Card counting in black jack

[fiulpro]

So I do know one thing that counting cards are banned in most physical casinos but if you can make it work then I do believe it works most of the time.

So how does counting card works ?
For:
Card no. 2-6 = +1 { good to remove these cards from the deck}
Card no. 7-9 = 0{ forget these cards }
Card no. 10-Ace= -1 { Do not remove them }

One needs to keep a running count of all the cards around and with multiple decks one can just divide the total running count with number of decks .

The more positive count the more the player is going to win and for the negative count the player is in a bad position; now it's completely legal in some places but banned in most .

It seems very simple but does it really work ? Did someone try it ??

Is there any card counter out here who did win most if the bets he made ? Please share your experience.

I still think it's an interesting thing to learn.

[Baofeng]

Statistical evidence shows that you can turn around the house edge with this 'trick', and increases the players chances. But I never tried it though, probably it will take time and practice to memorise everything. I'm also interested to know if there are 'professional' card counter here. It's not illegal, but if the casino suspect you that you are doing this strategy, then you can be kick out of the casino and be blacklisted.

[btc_angela]

Statistical evidence shows that you can turn around the house edge with this 'trick', and increases the players chances. But I never tried it though, probably it will take time and practice to memorise everything. I'm also interested to know if there are 'professional' card counter here. It's not illegal, but if the casino suspect you that you are doing this strategy, then you can be kick out of the casino and be blacklisted.

You're right, and card counting become highlighted again with the movie '21', and I'm sure almost all gamblers have seen this movie. I doubt though, that anyone here will admit that they are card counters. This could be considered as "pro", as it is not easy as you need to avoid suspicion, you have to look that you are just an average Joe player, and just betting base on hunch, specially if you double up your bet.

[bobyhodob]

It seems very simple but does it really work ? Did someone try it ??

i think you can try it with a small amount of capital and can give you the results of the experiments that you have done so that the people here can find out that the strategy you are using is successful and can be used by other people here.

[KTChampions]

There are many articles on this topic, just read about the evolution of blackjack. All changes in the rules for shuffling the deck and the number of decks occurred precisely because of the people who learned how to count cards.
At the moment, this does not make any practical sense since the deck is shuffled long before the player (even the one who counted the cards completely) can gain an advantage.

[Genemind]

Statistical evidence shows that you can turn around the house edge with this 'trick', and increases the players chances. But I never tried it though, probably it will take time and practice to memorise everything. I'm also interested to know if there are 'professional' card counter here. It's not illegal, but if the casino suspect you that you are doing this strategy, then you can be kick out of the casino and be blacklisted.

You're right, and card counting become highlighted again with the movie '21', and I'm sure almost all gamblers have seen this movie. I doubt though, that anyone here will admit that they are card counters. This could be considered as "pro", as it is not easy as you need to avoid suspicion, you have to look that you are just an average Joe player, and just betting base on hunch, specially if you double up your bet.

I've seen the movie and it's amazing. I've never played blackjack in a real-time casino before. But if this trick is getting pulled off by most people to beat the bank roll, I guess casinos must have started doing something about it to avoid card counting trick being effective.

[KTChampions]

I've seen the movie and it's amazing. I've never played blackjack in a real-time casino before. But if this trick is getting pulled off by most people to beat the bank roll, I guess casinos must have started doing something about it to avoid card counting trick being effective.

In the movie, everything is shown too optimistic. Now this is simply unrealistic, since the number of decks is large and they are shuffled on time.
Plus I read one interesting study: it looked at the theoretical earnings of such card counters. Almost everything was calculated there: the preparation time (to achieve this level of skill you need to train a lot), the cost of travel (you cannot constantly play in the same casino), overhead, etc. and it turned out that this is an occupation with a minimum level of profitability. It is not profitable to do this.

[Jating]

There are many articles on this topic, just read about the evolution of blackjack. All changes in the rules for shuffling the deck and the number of decks occurred precisely because of the people who learned how to count cards.

Yes, but having more deck of cards in a shoe as a way to counter these card counters means less revenue for casinos as it will result in less hands.

