Is It Legal?

'As long as a card counter is only using his brains to decide how to play his hand, then the act of card counting is not illegal.' Henry Tamburin, Gambling Author

The kind of card counting that I discuss on Gaming the Odds is not cheating or illegal - simply put: casinos have rules for their blackjack games and card counters play according to those rules.

Myth 1: Blackjack card counting is illegal. Because of the way that mass media presents blackjack card counting, people are often led to believe that counting cards in blackjack is an illegal offense that will land you in the back room taking a few bloody punches for breaking the casino’s – and state’s – rules. Speed Count is so simple to learn and use a 12-year can do it. And that is what makes Speed Count so revolutionary – for the first time average players can get the edge when they play without having to spend months learning a more difficult counting system. How long did it take to develop Speed Count? I would estimate about 2.5 years. As a game of skill, Blackjack intimidates many players. Frank demonstrates an effective Blackjack technique called Speed Count that allows players to gain th. You will learn to count spilt hands and to count very fast while the dealer is collecting the cards after a dealer blackjack. You will see that the OPP is very easy to learn and to master. When you feel proficient counting the cards at home, you can practice in an Internet casino playing for fun money at a table with multiple players.

In fact, card counters have forced casinos to make the games worse in order to prevent card counting. In New Jersey, casinos aren't allowed to throw players out for counting cards so they have to rely on card counting countermeasures. (In Nevada, casinos are allowed to decide who plays on their properties so they can throw you out.)

So a card counter must not only know how to identify a good game and count cards profitably but also to get away with counting cards. It's of little help to know how to count cards well if you get thrown out of each game you could count cards in or the casino makes the game worse for you.

The worse the games, the less people count cards, and the casino gets a bigger proportion of its bets from recreational players. Some of us want to play only when we have an advantage and look at playing casino games as 'investing' rather than 'gambling.' Since the amount of good games has gone significantly down since the '90s, there are less and less successful card counters each year.

It's certainly not the best time to start counting cards at blackjack but there are still opportunities out there.

How It Works

'Essentially, card counting is a method for tracking the probability of the player receiving cards that are favorable to him.' Arnold Snyder, Gambling Author

Say you have a box full of coloured balls -- red and blue. You and your friend decide to play a little game in which you pull ten balls out of the box: you receive $5 for each red ball and you pay your friend $5 for each blue ball.

Is this a profitable game for you? No. In the long run, over many games, you'll break even since your expectation in this game is zero. You both receive or pay an equal amount of money and you have an equal amount of balls in the box.

Nobody has an advantage.

But what would it take to make the game more profitable for you?

Aside from you receiving more money per every red ball while what you have to pay to your friend for every blue ball remains the same, you'd have a positive expectation in any situation in which the box contains more red balls than blue balls. It only makes sense for you to participate in this game under those circumstances.

Card counting at blackjack is doing the same thing.

High cards are your red balls and low cards are your blue balls. In addition, there are neutral cards which neither help nor work against you (imagine yellow balls in the box that you don't have to pay or receive money for).

Unless you do 'back-counting,' you must bet something on each blackjack hand, so the only way you're going to benefit from when the shoe is beneficial to you is by betting more. (If you were to go through the whole shoe with same bet sizes, you would get no advantage.)

You increase the bet size when the shoe is beneficial and therefore you stand to win more when you have a good chance of winning, as opposed to losing less when the shoe is bad for you.

Why It Works

'Keeping track of cards already played tells us about hands yet to come. But to make use of this information, we need to know which cards are beneficial to us as players, and which cards are not.' Olaf Vancura & Ken Fuchs, KO Count

As explained above, you get an advantage at real-money blackjack when the deck is rich in good cards relative to the amount of bad cards. But why are some cards good or bad for you and which cards belong to those groups?

