All blackjack card counting systems have the same basic idea: They track the amount of high and low cards already dealt. The purpose of card counting systems is to tell players when to bet big and when to bet small. When the count reaches a certain point, it's either time to start betting more or start betting less, depending on the score. The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. Card counting is a system that experienced blackjack players use to get a profitable advantage over the casino. There are many individual “counts” or systems. Many of them are named after colorful professional gamblers from times past. The 2008 movie “21” bought card counting to.

1. Blackjack Card Counting Systems
2. Best Card Counting System
3. Ko Blackjack Card Counting System
4. Learn Card Counting

Card counting is one of the most infamous strategies in blackjack, but it is also one of the least understood by the general public. Movies and television have portrayed card counting in blackjack to be a way to get rich quick. In films like Rain Man, we’re given the idea that card counters crush the casinos, winning hand after and hand and calling out exactly what cards will be coming. But of course, not just anyone can card count; it takes a mathematical genius who can calculate complex equations on the fly while keeping track of the positions of hundreds of different cards.

However, the truth behind card counting – for better and for worse – is very different. In truth, card counting doesn’t guarantee that a player will win big in the short run. Instead, the techniques used in card counting only serve to give the player the same sort of small edge usually held by the casino. On the other hand, there is good news; it doesn’t take a genius to count cards. Most people can learn simple card counting systems relatively quickly, and if you’re willing to put in the time, chances are that you’ll be able to learn more complex systems that promise the player a slightly bigger advantage over the house. However, it does take some hard work, and it’s certainly not an easy road to getting rich.

If you just want to jump straight in and get started, you can learn how to card count using our infographic here.

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How Card Counting Works

Typically, casino blackjack is dealt from a shoe of somewhere between six and eight decks. The cards are dealt until a certain amount of the shoe has been dealt – often, something like 75% of the shoe will be used before reshuffling. This means that by tracking which cards have come out of the shoe during play, we can have a pretty firm handle on which cards are still waiting to be dealt.

How can this information help the player? It turns out that having certain cards in the deck is great for the player, while other cards are better for the dealer. As a general rule, big cards favor the player, while small cards favor the dealer. More specifically, aces and tens are very good for the player, while fives and fours are great for the dealer.

This is mostly because aces and tens do a lot of things that the player can take advantage of with the options they are given. For instance, the player will get more blackjacks, which pay the player 3-2, while the dealer only “wins” the player’s bet if they make a blackjack. The player can also stand on hands below 17, while the dealer cannot, meaning that the dealer will bust quite often in shoes that are still rich in tens. Furthermore, the player will do better on double downs (when the player almost always will be happy with a ten and often with an ace), can start taking insurance if the deck is rich enough in tens, and can surrender more confidently in spots where the dealer is likely to have a very strong hand.

In short, everything the player can do works even better when the deck has plenty of tens and aces available to him. Conversely, small cards thwart these efforts. If many small cards have already come out of the shoe, the rest of the deck is very, very favorable to the player.

Card counters can take advantage of knowing how good the remaining deck is in several ways. As we said earlier, card counters will sometimes take insurance based on the remaining cards in the shoe, and on rare occasions, they might even deviate from basic strategy based on their counting. However, the biggest way that card counters pick up an advantage is by simply betting more money when the player has the advantage, and betting less (or avoiding playing altogether) when the odds swing too far in favor of the dealer.

Dangers and Challenges of Card Counting

Here’s the good news: contrary to popular belief, card counting is not illegal. As long as you’re not cheating or using a device to help you play, you’re welcome to play each hand however you want, including mentally keeping track of the cards that have been played and adjusting your play accordingly.

But that doesn’t mean that casinos can’t fight back against card counters. While you can try to count cards, casinos can also try to make the conditions for card counters difficult or impossible. For instance, a suspicious casino may start shuffling their cards more often to lower the deck penetration, thus making counting much less effective. If you’re a known counter, they may even bar you from playing blackjack entirely, as the casino has the ability to simply refuse to let you play at any time.

This means that one of the biggest challenges for a card counter is properly balancing taking advantage of the information they have with covering up the fact that they’re counting at all. If there was no danger of being caught, the player could simply bet the minimum until the odds were in the player’s favor, then switch to betting the table maximum. However, trying this strategy is a sure way to get yourself banned from playing blackjack! Instead, most blackjack systems rely on small, incremental changes that hope to keep the player from getting caught, while still doing enough to overcome the house edge.

