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Online Blackjack News - Counting Cards is more diffucult than it seems
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This is the effect card counters try to use to gain an advantage. "Try" is the operative word because the idea is more elementary in principle than in practice. One hindrance is that casinos are adept at spotting counters, and can take preventive measures if a shoe becomes too favorable to folks they fear are milking the cash cow. Another obstacle is that standard counting techniques involve mental addition, subtraction, and division -- all prone to error in the distracting atmosphere of the blackjack pit.
Little can be done about spotters, notwithstanding attempts at "camouflage," except to note that they rarely bother players at low-limit tables who don't push their bets through the roof when the count zooms up. There's a partial solution to the problem of doing arithmetic accurately in your head while talking to the dealer, totaling your hand and remembering what action to take, ignoring noise around you, giving your order to the server, and so forth. This solution is a simpler counting scheme indicating when you have an edge. It's less potentially profitable than classical counting done correctly. But it's better than trying to run with the big dogs and stumbling, or cowering under the porch.
It's a two-stage process. First, keep a tally of how many 10s and aces have been dealt. It may help to create a stack of chips, for instance one for every 10 aces and 10s you see, to mark where you are. Second, when a round is about to start, estimate how many whole decks are in the discard rack, multiply this times 20, and subtract 10 from the product. After you've practiced a bit, you can refine the approach to eyeball the discards for half-decks. Either way, if your tally is below the result, you're in the catbird seat; if it's above, the house still has the advantage.
For reference, consider an eight-deck game. At two decks out, the threshold of 30 aces and 10s gives you an edge of 0.9 percent. At three decks out, 50 aces and 10s gives you a 1.1 percent edge. And at six decks out, 110 aces and 10s gives you a 3.6 percent edge. Further, your advantage is higher when the tally is lower. With four decks out, the threshold value of 70 aces and 10s gives you a 1.6 percent edge while at 65 aces and 10s it's 2.6 percent.
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| Source:
Blackjack2002 News Staff
| Friday, 24 August 2007 |
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