If card counting in blackjack is just keeping track of high cards vs low, does that mean if I could remember all the different cards used (i.e. how many 5s, how many 7s) I would be really good at blackjack?

Question

This would break online casinos because you could easily do that with electronics. Assuming the casino itself is playing fair.

If you could perfectly keep track of how many of which cards are left in the decks, and everytime make the most mathematically sound bet, would the house still have an edge?

(I assume the correct answer will start off saying I don’t understand how card counting works – fair enough, but what about the basic explanation of it did I misinterpret?)

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Playing at home with 1 deck by the official proper rules? Sure. But no place that gambles for real money does that.

Instead they say things like “we play blackjack-ish, where these are the house rules…” and these are two very important house rules they use which are good at defeating card counters:

1 – They don’t wait until the bottom of the deck and have to reshuffle. They reshuffle before they hit the bottom. That means you will never be playing at the point where you know for sure which cards have to have been delt because they were the only ones left.

2 – They don’t play with just 1 deck. They shuffle together between 4 to 6 decks into one mega-deck and deal from that, all with the same back so you can’t tell which of the decks a card is from. Not only does this make card counting hard, it also means it’s entirely legal, and likely, for two people to actually have literally the same card in their hands. (“You have the ace of spades? Hey, so do I!”) In a typical “home” game from just one deck, that would be impossible and be evidence someone is cheating. But when there’s 6 decks in the deck, there’s 6 aces of spades, 6 aces of diamonds, and so on.