One other danger in card counting is overestimating how big an edge you have over the house. Yes, in the long run, a good card counter does expect to come out ahead of the casino. However, your results will prove to be just as volatile as they are when simply playing basic strategy; it’s only in the long term that you’ll see your small advantage realized, while in the short term, you’ll see significant wins and losses.

Card Counting Systems

There are a number of different card counting systems available, including the following:

• Ace-Five Counting Systems – Easiest card counting system to learn
• Unbalanced Counting Systems
• The Knock-Out Count (and derivative systems)
• Revere Counts
• Wong Halves

These systems vary from very simple (Ace-Five and Hi-Lo) to devilishly complex (Wong Halves), but most of them share some common elements. For instance, different cards are given values that the player must keep track of during the course of a given shoe. Cards that are good for the player are given negative values (since we’d rather they stay in the shoe), while cards that are bad for the player are given positive values. In many systems, this number is then divided by the approximate number of remaining decks to get a true count, which tells the player how rich the remaining shoe is in good cards.

In most counting systems, the player will use this true count to decide how much to bet on a given hand, and whether or not to take insurance if the dealer is showing an ace. Occasionally, the count will also tell players when to abandon basic strategy and play a hand differently, based on the fact that the remaining composition of the deck has changed the odds in favor of an alternative play.

Some card counting systems also ask players to keep a separate side count of aces. This is because aces have a very different effect on the game than other cards. While players want to bet more when there are lots of aces available (thanks to the fact that they make blackjacks more common), they don’t have as much impact on how you should play hands as tens. Thus, more complex systems will keep an ace count independent of an overall count, in order to make this distinction.

This brings us to an important point: there is a tradeoff to make when choosing a card counting system. More complex systems offer bigger potential rewards, but also come with more risk. Players are much more likely to make mistakes when trying to keep track of extra information, and just a few mistakes can be enough to remove whatever advantage the player has gained. If there’s a choice between using a simpler system that you’ve mastered, or a more complex system that you’re unsure about, it’s almost always better to pick the simple system, even if the more complex system promises a bigger edge against the house.

Ace-Five Counting Systems

Perhaps the simplest card counting system around is the ace-five count. This is a name given to a variety of different card counting systems that share one thing in common: they only keep track of aces and fives, ignoring all the other cards in the deck. This is done because aces are the best card in the shoe for the player, while fives are the worst.

The basic idea is simple. Start with a count of zero. Each time you see a five, add one to your count. If you see an ace, subtract one from your count. Higher counts will be better for the player.

Where counting systems vary is in how you use this information to change how much you bet during play. Some will advise you to double you bet every time the count gets beyond a certain point, while others say to bet a certain number of units based on the given count. Many try to reduce your losses in bad shoes by having you quit at a certain negative count. However, the basics are the same; when the count gets high (at least +2 or higher), the player should bet more than the minimum. The higher the count goes, and/or the longer it stays high, the more the player should bet, up to a maximum amount that the player is comfortable betting on any single hand.

Ace-five counting systems usually don’t require changing the way you play; you should simply use basic strategy and rely on your bigger bets making you a winner when the shoe is good for the player. The advantage gained by the player using these systems isn’t big, but it usually gives the player a slight edge over the house – and combined with the comps and rewards players earn while playing, can turn blackjack into a game that’s more lucrative and more fun for the player.

Final Thoughts on Blackjack Card Counting

Before learning a card counting system, it’s essential to first master basic strategy. The basis of any card counting system is playing perfect basic strategy, since making simple mistakes will undermine whatever advantage you hope to gain through counting. Even if you have to use a basic strategy chart to help you at the table to help you, always remember that you need to master the fundamentals before moving on to more advanced strategies if you want any hope of succeeding.

It’s also worth noting that there are a large number of blackjack games in which you won’t be able to effectively count cards at all. For instance, many casinos now use continuous shuffling machines, which essentially remove all deck penetration. This is also true in most online casinos. Some online casinos use a shoe made up of infinite decks, meaning that your odds of getting any given card are always exactly the same, no matter which cards you’ve seen. Other online casinos deal out of a regular (simulated) shoe, but shuffle the cards after each hand. This has the same effect of eliminating penetration, just as with a continuous shuffling machine, making card counting impossible.

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Written by: Heather Ferris – An experienced Las Vegas blackjack dealer.

