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A Dummy's Guide to Card-Counting in Blackjack

If you are a blackjack player tired of losing money whenever you hit for additional cards, it is time to learn card counting. All this means is you have to learn and practice some method for keeping track of the probability of high- or low-value cards that have yet to be dealt.

The basis for all counting methods is that the blackjack player has the advantage when the remainder of the deck has a greater proportion of high cards: Aces, faces and Ten's. Knowing he has a greater probability of getting a high-paying blackjack or scoring big with a double down, a player will bet more. So counting and betting strategy are interrelated.

No man can possibly keep track of how many individual Tens, Jacks, Queens and Kings have already been dealt or how many remain in the deck. Instead, card counters use some point system or other to establish how many low or high cards still have to come into play. The way the points add up to a total score, the "count", is what they hinge their bets on.

There are at least three fairly straightforward counting systems: single-value, dual-value and dual-value with side counts.

In a single-value counting system such as Hi-Lo, every card in the deck is assigned a value according to how they might make a winning hand. Tens, faces and Aces are tallied as -1, each card 2 up to 6 is equivalent to +1 and all those in between (7,8,9) count as neutral or zero value. The low cards are assigned a positive value on the rationale that each one dealt means there is a greater proportion of high cards left in the deck hence, an increased likelihood that the player or dealer will get a superb hand the next go-round.

No matter how many cards are lying face up after one deal, every high card will cancel out one low card. The count therefore becomes +1 only if there is one more low card than there are high cards. This method is the simplest of all because a blackjack player only ever has to remember a running total equal to +1, 0 or -1.

On the other hand, simple Hi-Lo or "plus/minus" can make for pretty simpleminded game play. If one is holding cards totaling 12 and the dealer has not hit on 16 or stood on 17, one cannot afford to take for granted the probability of drawing a 7, 8 or 9.

Enter dual-value counting systems, so called because certain cards count as -2 or +2. In the Zen Count system, for example, an ace still counts as -1 but every ten or face card dealt decreases the total count by 2 on the assumption that their appearance makes a winning hand less likely on subsequent deals. On the other hand, the running count goes up by 2 for every 4, 5 or 6 card dealt.

Yet a third type is dual-value with side counts. Aces count as zero in Hi-Lo Option I, for example. So a player makes a separate count of how many are yet to be dealt, multiplies that number by the value in use for Ten's and face cards (1 or 2) and adds the result to the running total point count. This particular procedure is used to guide betting strategy.

These three systems are merely a starting point to guide betting strategy. A probability-minded player would obviously raise his bets when the running count is positive or a series of deals have continuously yielded a positive count.