Counting cards in black jack is a way to increase your odds of winning. If you’re excellent at it, you may truly take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters increase their wagers when a deck wealthy in cards that are beneficial to the gambler comes around. As a general rule, a deck wealthy in 10’s is far better for the player, because the dealer will bust far more typically, and the gambler will hit a chemin de fer more often.
Most card counters keep track of the ratio of high cards, or ten’s, by counting them as a one or a – one, and then offers the opposite 1 or minus one to the minimal cards in the deck. A few methods use a balanced count where the amount of lower cards may be the same as the variety of 10’s.
Except the most interesting card to me, mathematically, is the 5. There were card counting methods back in the day that required doing nothing much more than counting the variety of fives that had left the deck, and when the five’s were gone, the player had a massive advantage and would elevate his bets.
A great basic strategy gambler is obtaining a nintey nine and a half % payback percentage from the gambling establishment. Each 5 that’s come out of the deck adds point six seven % to the gambler’s expected return. (In an individual deck casino game, anyway.) That means that, all things being equivalent, having one five gone from the deck gives a player a little advantage over the house.
Having two or three 5’s gone from the deck will in fact give the player a quite significant edge more than the casino, and this is when a card counter will normally elevate his bet. The dilemma with counting 5’s and nothing else is that a deck very low in five’s happens fairly rarely, so gaining a huge advantage and making a profit from that scenario only comes on rare instances.
Any card between 2 and eight that comes out of the deck boosts the gambler’s expectation. And all nine’s. 10’s, and aces boost the gambling house’s expectation. Except 8’s and 9’s have very modest effects on the outcome. (An 8 only adds 0.01 per cent to the player’s expectation, so it is normally not even counted. A 9 only has 0.15 per cent affect in the other direction, so it is not counted either.)
Understanding the effects the reduced and great cards have on your expected return on a wager may be the initial step in understanding to count cards and bet on chemin de fer as a winner.