High cards (tens, jacks, queens, kings and aces) are good for you mainly because of the following reasons:

• More blackjacks:
  The more ten-valued cards and aces, the more blackjacks you and the dealer are going to make -- the difference is, you get paid 3:2 for a blackjack while the dealer only gets 1:1.
• The dealer must hit until 17 or more:
  With more high cards in the deck, the dealer's chances of reaching 17 while going over 21 increase -- with more low cards, the dealer reaches the target value (17-21) easier.
• Better for doubling down:
  When doubling down, you expect to win the hand and do it by only drawing one more card; when you have a hand value around 10 against the dealer's low card, you're likely to get a high hand value with one more card and the dealer, once again, is likelier to bust.
• Better for splitting:
  High cards are better for splitting in general.

Those points make blackjack card counting profitable when used while playing according to basic strategy and, of course, suggesting you're playing a game with reasonable rules.

What It Takes to Count Cards

'I've met more people who play blackjack for a living than most. Successful players come from all walks of life: students, real estate people... ... and a used car salesman. Good, solid, average people.' Ken Uston, Million Dollar Blackjack

Movies may have given you the idea that you need to be a mathematical genius to learn card counting, when in fact simple arithmetic is enough. But you need to add or subtract a single-digit numbers fast, keep the count in your mind and divide when needed.

As with almost anything in life, being in good physical shape helps when counting cards at blackjack since you'll be able to do it longer, keeps your mind sharp, etc. And you need to be comfortable with the grind. Playing hours of real-money blackjack a day gets boring. At poker, circumstances change all the time and every player is a new puzzle to solve; at blackjack, every day is almost the same as the day before.

Then it's just about how hard you're willing to work to learn how to count cards at blackjack. The harder you work on counting speed, acting and finding good games, the better you do. Making good money from blackjack is simple in theory but it takes a lot of practice and research to make it happen.

Multiple Decks

An increase in the amount of decks increases the house advantage as well. As you can see from the blackjack house edge page, the difference between playing a single-deck game and an 8-deck game is significant to say the least.

The same goes for card counting and the reason is simple: let's say you have a single deck game and you remove two fours from the deck; now the amount of high cards (tens to aces) is clearly higher than the amount of low cards (2-6).

But what happens when we take two fours out of an 8-deck shoe? Again, there are two low cards less but the change has significantly less impact since the total amount of low cards is now eight times higher, as you can see from the following:

Single-deck:
20 low cards and 20 high cards take 2 low cards 18 low cards and 20 high cards.

Eight decks:
160 low cards and 160 high cards take 2 low cards 158 low cards and 160 high cards.

It's easier to get away with counting cards with multiple decks since casinos have more of a reason to expect card counters play in single-deck games. More importantly, the count changes much more often single-deck games so you have to constantly change your bet sizes which makes you look more suspicious.

When counting cards with multiple decks there won't be as many bet size fluctuations but less profitability as well. The upside? You don't give the casino staff as much reason to suspect you for card counting since you don't have to vary bet sizes as much.

In case you want to learn how to count cards with several decks, you have to know how to convert from running count to true count. The best way (in my opinion) to start practicing card counting with multiple decks is to use a balanced counting system since you'll always end-up with zero at the end of the shoe. (You'll know whether you kept up with the count or not.)

How to Not Get Caught

You should learn how to count cards without getting caught because casinos have the right to stop you from playing their games in most jurisdictions, in which case you lose a good, profitable game, perhaps for a lifetime. (When casinos don't have such right, the games are usually unbeatable.) That is a big blow to serious card counters.

The art of not getting caught is an essential one to learn for anyone who wants to make money at blackjack. There are casinos that disregard 'small-timer' card counters but once you start betting (and winning) significant money, they suddenly turn more serious too. Therefore the only way to make a lot of money is to not get caught. (If someone from the casino staff approaches you, one of my favourite ways of pretending to be clueless about blackjack is to act like I've invented a genius system which is based on something crazy like the day of the week or the weather outside.)

