one at a time face up and count them in the following fashion. In your head say one for a 2 to 6 card and say Minus One for a 10 to Ace card (you may want to shorten Minus to a single syllable for speed, anything that takes your fancy) ignore the rest of the cards (7,8,9). Go through the pack over and over until you can spot the cards fluently, when you are happy with your performance we will move onto the next stage.

We will now turn over the cards one at a time but this time we are going to keep a running count, start at zero and add one for a 2 to 6 card and take one away for a 10 to Ace card. Just to make things clear lets look at an example. Fist card Jack, your running count is now 1, next card Ace, running count 2, next card 5, running count 1, next card 9, running count 0, next card 2, running count -1. With a complete pack when you turn over the last card your running count should be zero, if it is not you have gone wrong somewhere, start again, slow down, once you are comfortable speed up. The ultimate goal is to be able to count faster than a dealer can deal comfortably, how fast is that? One step at a time, my advice is to practise until you get it right almost every time and as fast as you can turn them over. Another tip is to put 2 or 3 packs together, same rules apply as with one pack.

We will call this lesson one of Card Counting at blackjack, actually there are at least 2 lessons here and if you want to be really good there is 2 weeks practise for you. I will make sure that Lesson 2 is available for you before then. Until then happy practise and good luck...

 

Comments  

 
0 #2 Daniel 2011-11-18 04:06
Quoting Daniel:
can you send me lesson 2 for card counting? to my email...



same guy again i just noticed that you said ignore 7-9.. then ur theory you wrote down doesnt make sense

"Fist card Jack, your running count is now 1, next card Ace, running count 2, next card 5, running count 1, next card 9, running count 0, next card 2, running count -1."

9 is ignored so running count is 0 not -1?!?!?!?!?
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0 #1 Daniel 2011-11-18 03:45
can you send me lesson 2 for card counting? to my email...

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