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 only works until the deck is shuffled. Real casinos don’t make money while the deck is being shuffled, so they don’t shuffle after every hand. Online casinos could easily shuffle after each hand, making card counting almost useless.
This is all technically correct, a couple people won a good amount of money counting cards and they made a movie about it.
In response to card counting the casinos shuffle the deck more often.
Even if you track the cards perfectly they will wind up shuffling before a statistically significant bias in the distribution of cards can emerge. They also use tactics like pooling multiple decks so there are say 12 Aces in the well instead of 4.
If course shuffling too much wastes time and means you deal less hands per hour. A statistician working for the casino works out the exact balance of probabilities.
Theoretically, yes. In fact, there are already some card counting strategies that come somewhat close to this (*cough*Griffin Ultimate*cough*) that give you a greater edge than the traditional Hi-Lo counting system you see in movies and TV shows.
But, it’s important to remember that the theoretical memorization you’re talking about is essentially impossible for any human to do without computer assistance (which would be a felony in any live casino). Online casinos are more vague, and to be quite frankly I’m not sure what the legality of computer assistance is for those.
If we’re talking what could theoretically be possible with computer assistance, then yes the best card counting strategy would essentially log which cards have already been played, calculate the ratios of what cards are left in the shoe, calculate the house edge based on those ratios, estimate an optimal line of play based on those ratios (card counters often deviate from basic blackjack strategy depending on the count), *and* calculate the optimal bet for you in the moment based on what your Kelly Criterion is at that specific moment in time.
Would all of these things be enough over the long run to overcome the house edge when you play in those “real time” online casinos? I’m not really sure. That’s a *lot* of complicated math and simulations that I’m not exactly equipped to do. But my hunch is that it’s probably not, based on the experience I’ve had counting in live casinos…
Card counting absolutely gives you an edge, but only when the house is using a single deck. There is no rule stating that they have to use a single deck, and most use multiple decks, 5-6 or even more, and they don’t tell you how many decks they have which makes counting cards pretty much impossible.
You are understanding card counting correctly. You basically track how many ten cards are left in the shoe relative to the total remaining cards in the shoe. When there is a heavy ratio of tens remaining it becomes more common for the dealer to bust, so you increase your bets to take advantage of the favourable situation.
The part everyone seems to be missing is that it’s the increasing your bets that gets you caught. You can’t make large bets every hand or you’ll go bust before the count becomes favorable. But if you bet low and then suddenly jack up your bet size, the casino will notice this and you’ll be asked to leave on suspicion of card counting.
I’ll add a bit of an explanation of expected value (EV) as it’s relevant to card counting. EV refers to the amount of money you stand to gain or lose based on the current odds. In standard blackjack play, the house has I believe a 50.5% win chance if you do everything perfectly. That means that you have a 49.5% chance. That’s a 1% difference, so the EV of every hand (without extra info like card counting can supply) is -1%. In other words, over time, you should expect to lose 1% of your money for every hand you play.
So with card counting, you’re playing hundreds of hands with this -1% rate of return, but because counting gives you access to additional information, you know when the true EV of the hand you’re in is much better than the 50.5/49.5 split that it theoretically is. Maybe you can see that in your current situation the odds go all the way to 55/45 in your favor. Now you’re suddenly getting a positive EV of +10%! That’s when you jack up your bet sizes so that you maximize the positive returns. You only need a few wins before you turn around and losses to that point. But they also train the dealers and the pit bosses to watch for these kind of betting changes which makes you get caught as soon as you succeed.
“Assuming the casino is playing fair” – what gave you that impression?
Usually casinos play with multiple decks and that makes it much harder, and they don’t run the whole deck down until the end. So they’ll shuffle 5 decks together and then take a plastic indicator card and slid it into the deck somewhere randomly, then when they reach the plastic indicator, they either reshuffle the whole entire 5 decks again or they get new fresh packs of cards (then they punch a hole into the used decks and sell them to you at the gift shop!).
So counting cards becomes pointless because there are 5 decks and you have no idea where they stop playing, which leaves roughly half the decks unplayed … and you can’t account for what’s in the playable first half of the deck.
The house will likely still have an edge because you have to play your hand first.
Also, there’s a couple ways they mitigate this: they use more decks (the casino I dealt at used 8 decks), and the cut card will make the deck get shuffled with 1-2 decks still to be played.
Counting the cards can certainly help your odds but it’s not going to become a sure thing, even if you aren’t caught.
There’s an Economy of Thing podcast episode on card counting. TLDL: Even if you get really good you are not going to get rich. It’s very hard to scale up and you’ll likely to get banned from casinos after awhile.
Several factors here. But do them all and the player has the edge over the house. I was taught to count cards by my Dad’s old ‘Nam buddies when I was around 9-10 years old and have done it casually in Vegas every time I go, somewhere around 50-60 trips. Nearly always successful.
1. There are tons of card counting methods, but all of them pretty much revolve around keeping track of high/low cards. The more high cards (high count), the more likely the dealer will bust. Main goal, you stay in and the dealer busts.
2. fluctuate your bet. Bet minimum when the count is low (lots of low cards left in the deck), and bet bigger when the count is high (lots of high cards left in the deck). Be careful here and don’t go crazy.. this is how they catch you. It’s not illegal, but they can kick you out and ban you.
3. Play perfect strategy.
Even with all this, more and more casinos are starting to use auto shufflers, basically re-shuffling 8 decks at a time before each hand. You can’t count on these tables.
You mention electronics. I don’t know all the laws, but might be illegal. Also, not only will they ban you but they’ll probably beat the crap out of you on the way to the door for this. I had a gaggle of security guys jerk the guy out of his seat at my table and drag him out by his feet. Scary stuff.
Honestly, as long as you’re not going nuts, fluctuating from $25 bets to $1,000 bets and winning crazy amounts, you’ll be fine. Most dealers and Pit Bosses are super friendly and they know what’s up, even joke around with me about it. I can typically just win enough to pay for the trip, meals, a show here and there… just don’t get greedy and you’ll be fine.
Also, my favorite book if you want to learn more is called Knock-Out Blackjack. Very easy system to learn.
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