The ideal situation would be to not even make the casino staff suspicious. This, however, is almost impossible to avoid in the long run. It's best to prepare to get caught because you most likely will, at some point, suggesting you count cards more than a few times in your lifetime.

The best way to count cards without getting caught (in my opinion) is to stay at one casino for about two hours and move on to the next one. There are about 80 casinos in Las Vegas and pit bosses work in three shifts, so in theory as long as you haven't been banned from a casino, you can re-enter the casino once the next pit boss starts his shift, so that would give you 240 chances of playing under the supervision of a different pit boss in 24 hours (suggesting you play in Vegas).

There's an added benefit to counting cards an hour or two at a time and moving on to the next casino; you'll have losing sessions and some casinos tend to 'comfort' their customers by providing them with a free lunch afterwards. Since you'll quite likely lose money in at least one of the four casinos you visit during one day of playing, you might as well take a free dinner while you're at it.

Blackjack as a Team

I'll be the first to admit that I've never practiced blackjack counting as a team. In fact, I've hardly even thought of it at all. For some reason, I enjoy counting cards by myself where I have control over everything, but there's no question that the group counting strategy has worked extremely well and made some people millionaires. This article consists of advice that other people - mostly famous blackjack authors - have given, alongside with my thoughts on that advice.

Ken Uston is famous for running a blackjack team that took casinos for millions of dollars. He's published books about it -- I've read Million Dollar Blackjack, which I quoted in this article, and I plan on reading The Big Player once I get my hands on it.

But first, instead of quoting Uston directly, let's look at how Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs explain Uston's blackjack team in their book KO Blackjack:

'... Uston formed teams that used the now-legendary 'big player' (BP) technique. Big players can be used in several ways. In one common approach, little players are stationed at several tables in a casino, counting through the shoes and placing table-minimum bets while the BP wanders around aimlessly. Every so often, as superstitious high-rollers tend to do, the BP gets a 'hunch' and plays a few hands, perhaps at the betting maximum, at a table chosen seemingly at random. Unbeknownst to casino personnel, the BP has actually been signaled into the game by one of the little players after the count has gone favorable.'

Simple enough. In Blackjack Secrets, Marvin French is quoted mentioning actual betting amounts; as an example, small players would make $2 bets, after which big players come in and start making $100 bets.

This approach to card counting has the same advantage as back-counting in that there's no need for bet spreads. Small players keep betting a small amount, such as $2, and big players keep betting big amounts, such as $100.

But this sort of approach has other advantages as well: for example, it's harder for the casino to come into the conclusion that you're olaying blackjack as a group. If you come out of nowhere, not having been near the table to be able to back-count, and start betting big rightaway, and you don't stay for long, I think you're going to need a very experienced dealer or pit boss to catch something like that.

'When the BP arrives at the table, the present count may be relayed to him via signals worked out beforehand. Alternatively, the little player can simply make all betting and strategic decisions for the BP, again through signals. In this case, the BP need not know anything about expert play, only how to read and follow the signals. When the deck goes sour, the BP is signaled to leave. The BP then dawdles while waiting for the next signal indicating a juicy deck.'

Even though small players try to lose the minimum and big players try to win the maximum, in which case it's the big player who makes the money for the blackjack team, the role of the small player could be even more crucial -- after all, in Uston's case, it's often the small player who counts cards and tells the big player what to do, while the big player just acts according to instructions.

'The beauty of this technique is that the BP makes only large wagers and always in positive situations. Because he never varies his bets, the BP appears to be a fun-loving highroller, 'haphazardly' making his way from one 'lucky' table to the next. Casino personnel see a big bettor jumping from game to game, never staying at a particular table long enough to possibly be counting cards.'

As mentioned, one of the big advantages in team-play blackjack card counting is that there's no bet spread, and players who stay only for a while (after appearing out of nowhere) are rarely card counters.