I don't know any gamblers who are a card counter, perhaps this is just a niche and only a handful remains in this business because casinos has also evolved on how to catch them. Not illegal per se, but you can land in jail, specially if you have been forewarned already and then you return to play, that is trespassing as casino is a privacy property per law.

[Oilacris]

There are many articles on this topic, just read about the evolution of blackjack. All changes in the rules for shuffling the deck and the number of decks occurred precisely because of the people who learned how to count cards.
At the moment, this does not make any practical sense since the deck is shuffled long before the player (even the one who counted the cards completely) can gain an advantage.

Yeah there are several threads about this topic.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5171747.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5248436.0

For sure this works but i havent tested out yet im not really that much good in memorizing things after they get flashed. 

[FlightyPouch]

Watching the movie 21, it is explained there show how effective card counting is and how bad it is for these casino owners, and it also shows how hard it is to do that. But it is also said that there are mistakes shown in the movie about card counting. But what I can ensure you is that these people are smart and can memorize these cards, well, since it is a movie.

[KTChampions]

There are many articles on this topic, just read about the evolution of blackjack. All changes in the rules for shuffling the deck and the number of decks occurred precisely because of the people who learned how to count cards.

Yes, but having more deck of cards in a shoe as a way to counter these card counters means less revenue for casinos as it will result in less hands.

I don't know any gamblers who are a card counter, perhaps this is just a niche and only a handful remains in this business because casinos has also evolved on how to catch them. Not illegal per se, but you can land in jail, specially if you have been forewarned already and then you return to play, that is trespassing as casino is a privacy property per law.

How does this reduce the number of hands? Shuffle machines don't care how many decks to shuffle. Therefore, this does not lead to wasted time.
As for the legislation, it is different everywhere, but it's hard for me to imagine that somewhere there is a law prohibiting counting cards and counting your own odds when playing cards.

[StephenJH]

There are many articles on this topic, just read about the evolution of blackjack. All changes in the rules for shuffling the deck and the number of decks occurred precisely because of the people who learned how to count cards.

Yes, but having more deck of cards in a shoe as a way to counter these card counters means less revenue for casinos as it will result in less hands.

I don't know any gamblers who are a card counter, perhaps this is just a niche and only a handful remains in this business because casinos has also evolved on how to catch them. Not illegal per se, but you can land in jail, specially if you have been forewarned already and then you return to play, that is trespassing as casino is a privacy property per law.

How does this reduce the number of hands? Shuffle machines don't care how many decks to shuffle. Therefore, this does not lead to wasted time.
As for the legislation, it is different everywhere, but it's hard for me to imagine that somewhere there is a law prohibiting counting cards and counting your own odds when playing cards.

It is not completely meaningless to count cards with 8 decks of cards but the chances are very low to increase winning portability. The same frequencies will not happen as in 1 or 4 decks of cards, just try to count one of the live dealer games in Blackjack tables. You can use a single-player room which usually has more than 50 people and the time will be your advantage.  In the best case, you will have 1 max 2 percent edge over the house, will it worth to use your energy?...
P.s: Check this thread and find the statistical edge in numbers.

[Wexnident]

Yes, it works, back then that is. Casinos pretty much countered this by having a few decks in play so that card counting is REALLY hard to do anymore. It increases your chances even though the chances are still pretty low imo. If it were one deck, then your chances are pretty good as long as you're able to card count properly.

How does this reduce the number of hands? Shuffle machines don't care how many decks to shuffle. Therefore, this does not lead to wasted time.
As for the legislation, it is different everywhere, but it's hard for me to imagine that somewhere there is a law prohibiting counting cards and counting your own odds when playing cards.

It isn't completely illegal per se, but some people can't really card count on their own, so they ask for others to support them, and THIS makes it illegal. It's like those movies where there's a third party behind the bad guy that's winning. Card counting on your own is legal itself, since it is a skill, and you're doing it yourself (without any external device that could help that is).

[Darker45]

I read the book Bringing Down the House. It was about very brilliant students from no less than MIT and not ordinary guys playing blackjack occasionally.

