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
Card counting works if you incrementally increase your bet as the odds of 10/face cards increases, and you decrease your bet when the odds are lower. As you see the cards on the table, you change your count +1 or -1 based upon whatever system you use. If you’ve seen a bunch of 10’s, your odds of another 10 coming out decreases. If you haven’t seen 10s in a while, then your odds go up.
The house does things to screw with this. They remove the first card after a shuffle without showing it to you, and often will do the same thing when the dealer changes. You CAN ask to see it, but you have to ask. They also cut off the back of the deck. This isn’t (only) so they don’t run out of cards on a hand, but to make sure a subset of the card deck isn’t used. There is also a minimum bet to create a floor for betting, and they watch to see who varies from that floor and when.
If you incrementally increase your bet and incrementally decrease it, they’ll watch you more closely than someone who just decides on a whim to throw more money on the table.
TLDR: You don’t need to know all the cards. You just need to know the chances of a 10 showing up to give you 20 or to bust the dealer showing a 6. If the deck is shuffled after every hand, there’s no advantage to counting. If you know the number of decks and when the shuffle happens, you can gain an advantage, but you have to bet with your advantage without it being obvious.
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