Finally, let's look at Kevin Blackwood's take on counting cards as a team from his Play Blackjack Like the Pros. He has an entire section dedicated to the subject, but here's an excerpt:

'I prefer putting spotters behind the table and always use verbal signals to pass the count. This has three advantages. First, the back counters never have to play the hands or bet any money in the negative shoes, which provides an excellent entry-level position for new players to break into the game. Second, verbal signals can't be detected by the overhead cameras, but even the most covert hand signals could be deciphered with the modern aid of replaying them over and over again on videotapes. And standing behind the tables makes it much easier to move when the count is going south and the odds favor shifting to a new table to back-count.'

The Mindset

'The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple.' Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway

Blackjack card counting is investing. In order to invest, you need to risk real money. The advantage over the casino is small even in best-case scenario and you will experience bankroll swings due to variance. It's never a steady ride upwards -- in fact, it may be more like a roller coaster.

By the way, never buy into any betting progression systems such as Martingale, Fibonacci and D'Alembert, or any of the other common blackjack mistakes.

It's unwise to bother yourself with market swings when investing in stocks and also important to only concentrate on making profitable investments and trust that time will deliver the profits. But unlike with investing, you know exactly how likely you're to win at blackjack in the long run. The dealer must follow the rules of the game and you get to know all the rules involved in the game before playing. Should you decide to play, it will be on your terms, when you find it beneficial.

I've also written short pieces about card counting in other games:

Updated on January 2, 2020.

For centuries, the strategic potential of blackjack has defied the chances and reduced the house edge to the point of complete elimination. The advanced card counting strategies were fought off by the casino operators through a gradual increase of the card decks inside the shoe.

Nowadays, it is next to impossible to find a live blackjack variant played with 1, 2, or even 4 decks; instead, 6 and 8-deck blackjack games are dominating the market, thwarting the beginner-level card counters. This, along with the RNG (Random Number Generator) blackjack, has created the need for alternative solutions, and a number of players resorted to blackjack betting strategies that exploit the winning and losing streaks, focusing on money management rather than trying to predict the next card. At the same time, these are much easier to master than some of the advanced blackjack techniques, such as Shuffle Tracking, Zen, or Omega 2.

Where to Start – The Most Popular Blackjack Betting Strategies

The complexity and dedication are not the only reasons people shy away from card counting techniques. Casino operators frown upon any skill that will give you an unfair advantage over other players (and the house), which is why advanced budget management methods are your safest resorts. They can also be arranged according to the difficulty level, starting with the simplest form of betting (flat) and gradually advancing to the complex patterns used by experienced players (Labouchere):

• Flat Betting
• Martingale
• 1-3-2-6 System
• Paroli
• D’ Alembert
• Oscar’s Grind
• Labouchere

Apart from the complexity level, each of the systems can also be classified according to the risk degree and the type of progression it entails – negative or positive.

Flat betting

Flat betting is somewhat of an exception, and many do not even consider it a strategy at all. The only requirement of this “system” is to remain in the game by constantly submitting the same size bet. Ideally, the player needs to establish a budget and divide it into equal portions of up to 5% of the total balance. Clearly, flat betting will not make you rich, but the strategy is deemed successful if you manage to generate around 10-20% profit.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Flat Betting

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Apart from the extreme simplicity, the strongest suit of flat betting is the damage control it delivers. The fixed stakes will prevent you from suffering a sudden, substantial loss that some of the other methods are prone to.

On the other hand, the results that flat betting can produce are modest and rest on the assumption that you will win more than 50% of the time. This is why most players outgrow this strategy fairly quickly. The monotony makes it quite easy to abandon this process and move onto potentially more profitable (and riskier) blackjack betting strategies described below.

Risk Rate: Low

Positive Progressive Betting Systems – Definition and Popular Variants

Positive progressive betting systems are designed to get the most of the players’ winning streak, commanding a bet increase every time you score a winning blackjack hand. The stakes are raised systematically and lowered after the first losing hand. The most popular representatives of positive progressive strategies are Paroli and Oscar’s Grind.

