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UK
Casino Times
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Articles
24 May 2006
The Basics Of Card
Counting
 Contrary
to popular belief, card counting does not involve memorising
what cards have been dealt so that you can work out what
cards are left in the decks.
To begin with, unless you
are Rain Man, you can't keep track of what has been dealt -
sometimes at great speed from six decks of cards. On top of
that only four or five of the decks are actually dealt
before the reshuffle.
Calculating Your Count
Total
In short, there is no
certainty in regarding which cards are more or less likely
to turn up. However, there easy ways to estimate the ratio
of the cards left in the deck.
Card counting involves
attributing points to various cards you see, based on their
face value, and keeping a running total. For instance you
score -2 for a 10, -1 for a 9, 0 for an 8 and so on. Every
card you see, you add or subtract from the score to give you
a positive or negative number. This is your count total. You
then divide the total by the estimated number of decks left
to deal.
Adjusting Your
Strategy
For example, if the count
is running at -12 with roughly two decks of cards remaining
to be dealt than the true count is -6. This means that there
is a significant number of low value cards in relation to
the number of cards with a value of ten. Therefore you
should adjust your strategy accordingly.
If there are a lot of
lower cards, say 6s and below in a deck, then your play
should start to change to maximise your chances - hit more,
split less and double down less. The dealer's chance of
busting is also greatly reduced. In a deck with a lot of
tens/picture cards left, the opposite
happens.
It may sound simple, but
card counting is fiendishly difficult to accomplish in a
busy casino environment.
More to the point, the
method doesn't work at Online
Casinos as the
deck is usually shuffled after each hand.
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