Ever since Edward Thorpe exposed the game in 1962, Blackjack has increased in popularity as a game of cat-and-mouse. Thorpe’s basic strategy, as well as his Ten Count system, was what pushed that pebble over the hill creating this huge snowball effect of card counting that we know today. Players have numerous systems to choose from and which one you adopt depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. The Hi-Lo count is an easy strategy to learn; is recommended for most situations and will be the system we will be focusing on in this article.

Step 1: Assigning Card Value

The first step to learning the Hi-Lo count is to assign value to the cards. Each card has a specific value that must be memorized. All ten value cards including the Jack, Queen and King, plus the Ace are all valued as negative one (-1). Sevens, eights and nines are valued as zero, or even and twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes are valued as one (+1). By valuing the cards in this manner it makes card counting much easier and obtainable for the average person.

Blackjack Card Counting Values

Homework 1: Identify Card Value

Many hours of at-home practice are required when learning how to count cards. The first homework assignment is to be able to quickly identify the card value without any hesitation. Take a single deck of cards and run through it until you’ve correctly identified the value given to each individual card. For example, when using the Hi-Lo system, if you see a Jack then the correct answer would be Negative One (-1). Keep practicing until you’ve run through an entire deck without making a mistake. This is also a good warm-up exercise to use before card counting.

Identifying Card Counting Values

Step 2: Counting Cards

Blackjack Card Counting Systems

Now that you know the value of the cards it’s time to count them. It’s better to start the count after the dealer has shuffled the deck and a new round begins. Card counting is not the same as memorizing the deck. The player is mentally keeping track of the ratio of high to low cards. The player will start at zero and add or subtract the value of the card as they are seen there by creating a tally or a running count of the deck. If the count is high, the remaining deck will have a lot of 10’s in it making the situation more favorable for the player. If the count is low, the remaining deck will have more numbers in it making the situation more favorable for the casino.

Running Count while playing blackjack

Homework 2/3: Learn to keep a running Count Of Cards

The second homework assignment is to be able to accurately keep a Running Count of the cards. With a single deck in hand, start at zero and total the values of the cards. You know you’ve succeeded if you hit zero or Even by the end of the deck. If you can do this 9 out of 10 decks then you’re ready to move on.

The third homework assignment is the same as the second however instead of counting one card at a time, now count two. A good card counter will count down a single deck in 20 seconds with one error or less.

Starting a running count

Ending a running count

Step 3: True Count

Now that we can count the cards, what do we do with this information? A count system provides three critical pieces of data. When to bet more, when to deviate from basic strategy and when to take insurance. When making a wager or deciding whether to take insurance professional card counters convert the running count into the True Count. The true count is the actual count or value of the deck when the player is making a decision. You’ll need to convert your running count into a true count on all multi-deck games. However, single deck games will always give you a true count. In order to calculate the true count the player would need to divide the running count by the number of decks remaining. For example, if the running count is +9 and there are 3 decks remaining then the true count is +3. +9 divided by 3 is +3. If the running count is +8 and there are 2 decks left then the true count is +4.

True Count formula

Homework 4/5: Estimate Decks Left & Calculating True Count

The fourth homework assignment is to be able to accurately recognize how many decks are left in the shoe and to use that information to calculate the true count. Buy a shoe and several decks of cards. Place one deck in the shoe in order to get a feel for what that looks like. Then increase it to two. Keep repeating this step until you’ve seen all 8 decks. Complete this exercise several times until you feel comfortable identifying the number of decks in a shoe. In order to test your knowledge, ask a friend to set up the shoe, then enter the room and try to correctly identify how many decks are in the shoe.

The fifth homework assignment is to be able to successfully calculate the true count using your newfound skill. A good way to practice this is to ask that same friend to come back and deal a mock game of blackjack for you. Calculate the true odds in your head and then check the deck and use a calculator to verify if you’re correct.

True Count example with 2 decks

Step 4: Deviations or Indices

Typically, the house edge for blackjack is roughly around 0.5% however it is possible to bring that number all the way down to Even or 0% if Edward Thorpe’s basic strategy is used. That’s why it’s incredibly important to know blackjack strategy by heart. This guide tells players what actions to take during specific situations. We’ve provided several blackjack strategy charts for single deck, double deck and multi-deck shoes as well as for games where surrender is available. Card counters will follow basic strategy the majority of the time. In order to achieve an advantage over the house, counters must know when to deviate from basic strategy. These deviations, or indices, must be memorized and used according to the true count. We have provided a simple chart outlining these indices. This chart will tell you when to deviate from basic strategy. For example, when looking at the cross sections for TT vs. 6 we see +4. This means when the true count is greater than +4 the player will deviate from basic strategy by splitting instead of standing. If we go to 13 vs. 2 we see -1. This means when the true count is less than -1 the player will deviate from basic strategy by hitting instead of standing.