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Paroli

Paroli is often defined as a reversed Martingale system, prompting the players to top the stake after every winning hand. Every next bet should be doubled and re-set after three consecutive winning rounds. For example, if we are to start our betting session with a $1 stake, the next two stakes should be increased by 2:

$1 > $2 > $4

For the sake of illustration, let us assume that you have placed a $10 bet and your hand trumped the dealer’s, resulting in an even money payout. Your next bet should, therefore, be $20, which is your base bet + $10 that you have won in the previous round. If you manage to win that hand as well, the follow-up stake should amount to $40 – again, the $10 base stake, plus the winnings from the previous rounds. The third win will result in an $80 bet, after which you will need to go back to the initial $10 bet, regardless of the outcome. Looking at the starting point, we can easily deduce that a $10 starting bet generated a total of $160.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Introducing Paroli Betting System to Your Gameplay

As you can see, the Reversed Martingale is very easy to use, as it requires the player to press the bet only 3 times and revert to the original wager in two cases – after a loss or when a series of three winning hands in a row is completed.

An added value of Paroli is that you do not need to have a substantial budget to implement this strategy, which is the main drawback of some other progressive betting patterns.

On the downside, three linked winning hands are not that easy to land, and the players may find themselves operating at a loss before long.

Risk Rate: Medium

Oscars Grind

A medium complexity system with a low-risk rate, Oscars Grind (aka Hoyle’s Press) starts off with a single unit bet and aims at generating an equivalent profit amount. The losing hands will follow the flat betting pattern whereas the winning hands will be followed by the bet increase – but only if it will result in the desired profit of one unit. Otherwise, the bet size is decreased to assure that the accurate amount is acquired, as shown in the table below:

The desired result is a single unit win on every session as well as the increased damage control during the losing streaks.

Pros and Cons of Oscars Grind

The method is not aggressive which means that you will be able to sustain longer losing streaks without suffering irreparable damage to your finances. The proceeds, although modest, will gradually accumulate, recuperating the losses incurred across ten rounds in no more than 4 wins.

At the same time, you may find the system frustrating as it requires a lot of self-discipline and restraint.

Risk Rate: Low

What Are Negative Progressive Betting Systems?

As opposed to the progressive betting methods, the negative strategies demand that the bets are increased during the losing streaks; the idea is to recover all that you have previously lost and to gain a profit. By default, negative progressions are more aggressive than their counterparts and they carry a somewhat higher risk rate. The representatives of this methodology are Martingale, D’Alembert, and Laboucher systems.

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Martingale Betting System

When you first come across to Martingale, it may seem like a heaven-sent system that simply cannot fail. You will soon discover that not all share your initial enthusiasm; there will be those who might urge you to avoid this strategy, especially if your gambling budget is limited.

As a negative progression system, Martingale mandates that you double the stake after every losing hand and go back to flat betting after a win. In the perfect world, this should generate a series of cumulative winnings and recuperate the losses in a course of a single losing streak.

But what happens if the streak prolongs and you budget dries out? Even if you start wagering with the betting minimum, you are running a risk of leaving the table empty-handed. To illustrate, let us assume that you begin the session with a $5 wager and start losing. To get back on the track, you will now need to double every next wager, which means that it will take no more than 8 consecutive losses to find yourself short of $1,275:

If the trend keeps up, you can soon end up with a considerable debt, which is probably not what you have signed up for when joining the blackjack table and introducing a betting structure to your game. High rollers will, of course, be able to disregard the elevated risk rate of the Martingale system, but average online or land-based casino visitors will probably need to adjust their strategy to the amount of money they can afford to lose. For most of them, this means that Martingale is off the limits.

The benefit of using Martingale is that it can produce excellent results in a relatively short time span.

