car counting is a technique that you can use to win at Blackjack a proficient card counter or team can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour playing Blackjack you might have heard a card counting from movies like 21 and assume that it was dying out due to facial recognition technology or something like that although casinos do try and stop car counters I can tell you from personal experience that measures like facial recognition technology or kicking out card counters aren't nearly as effective as the casinos would like you to believe even in 2021 card counting is still very much alive there are lots of videos on the internet explaining how to count cards but most of them are greatly oversimplified and you're only left sort of understanding how card counting Works in this video I'm going to give you a proper Deep dive explaining exactly how car counting works not holding anything back but before I do I want to quickly let you know about Blackjack apprenticeship. com Blackjack apprenticeship. com is the place to learn how to count cards in this video I'm to explain exactly what you need to know but BGA accelerates your learning process they've got trading software which tells you exactly when you make a mistake they've got video courses and they've got the best darn Blackjack Forum in the world I wouldn't be counting cards without it I genuinely without being over dramatic there are few things in my entire life that I would recommend so highly as blackjackapprenticeship.
com if you do check it out please use the affiliate Link in the description as it helps the channel understanding Blackjack you probably know the basics of how to play Blackjack but you might not be aware of the one element of the game that makes it beatable the one thing that sets it apart from other gambling games that you can exploit to win money before I can explain that let's quickly go over how Blackjack is played blackjack is a game played by you alone against the dealer these days Blackjack is normally played with a few decks of cards shuffled together and rounds will be played until you're near the end of the shoe where the cards will be reshuffled and you start again the player is dealt two cards and the dealer is dealt two cards only one of which you get to see at first to win you simply need to have a higher hand total than the dealer without it being higher than 21. picture cards are worth 10 and aces are worth either 1 or 11 whichever gives you slash the dealer the better hand you act first having the option to hit requesting another card from the dealer or to stand if you're happy with the total that you have you can hit as many times as you like but be careful because if you go over 21 you bust and you immediately lose the hand after your turn it's the Dealer's turn to play they aren't making any decisions themselves they must keep hitting until they have a hand total of 17 or higher you win the hand if your total is higher than the dealers or the dealer has gone bust they win the hand if their hand total is higher than yours or if you've gone bust simple there are also a couple of special plays you can make you can double allowing you to double your bet and receive one final card or if you have two cards the same value you can split adding another bet the same as your previous and turning your one hand into two hands there's also Blackjack if you get a 10 value card and an ace then you win not the usual one-to-one payout but three to two giving you 1. 5 x your bet as profit nice in some casinos they will pay you six to five for blackjack which is terrible it's an awful thing that they do just to take more money from you don't play those games like all casino games the house has an edge AKA an unfair advantage in blackjack it's that you have to go first when you go first you might go bust and if you go bust you lose the hand it doesn't matter that the dealer might have gone bust themselves or had a bad hand if you go bust you've lost your money that's it the dealer going last gives them just enough of an advantage that over the course of your Blackjack playing life you're probably gonna lose money so how can you win what's the floor in this game what makes Blackjack beatable let's imagine a simple fictional gambling game here's a deck of cards 26 cards are red 26 cards are black the deck is shuffled you bet 100 and if the top card is black you win 100 if it's red you lose it was black you won nice one here's a hundred dollars let's Shuffle the deck again same game what are the odds that the top card is black given that it was black the last time it's still 50 50.