Examples of Basic Strategy Deviations for card counting with Hi-Lo count

Blackjack Strategy Cards:

Homework 6/7: Memorize Basic Strategy & Deviations from the Indices Chart

The sixth homework assignment is to memorize basic strategy. You can learn via the classic techniques or, depending on your learning style, you can learn by simulating a hand of blackjack with a deck of cards. This may be more helpful to some people rather than writing the answers down on a sheet of paper. You know how you learn so do what is most comfortable for you. Either way the blackjack strategy should be practiced until it can be recalled instantaneously. The seventh homework assignment is to memorize all of the deviations from the indices chart provided. Create home-made flash cards, writing out the same chart over and over again until it is memorized. These are all classic techniques that will help with learning these deviations. If possible, have a friend deal you a mock blackjack game as you use your newly acquired skills.

Step 5: Bet Spreads

Bet spreads and bankroll requirements are two more tools that are critical to a card counters’ success. Bet spreads is when the player raises or lowers their bet based on the count. A small spread would be 2 to 4 units while a large spread would be 8 to 16 units. Card counters raise their wager when the true count is positive and lower their bet when the true count is negative. Bet spreads are mainly used on multi-deck games and are not typically used on single-deck games. A large bankroll is also needed in order to weather any losing streaks. If the player spreads between $100 and $300 then a bankroll of $20,000 will be needed. If they spread between $5 and $10 then a $2,000 bankroll will be needed. As you can see, with the amount of time, effort and cash investment needed this can quickly become a serious hobby. Card counting can increase the excitement of blackjack as players have fun testing their skills against the house.

Best Card Counting System

Here is a quick overview of popular blackjack card counting methods. There are options for both the beginner and the advanced player.

Hi/LoCount – This is our recommended card counting system outlined above which gives you many of the advantages of other counting methods without the steep learning curve.

Hi Opt 1 System – This was developed by Charles Einstein in 1968. This is similar to the Hi / Lo System except that 2s and aces are assigned a 0. This makes the system more accurate, but at the cost of being more difficult because you need to keep an ace side count.

Hi Opt 2 System – This adaption of the Hi Opt 1 System was created by Lance Humble in the 70s. It’s more accurate than it’s predecessor, but it’s even more difficult because you need to keep a side count for 8s and 9s, too. That’s on top of needing to keep a true count (for multiple decks).

KO System – This system was developed by Ken Fuchs and Olaf Vancura in 1998. The KO is considered an unbalanced system, because +1s are assigned to 7s, making the overall count end at +4 when you go through an entire deck (instead of 0).

Ko Blackjack Card Counting System

Uston Advanced Count – This system was developed by Ken Uston. It’s considered one of the most accurate card counting systems, but also one of the most difficult to learn and use. The UAC assigns a -1, 0, +1, +2, or +3 to each card. You also need to keep a side count for aces.

Zen Count – The Zen Count was created by Arnold Snyder. This balanced system assigns -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2 to each card. You will also need to figure the true count (before betting). You can learn more about the Zen Count on the Blackjack Forum, or in the book, Blackbelt in Blackjack.

Omega II Count – This was first published in Blackjack for Blood, written by Bryce Carlson. Players will want to figure out the true count, but keeping a side count isn’t necessary (but it is more accurate). This system assigns the values -1, 0, +1 and +2 to each card.

10-Count – The 10-Count was created by Edward Thorp. No one uses it anymore, but that doesn’t make it ineffective. Thorp tested it in Vegas and won more than $11,000 in a weekend. It paved the way for the systems used today, too.

Wong Halves Count – This was created by Stanford Wong, and was first introduced in his book, Professional Blackjack. It is a difficult, yet accurate system to learn and use. This system assigns -1, 0, +0.5, +1 and +1.5 to each card. You also need to figure the true count.

Learn Card Counting

Red 7 Count – This system was developed by Arnold Snyder. Players will need to keep an Initial Running Count (IRC), which starts with -2 for every deck in the game. For example, one deck would be -2, 4 decks would be -8, etc. Then you start counting from there. You can learn more about this system in Blackbelt in Blackjack.