Two things are required to play winning blackjack. You must bet more when the advantage is yours, and bet less when it is on the dealer's side. And, most definitely, you must make correct decisions on hitting and standing, splitting, doubling down, and taking insurance. Card counting relieves both.

In a nutshell, card counting is keeping track of the cards that have been played for the purpose of getting a clue on the cards still remaining in the deck.

Speaking about the basic strategy we hold the assumption that each of the cards comes out of the shoe with equal probability. However, in the course of the game, if you trace the cards as they are exposed, you can figure out the composition of the remaining deck. Evidently, aces and 10s favor players because blackjacks pay 3:2. Small cards favor the dealer by reducing his chance of busting. Card counting tells you when the deck is better for you than it is for the dealer.

Do you have to be a prodigious mathematician or have a photographic memory to count cards? Not in the least. Lots of methods aimed at simplifying the process have been invented. It was in 1963 that Prof. Thorp developed the first card counting system. As the result of through mathematical analysis he came to the conclusion that the card most crucial to the player's success is 5. When there are few 5s in the deck, the player's advantage is bigger than if the deck is low in any other cards. The inference is simple as it is - you should keep track of how abundant or scarce in 5s the deck is. This formed the foundation of his "Five Count" system.

Thorp's undertaking inspired the imagination of professional gamblers, and nowadays there exist literally dozens of counting systems. Whatever their peculiarities, the essence is the same. Different values are assigned to different cards, normally positive numbers - to low cards, and negative - to face cards and aces. Some cards may be counted at 0 if their impact on the player's chances is believed negligible. Then, you sum up the values of the cards that have already been exposed, not only your own, but all the other players' as well, including the dealer's. The running count indicates whether the chances are for or against you and, thus, help you make decisions on playing your hand and wagering.

If the system is designed in the way that you start with a count of zero and at the end of the deck come to zero count again, then the system is called a "balanced count". Other systems would be "unbalanced", as you may guess.

The next point to discuss is how to count cards in multiple-deck games. The universal solution, which applies to any number of decks, is to divide the running count by the number of decks left unplayed. The result is called a "true" count. You can estimate the number of decks left in the shoe knowing the thickness of a deck. This would be, of course, a relatively rough calculation, but much precision is not important here. Rough estimates suffice because each count system offers a table of integer values, so all you have to know is whether your count exceeds these values or not.

Stanford Wong in his Professional Blackjack gives a useful tip on how to make a count if you jump into a game in process and don't want to wait for a shuffle. You should start your count as you usually do and treat the unseen cards the same as cards yet in the shoe. This stands to reason, doesn't it: an unseen card is an unseen card, either it has already been discarded or is yet to be dealt.

What counting system is the best? This is a highly disputable issue. There are several approaches to evaluating a system's performance. It is possible to try a system by simulation or estimate several performance parameters that, taken together, reflect the power of the system. What is even more important, is the tradeoff between complexity and theoretical power. More complex systems are more accurate in telling you how to deviate from the basic strategy depending on the count. On the other hand, they are harder to master and more liable to errors. Among the most powerful are the Hi-Opt II, Uston APC, Wong Halves, Revere's Advanced Point Count and some other.

The battle between players who count cards and the casino industry has been waging ever since the first counting systems gained popularity. Casino owners claim that they have the right to exclude certain individuals whom they find detrimental to gabling business because card counters "take a game of chance and turn it into a game of skill". We know many examples when players, suspected of counting cards, were forced to leave the house and told banned from ever visiting it in the future. On the other side, counters protest, arguing that there is nothing illegal in using ones brains to play blackjack, or in raising bets at the most advantageous times. Several counters attempted to sue casinos on the grounds that such exclusion violates the Fourteenth Amendment - the right to full and equal enjoyment of public accommodation, but almost none of them succeeded.

Houses unwilling to resort to drastic measures, nonetheless, try to impede card counters in other ways. The pitboss may try to disrupt the player's concentration or give him an evil eye hoping to unnerve the player so that the latter will pick up his chips and cash in. Then, a dealer can be as good at counting as a player. He may count cards to while away the time or, more likely, because the house wants him to be on guard. If the deck is too favorable to the player and the dealer is aware of it, he may shuffle up. This ploy is referred to as preferential shuffle; this is not cheating but such move evaporates the player's advantage.

And the easiest way for casinos to discourage players from counting is to make them think card counting is illegal. However, it is not. If it were illegal it would be the first instance of a "thought crime" in the USA, as one of the blackjack pundits wittily remarked. Counting does not involve physical meddling with cards, therefore it cannot be regarded a form of cheating.

Much of the challenge of card counting is dispelling suspicion that you are a counter. Remember that it is raising bets drastically that normally gives away players who count. Although the greater the factor by which you can increase your bet the greater your odds of winning, more than doubling your last bet is a fast way to arouse "heat" from the dealer and pit boss. Usually when casinos do realize you are counting they will either shuffle the cards whenever you increase your bet, essentially removing any advantage, or ask you to leave. The use of various camouflage techniques to disguise the act of counting often referred to as cover is an art itself. It may include anything from the use of the wrong playing strategy or apparently improper bet sizing to very sophisticated maneuvers designed to fool casino personnel who may be attempting to discover whether or not a player is counting cards.

In fact, the houses benefit from the counting craze. Many gambling fiends play with renewed enthusiasm, inspired by various counting techniques. Even women, who used to frequent only slot machine halls, have become avid counters.

Finally, we'd like to note that most existing count systems, whatever their power and complexity, share the following imperfection. They tend to assign to aces zero count or the same count as to 10s and, thus, underestimate the real significance of aces. Ace is the card that favors the player, but unlike other high cards it has no low pair in the deck. Therefore aces require special ajustment in the count. In the "For Members Only" area of this web-site we introduce our modified count system which eliminates this defect.