even if we played this game 100 times in a row and each time the top card happened to be black the odds of it being black in the next game are still exactly 50 50. that's because the deck doesn't have a memory it doesn't care what the deck was before because it's been shuffled Fate has been reset it's really hard to grasp this because it feels like surely if it's been black 100 times in a row it's time for it to be read if we did play this game a hundred million times it's very likely that by the end about half the time the top card will have been black and about half the time the top card will have been red but in the short term each individual round is still independent from the previous so it's still 50 50. as a side note roulette wheels often have this little screen which show you the history of the roulette wheel that's to encourage this flaw in human psychology you get to see it's been black the past 10 times in a row to encourage you to make a wager even though the history of the wheel makes no difference back to our little car game same game but we're going to change one element this time after you've placed your bet and the top card is revealed it's not shuffled back into the deck for the next round we actually take it out and get rid of it this changes everything because now if there's a red card missing there's more black cards left in the deck which means there's a slightly higher chance that the top card next time will be black if we keep playing and every round the card is removed there might be a point later on where there's actually a lot of black cards left in the deck and barely any red ones and there's a very high chance of the next card being black and if you are able to keep a mental tally of how many black cards were left there'd be times when it'd be super likely that a black card is an X instead of betting a hundred dollars maybe you'd bet a thousand dollars and sure you won't be right every single time but you'll be right most of the time and that is all it takes to make a lot of money playing this game unfortunately no sane Casino would offer this game but that's okay because this is the exact principle we can use to win at Blackjack Blackjack normally has a few decks of cards shuffled together and the card counter will keep a mental tally of what cards have been played giving them a good indication of what cards are left similar to the red black game if there are a lot of high value cards like tens and Aces left in the deck then the player is actually more likely to win than the dealer a car counter will bet more when they're more likely to win and bet a small amount when they're less likely to win they won't win every time but they'll win enough times to make a big profit Blackjack has a memory before you can count you must know how to play keeping track of what cards have been played is only useful if you can actually play Blackjack well it doesn't matter how good you are at counting cards if you hit when you have a 20 or if you double your hard 15 you're going to lose a lot of money the first thing every aspiring car counter must do is Master basic strategy this is the most important step everything else will crumble if you do not get this step down people have had computers play millions and millions of blackjack hands and through trial and error they figured out the best way to play every single hand combination there's no room for debate in Blackjack it's a purely mathematical game for example if you have a hard 15 and the dealer has a six as their odd card you should stand every single time it doesn't matter if you have a really good feeling that a six is coming next you should stand basic strategy is a system that you have to memorize and know perfectly you must know basic strategy so well that you don't have to think about it because when you're counting cards you're going to be doing a lot of thinking basic strategy can be a bit of a pain to memorize as some of the plays aren't intuitive I frequently play blackjack with players on the same table as me that will actually tell me off for making the wrong move I've even had dealers tell me that's not basic strategy when I know it absolutely is don't let others tell you what to do so step one memorize basic strategy it's not fancy it's not particularly fun but it's the foundation and you need to know it perfectly step two the running count there are different types of card counting system in this video we're focusing on the most popular high low in high low each card in the deck is assigned a point score two through six are worth plus one seven eight nine are worth zero so they're ignored and tens and aces are worth minus one point all a car counter is doing is that whenever a card is played they're keeping a running total of the point score for example let's go through a few cards we start on zero a six is worth plus one so now we're on one a five is worth plus one so now we're on two a picture is worth minus one so now we're back to one a ten is worth minus one so now we're back on zero a seven is worth zero so we ignore it and eight is worth minus one so now we're on minus one a card counter counts every card that they see come out of the shoe it doesn't matter if it's your card the dealers card or the player next to you every single card is counted to make sure you don't forget the count you can repeat it in your head again and again I've actually had times when I've left the casino and I'm still repeating the count from the last game because this process becomes so automatic sometimes it's hard to stop if you're not repeating the count again and again in your head you'll be surprised at how easy it is to forget the count completely for Speed and ease a counter will often not start counting the cards until the second card for each hand is being dealt that means if there's a plus one card and a minus one card on top of each other you can just ignore that completely instead of going plus one minus one in your head a quick tip when you're in a negative count instead of saying negative one negative one negative one it's much quicker if you just shorten that down to N1 for negative one or D1 for down one which is what I personally use or M1 for minus one shorting it down just makes it easier a proficient counter has no trouble keeping the running count