Pros:

• Can be effective in short-term sessions
• Simple to use

Cons:

• Uncomfortably risky
• More suitable for high rollers
• Possibility of the stake amount exceeding the payout rate
• Table limits can easily stop the progression

As you can see, the cons, in this case, outweigh the pros, which means that you may want to leave the strategy to those with more money to waste.

Risk Rate: Extremely High

D’Alembert

D’Alembert is a great alternative to Martingale, since it offers a reduced risk rate but has the same complexity level, which makes it suitable for beginners. The system has an alternating pattern, urging the players to increase the stakes by a single unit after a loss or deduct one unit from the follow-up wager after a win. So, if you should happen to lose $5 bet, the next amount that you need to wager is $10 and the one after that $15 (as $5 is considered a single unit). Should the $15 result in a win, the subsequent bet should be re-set to $10. Example:

Pros of D’Alembert Betting System

The entire scheme is very easy to follow through – all you need to do is remember your previous bet and act accordingly. Also, since the increase is moderate, you will not risk losing a large portion of your budget. Last but not least, thanks to the controlled variations in bet size, you are less likely to hit the table limits.

Cons of D’Alembert

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The main defect of this system is that it’ll take forever to recover the lost bets, not to mention the perils of the long losing streaks that are likely to severely affect your balance.

Risk Rate: Medium High

Labouchere Betting System

In Laboucher, the players start with any sequence of numbers, where the first and the last number in the chain determine the bet total. Let’s say that you select the following string:

2 – 3 – 4 – 6 – 9

When you add up the first and the last number, you will get a total of 11, which should be the initial bet. If you happen to win, the relevant numbers should be eliminated from the sequence, leaving you with 3 – 4 – 6.

Assuming that you win again, the remaining number (4) should be doubled.

If, on the other hand, you lose the initial bet, the total must be added to the chain:

2 – 3 – 4 – 6 – 9 – 11

The bet will now amount to $13 (2 + 11), adding the number $13 to the string if the player loses again, or removing both 2 and 11 if the outcome is favorable.

The sequence total will depend on the target amount, which means that the players whose objective is to make a profit of $20 will create any sequence that can add up to that sum.

Pros of Laboucher

The increased control of both the budget and the progression of your bets is the main perk of Laboucher, but the players should make sure to use it at high limit tables.

Cons of Laboucher

Just like Martingale, this system threatens to hit the table limits, although, not as fast.

Risk Rate: Medium

The “In-Between” Split System: 1-3-2-6 Blackjack Betting System

Seemingly complicated, the 1-3-2-6 blackjack betting strategy is actually much simpler than it looks at first glance. After deciding on the betting unit, the players will just need to make sure that the system is executed correctly, in accordance with the 1-3-2-6 sequence. On a $5 unit bet, the process would look like this:

• Step 1: bet the single $5 unit. If you lose, repeat. If you win, proceed to Step 2.
• Step 2: bet 3 units ($15). If you lose, start over. If you win, proceed to Step 3
• Step 3: bet 2 units ($10). If you lose, start over. If you win, proceed to Step 4
• Step 4: bet 6 units ($30)

Pros of 1-3-2-6 System

The upside of this betting pattern is that you will have no difficulties mastering it – the formula is in the name itself, so it does not get any easier than that. The losses will not be severe, and you will be quite happy with the results this system provides in the short-run.

Cons of 1-3-2-6 System

You might not need a huge bankroll to execute the 1-3-2-6 betting scheme but bear in mind that the system’s “expiration date” is just around the corner. While the maneuver is efficient enough to be included in the list of the best blackjack betting strategies, it will not eliminate the house edge and provide lasting results.

Risk Rate: Low to Medium

Conclusion on the most successful Blackjack betting strategies

Adding some structure and limitation to your gambling routine might be just what you need to handle your money more efficiently. Still, you will need to remember that these systems are flawed, especially in the long run. As they have zero effect on the house edge, the end results they produce will be modest, but some of the low-risk systems mentioned above will prove quite handy in cutting down the unwanted losses.

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