Title:
Blackjack Card Counting
Word Count:
433
Summary:
Counting cards at Blackjack is a learned skill and frowned upon by
casinos. In fact if they think you are doing this and winning they may
bar you from playing Blackjack in their facility. What is card counting
and why are the casinos leery of players who can count cards? There is no
way this could be considered cheating, but a player who is good at this
method is treated like a cheater.
The reason the player is feared who can do this with skill and discipline
is simple. It...
Keywords:
blackjack,card counting,blackjack card counting
Article Body:
Counting cards at Blackjack is a learned skill and frowned upon by
casinos. In fact if they think you are doing this and winning they may
bar you from playing Blackjack in their facility. What is card counting
and why are the casinos leery of players who can count cards? There is no
way this could be considered cheating, but a player who is good at this
method is treated like a cheater.
The reason the player is feared who can do this with skill and discipline
is simple. It puts the odds in the player's favor. The house edge in the
game is destroyed when the deck is rich in face cards. The odds for the
rest of the shoe will remain with the player to win more bets than the
dealer due to the fact that he can wave off hitting a card on a break
hand. The dealer must hit any hand lower than soft 17 (Ace and a six). A
rich shoe in face cards means the dealer has a higher chance of busting
their hand.
There are several good books on this method of play, which are easily
found on the Internet or in any bookstore for gamblers. The idea is to
count the shoe down by keeping track of the cards as the dealer shows
them. You know how many face cards are in a six-deck shoe and how many
cards are under six not counting the aces. When the low cards are at
minimum and the high cards have a numerical advantage the shoe favors the
player. How out of line the shoe is in high versus low cards will
determine how much the shoe favors the player. When this situation is
present, the player raises the size of the bets.
One of the ways the card counters have defeated detection is to have
another player on their team actually make weird bets, but always
increasing them when the shoe is favorable. One team even used a team
member with the alias of the mad bomber to show up at an advantaged
table, make a few bets and leave. This team used this ploy for a long
time before they got caught.
Card counting was terrific, when the casinos dealt a lot of single deck
games. The shoe dealing has made card counting much harder to do
effectively. If you are willing to take the time to learn this method of
play, be advised that if you are good at it you will be caught
eventually, but up until that time it is possible to win consistently.