and playing basic strategy at the same time without making any mistakes step three true Count conversion imagine you're going fishing let's say I've told you that there are two pawns you can fish in and one Pond has ten fish in it and the other Pond has 20 fish in it which Pond would you rather fish in presumably the one with 20 fish in it right well what if I told you that the pawn that has 10 fish in it is really really small and the pond with 20 fish in it is absolutely huge you'd probably change your answer even though there are more fish in the big pond your odds of actually catching one after smaller than in the other pond fish to Pond ratio is important it's a similar thing in card counting you've been keeping track of the running count how many fish there are but now you need to gauge the so-called true Count which is your fish to Pond ratio only when you know that can you judge if it's a good time to bet big or to fish the pond in blackjack is how many decks are left in the shoe as I mentioned before Blackjack is normally played with multiple decks of cards shuffled together so the first thing that you should do when you get to the table is gauge how many decks are in play you can do this pretty easily by just seeing all of the decks stacked on top of each other with practice you can just look at it and know but it's also not very suspicious to just ask the dealer how many decks are this and they'll tell you as you play Blackjack you keep the running count but you also keep track of how many decks of cards are left to be played the easiest way to do this is just to look at the discard tray and judge how many cards are there if you're playing a six deck game and you look over at the discard tray and see that there's about a deck there then you know that there are five decks remaining this is a lot easier than what people would intuitively do which is try and peek how many cards are in the shoe there are different training drills that you can do to learn deck estimation but it basically just comes down to looking at a pile of cards thinking that's about two decks and then checking if you're right many card counters will actually estimate to the nearest half deck or even quarter deck which gives them more precise information now we get to the next major step in car counting which is true Count conversion or in fish ponds terms figuring out how likely you are to catch a fish let's say you're counting cards in a six-stack game and you've got a running count of 12.
you look over to the discard tray and you see that there are two decks in the train well it's a six-step game so you know that there are four decks remaining to figure out the true Count you simply divide the running count by the amount of decks remaining so 12 divided by 4 is 3 so it's a true three now I know a lot of you are like odd division anything but division don't worry it's easy division we actually round things so if it's a running 15 and there are four decks remaining it's still a true three because it's not quite a true four we cut off the decimal figure and honestly on big counts you can always take a second and secretly count it on your fingers underneath the table trust me the division isn't difficult and I'm someone that hates division step 4 make tons of money now you've got that true Count that magic number what is it what does it mean how do you use it well it's pretty simple in most blackjack games playing basic strategy at a true one you have the advantage hooray and that Advantage increases to a point by about 0. 5 at every true Count and if you think that that Advantage is small it is it is tiny but that is all you need to make a lot of money from casinos you simply have to bet big when you have the advantage and that's more when you don't and you have to repeat that as often as possible to overcome any potential negative outcomes in the short term in other words even if the pond has a lot of fish you're not going to catch a fish every time and sometimes the fish might catch you you won't win every hand you won't win every session but you'll win more than you'll lose and make money step 5 bonus make more money doing very little extra work remember how I told you about basic strategy the optimum place to make during every hand combination well there are actually a few modifications you can make to that strategy depending on the count for example normally you should hit a 16 versus a 10. but if the running count is in the positive it's actually smarter to stand on that hand learning what we call deviations which there are a ton of but there's 18 that give you the biggest benefit can actually increase your earnings playing Blackjack by 20 to 40 percent not bad for just a little bit more memorization and let's be honest at this point you're pretty well practiced at memorizing charts there is also nothing more fun than splitting tens or doubling a soft 20 moves that you would normally never make people think you're absolutely insane step 6 the most important step of all not going broke by now you know that when counting cards you only have a tiny Edge over the house so if you've got five thousand dollars worth of money dedicated to playing Blackjack and then a true one you start betting a thousand dollars a hand you're gonna go broke blackjack players have to carefully calculate their bet spread which is what you bet at each true count your risk of Ruin which is your chance of losing it all and your rounds per hour as well as a bunch of other stuff many car counters will master all the other steps and then not do this step properly and lose all their money it is to me the most tedious and boring and confusing part of the whole Blackjack process is fearing this stuff out but luckily at Blackjack apprenticeship.
com they've got software which just crunches all these numbers for you and it makes it so easy I cannot imagine how tedious it would be for me to try and figure that stuff out myself but the software just does it all for you super easy so that's it a complete very thorough and accurate guide on how to count cards quick shout out to my buddy ultimate who looked through the script of this video to make sure that I didn't say anything stupid if this video has gripped you and you'd like to give it a shot I'd highly recommend Blackjack apprenticeship.
