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Hi, just ondering if anyone had ever tried to learn the game of blackjack and card counting propperly. Alot op peaople say "yeah i can play blackjack" but dont know why the hit, stand or double on a paticular combination of cards.

Quick overview:
Generally black jack is Always in the favour of the casino by around 2% per deck, meaning if you play a whole deck yr going to be down 2% of yr initial stake. But you can implement a technique called basic strategy where as every combenation of cards which comes out has a pre-defined mathamatic set of rules it must follow.
For example. Dealer draws 7 and you cards total 14, it is mathematically advantegious for you to take a card. But if the dealer takes 4 and your toaol hand is 14 it is mathematically advantageous for you to stand on that hand because ithe odds are in favour of the dealer going bust.

All of this is worked out from statistics of which cards have been drawn out of the deck and which cards are left to be drawn. Then this changes again depending on how many decks are used.

Currently i have just about mastered basic strategy, it being second nature to hit, stand, double or split depending on what the dealer has. Currently im trying to learn the hi-lo count which means keeping track of how many low and high cards are delt during a shoe letting me know if there is more high or low value cards left in the shoe to be delt. (High cards are in the players favour). This is really, and i mean realy hard and frustrating to learn because you have to calculate basic strategy and keep count on choch cards are comming out! and im guessing that it will be a good few month before i am any where near begining to get a handle on it.

Has anyone else tried to learn blackjack in this way? the more and more i read on the subject and experiment with varying decks of cards, removing a number of high or low cards from the deck to experiment with the outcome, the more fascinating the whole thing is.

if yr interested i recomend:

http://www.bj21.comandhttp://www.bjmath.com

truly fascinating!!

The fact that in some games of Blackjack, there are multiple decks used, the strategies could be dispelled.

Personally, when playing with just one deck, I find counting the Aces and picture cards to be a good strategy.

Knowing the odds of drawing a picture card or an Ace can be advantageous.

No you can use vaying strategy charts for multiple deck games, the generic chart used today was derived fom a six deck game using over 1million computer simulated hands.

There's a series running on Sky at the moment entitled Greatest Gambling Scams which refers to card counting quite a lot.

In last night's programme they highlighted a team of students from MIT who were recruited to gamble in various Las Vegas Casinos using the counting process and were very, very successful. They varied the action between winning large sums with winning very small sums and losing a few dollars but still roused the suspicions of the Casino owners who engaged a firm of Private Investigators to check into the team members. They were rumbled when it was discovered that they only gambled at weekends and all had addresses in Boston. Checking the MIT yearbook showed all members of the team and they were banned from all the Las Vegas Casinos. This sounds rather harsh to me as they weren't using gaffed cards or gimmicking the equipment, just using a mental process to keep ahead of the game. Sadly, the Casinos want everyone e to play without such advantages which means they lose - a lot! The same program also referred to counting being done in a Casino in Madrid where the players were banned but took the matter to court. The Judge ruled that they had not broken any laws so the Casinos were ordered to lift the ban. I don't think I'd go back into a Casino after such a judgement - if anyone's seen the movie 'Casino' they'll know what happened to Joe Peschi's character!

Didn't Derren Brown get banned from a Casino once by counting cards during a game of blackjack? I think that was a 4 deck game so it's certainly possible

Derren Brown has been banned from just about every casino for card counting. I'm c*** (not the best) at maths but have a good memory but I doubt I could remember 52 different items for a whole deck of cards but its still interesting stuff

You dont have to remember all the cards to count them, thats a massive misconception, card counting involves giving the high cards (10, j, q, k, a) a value of -1 the low cards (2,3,4,5,6) a value of 1 and the middle cards (7,8,9) a value of 0, these values are added and subtracted depending which cards come out of the deck with the resultsnt number telling the counter what ratio of high or low cards are left in the deck.
Plus lots of practice practice practice.!!!!

If you try card counting in a casino, you are quite likely to get caught as they have learnt to watch for patterns of play that indicate that you are counting. A team at MIT actually managed to pull it off, but the team included a few hundered people ...

You can read about it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vegas_pr.html

Mandrake wrote:There's a series running on Sky at the moment entitled Greatest Gambling Scams which refers to card counting quite a lot.

In last night's programme they highlighted a team of students from MIT who were recruited to gamble in various Las Vegas Casinos using the counting process and were very, very successful. They varied the action between winning large sums with winning very small sums and losing a few dollars but still roused the suspicions of the Casino owners who engaged a firm of Private Investigators to check into the team members. They were rumbled when it was discovered that they only gambled at weekends and all had addresses in Boston. Checking the MIT yearbook showed all members of the team and they were banned from all the Las Vegas Casinos. This sounds rather harsh to me as they weren't using gaffed cards or gimmicking the equipment, just using a mental process to keep ahead of the game. Sadly, the Casinos want everyone e to play without such advantages which means they lose - a lot! The same program also referred to counting being done in a Casino in Madrid where the players were banned but took the matter to court. The Judge ruled that they had not broken any laws so the Casinos were ordered to lift the ban. I don't think I'd go back into a Casino after such a judgement - if anyone's seen the movie 'Casino' they'll know what happened to Joe Peschi's character!

I also saw this and cardcounting can get you banned from casinos. Tell me if I'm missing something but if your trying to figure odds in your head how is that cheating, or do casions not wnat to lost money so they ban you.

I didnt read mandrakes post last time, I typed the reply in earlier and forgot to submit it...

Card countinng is not illegal in casinos, but most casinos will throw you out and ban you if they suspect it. They have the right to remove anybody they wish without any reason given. Basically, they just dont want you winning more often than losing so throw you out.

casinos dont like loosing large amounts of money, just as it is perfectly legal to count cards, casinos have in every right to throw you out if your winning too much of their money. Not fair eh!!!

I remember reading The Newtonian Casino years ago. It's the story of a group of boffins who designed a computer to fit inside a shoe, and which could predict roulette numbers based on the taps made by the player's foot as input. Very clever stuff, that, but a dense read.

Mind you, there was a bookie on Mastermind last night who openly admitted that the odds are stacked in his favour. Hads I win, tails you lose.

well i guess if they were using more decks of card, couldnt they just divide the cards they count by the munber of decks? that would give you the same value as if you were playing with 1 deck.......juuuussst a suggestion lol

Ive counted cards a couple of times, not in casinos or nothing just when playing with a couple of mates. It works alot of the time, but as always it depends on chance still. Just because you count cards does not mean theres a sure chance of you winning all the time, you just have a greater advantage because you know the difference between how many high card theres are and how many low cards there are.

there's a little known principle of the chances of drawing Ten or higher every five cards...very useful...

as for card counting, a good exercise i found is to play games of "Chase the Lady" (you'll have to look up the rules) with three people (including yourself), its a very good way of learning to count cards...been doing it for years...i can handle 2-3 packs fairly well...

yes, casinos use 4 or more packs mixed together, but you just have to visually "mark" each set in your mind if you see what i mean...