And it was not just about learning card-counting skills alone and using whatever resources taken from different sources. They had mentors. They had serious practice sessions and sophisticated plans.

Having said these, I don't think card counting is an easy thing to do, more so because most blackjack games are now using multiple decks, even reaching a total of 8. If counting in a single deck game is hard, it would be a lot harder in a multiple-deck blackjack game.

[Janation]

It seems very simple but does it really work ? Did someone try it ??

Bro, it's not, I'll tell you that.

It is simple if you read it like these so I need to tell you what is hard. You are being dealt with six-deck of cards, which is 312(52*6). You need to be observant and track the cards that are being dealt with, and yeah quickly memorize all of them to eliminate them in that 312 cards. Some of the videos I watched about it says it is working but it is not a 100% working strategy since they could still lose, maybe they are losing the count.

[Melloiga]

I think it is pretty hard. The movies show everything to be so easy when in-fact it is almost always the opposite of it. But what I want to know is, say someone becomes good at it and knows how to 'cound-cards'. Can this skill be applied to online casinos?

Btw, I have seen a movie or 2 on Black-Jack Card-Counters and it is often shown that they worked in groups. 

[Coin_trader]

So I do know one thing that counting cards are banned in most physical casinos but if you can make it work then I do believe it works most of the time.

So how does counting card works ?
For:
Card no. 2-6 = +1 { good to remove these cards from the deck}
Card no. 7-9 = 0{ forget these cards }
Card no. 10-Ace= -1 { Do not remove them }

One needs to keep a running count of all the cards around and with multiple decks one can just divide the total running count with number of decks .

The more positive count the more the player is going to win and for the negative count the player is in a bad position; now it's completely legal in some places but banned in most .

It seems very simple but does it really work ? Did someone try it ??

Is there any card counter out here who did win most if the bets he made ? Please share your experience.

I still think it's an interesting thing to learn.

Most of the casino including online are using continuous deck shuffle method plus multiple deck to eliminate this counting trick so I believe this normal counting card method don’t work anymore and if you are lucky to find one then the security on that casino is very tight you can easily place under there watchlist if you are winning consecutively which is very risky.

Blackjack nowadays is not that profitable and the only tool that you can use is the strategy table guide which gives you approximately  60% winning chance rate. I regularly play blackjack on different casino before this pandemic hits that’s why I observe this.

If you find an online black that has a single deck and no continuous shuffle. Then maybe you can share it with me and let’s rekt them badly.

[reliable]

Very good memory is the key. If you are good in remembering and also calculating at the same time which is also fast, then it became an advantage for you. Though only few of them would be able to take advantage of it and rest of them will just have to play in a normal way.

[iv4n]

I read the book Bringing Down the House. It was about very brilliant students from no less than MIT and not ordinary guys playing blackjack occasionally.

And it was not just about learning card-counting skills alone and using whatever resources taken from different sources. They had mentors. They had serious practice sessions and sophisticated plans.

Having said these, I don't think card counting is an easy thing to do, more so because most blackjack games are now using multiple decks, even reaching a total of 8. If counting in a single deck game is hard, it would be a lot harder in a multiple-deck blackjack game.

Multiple decks is a game changer here! I didn't know how many decks there can be, but if it's max 8 it's crazy, too many combinations here. And card counting maybe works in land casino, where you can see how many decks
there are, you can calculate your odds when you know that, but in online gambling you don't see how many decks there are. I never tried to check that information, online casino should state somewhere how many decks they are using for blackjack, can that even be checked?
I play black jack from time to time, but it's not in my list of favorite games, it's why I never bother to check more about this matter.

[acroman08]

It seems very simple but does it really work ? Did someone try it ??

I can't vouch for my self but I have seen cases where people get banned on a casino or ask to leave the casino if they were caught card counting and basing on how the casino owners respond to card counting it seems that it works and if the person who is card counting is left alone they have a higher chance of losing to the gambler.

a little offtopic: I wonder if card counting works in black jack in an online casino(not live black jack).