If you can tell a face card from a small card, you could become a card-counter.
If you can add one and one in your mind, you could become a card-counter. If you can subtract one from two, you could become a card-counter.
Counting cards in blackjack sounds more difficult than it is. Popular culture would have you believe counters must be savants, as in "Rainman," or math geniuses like the MIT team in "21."
Anyone can learn to count cards. The secret to doing it successfully at a casino is having the discipline to keep an accurate count, to raise or lower bets accordingly and to have a bankroll that gets you through the inevitable losing streaks.
Card-counting is legal in Pennsylvania as long as the counter does not use a device, the Gaming Control Board said.
Card-counters mentally track the number of high-value and low-value cards as they are dealt.
If more low-value cards have been exposed, the rest of the deck has a surplus of face cards and aces, tipping the odds to the players' favor. If more face cards and aces have been dealt, the remainder has a surplus of small cards, giving the house a greater edge.
Learning to count cards takes hours of practice. But the effort can pay off because blackjack is fundamentally differently from every other casino game. In craps, roulette, slot machines and other games, what happened in the last round has no influence on what happens the next. Each roll of the dice or spin of the roulette ball is an independent event.
Even if the roulette ball has landed on black three times in a row, the odds of it landing on black in the next roll are unchanged: 18 chances out of 38 slots in the wheel.
But in blackjack games that do not use a continuous shuffle machine, the ratio of high-value cards to small-value cards fluctuates as hands are dealt.
"Suppose you're playing in a single-deck game, and on the first round you see four aces. What are the chances of someone getting a blackjack on the second round?" blackjack author and instructor Henry Tamburin asked.
With no blackjack possible, an observant player would bet the minimum until the deck is reshuffled.
"Card-counting is a tool that tells you when the odds shift from the dealer to the player," said Tamburin, who helped develop a simplified "speed count" for players who want to take their game a step beyond basic strategy. "The odds are constantly changing, depending on what cards are played."
Many players mistakenly think card-counting is next to impossible when the casino deals from a six- or eight-deck shoe. Counting multiple decks is not much more difficult than counting a single deck.
That's because counters don't track individual cards.
A typical counting system assigns a value of plus-one to small cards and minus-one to face cards and aces. For every small card they see, counters add one to their "running count;" for every face card or ace, they subtract one.
When the count reaches a designated level, counters increase their bet because they have an advantage over the house. They don't win every big bet they make. Counters get their edge from betting more when the odds favor them and less when the odds favor the casino.
Before deciding to try card-counting, you should know and play basic strategy perfectly. Counters rely on basic strategy for almost all their decisions.
In a handful of situations, a counter might vary from basic strategy because of the preponderance of high or low cards remaining. For example, basic strategy says to never take insurance. A card counter would break that rule if he knows the deck is rich in face cards.
Tamburin said counters can gain an edge of 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent, depending on which system they use and their betting spread — the range between their minimum and maximum bets.
"In the long run, card counters will get the money," he said. "It's no different than the edge casinos have on players.
"We just turn the tables."
Question of the week
What's the most valuable card in the deck for a blackjack player?
There are two: aces and fives. Aces are most powerful for players, because they are necessary for a blackjack, which gets paid 3-to-2. Fives are most beneficial for the dealer, because they turn any "stiff" hand of 12 to 16 into a made hand. One of the earliest counting systems tracked only aces and fives.
Gambling numbers
• $90.20: Payback for every $100 played on slot machines in Pennsylvania during September
• 16-to-1: Odds of being dealt a pocket pair in Texas Hold 'Em
• 8-to-1: Odds of a Hold 'Em player with a pocket pair hitting trips on the flop
• 0.2 percent: Probability of being dealt three of a kind in three-card poker
• 2,598,960: Number of possible five-card hands that can be dealt in video poker
• Once per 40,000 hands: Average number of royal flushes for a video poker player
• Once per 21 hands: Average number of naturals for a blackjack player
Numbers rounded; source: Tribune-Review research
Additional Information:Henry Tamburin
Background : Blackjack player, author and instructor
Residence : Daphne, Ala., and Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas
Age : 66
Web sites : SmartGaming.com (covers all casino games) and BJInsider.com (focuses on blackjack; free three-month subscription available at site).
Favorite games : Blackjack, video poker
How he started: While a graduate student at the University of Maryland, he was assigned a paper on statistics and probabilities. He decided to focus on casino games and realized blackjack could be a beatable game.
