Blackjack Card Counting – Is it Worthwhile?

Having confirmed the legality of blackjack card counting, I now address the next logical question. Is blackjack card counting worthwhile. My experienced answer is an unequivocal NO. And these are the reasons why.

 

Blackjack Card Counting Is Difficult

 

The simplest form of card counting, which offers the least advantage, involves assigning a value of -1, 0, or +1 to each card, as shown in the image above. You have to keep track of the cumulative total of all exposed cards on the blackjack table– not only yours and the dealer’s, but also for each player. And this needs to be done discreetly, without giving any signs to the casino staff. Believe me, this is extremely difficult. Very few people can be successful.

 

 

Blackjack Card Counting Offers Only Marginal Advantage

 

Optimum blackjack strategy results in an average expected return of 99.5%. This means that for every $100 that you bet you will get back only $99.5 in the long term. The enhancement in the expected blackjack return through card counting is a complex calculation depending on several factors, the most significant of which is the card counting method used. Most sources place it between 1% and 2%. Assuming a value of 1.5%, we get an expected return of 101% with expert play in both blackjack decisions and blackjack card counting.

 

To put it in perspective, if you bet $10,000 over 8 hours (assuming this to be long enough) then you can expect to be up by $100 only.

 

Grind for Long Hours at the Blackjack Table

 

Card counters have to put in long hours at the blackjack table, waiting for the remaining cards in the shoe to turn favourable. Many times, the shoe gets consumed and discarded without giving any advantage to the card counters. Once they get a favourable shoe, there is a short span of time in which they can rake in big wins. If you go through the history of blackjack teams, you will learn that days, even weeks, are spent with no return at all.

 

Casinos Are Making it Difficult for Card Counting

 

Casinos are aware that card counting exists, and have introduced practices to render it ineffective. These are the most common ones.

 

Card counting requires you to see all the cards that are discarded from the blackjack table. To obstruct this, casinos burn cards after every round. Up to three cards are taken from the shoe and put into the discard tray face down. No one will know the value of these cards. Card counters have to ignore the burn cards and this leads to an error in the cumulative total.

 

Only after at least half the cards are dealt from the shoe, it may have potential for being favourable for card counters. So casinos replace the shoe once half the cards are dealt. Even if this is not doe as a standard practice, the casino is counting cards as well. So, it knows when the shoe has become favourable for the player. It will change the shoe at that point. 

Author: Harsh Nevatia has 20 years’ experience of creating content on online gambling and understands how the system works.

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