Counting cards in black jack is a method to increase your chances of winning. If you’re good at it, you can truly take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters raise their wagers when a deck wealthy in cards that are beneficial to the gambler comes around. As a general rule, a deck wealthy in 10’s is far better for the player, because the croupier will bust more often, and the gambler will hit a black-jack far more often.
Most card counters keep track of the ratio of high cards, or ten’s, by counting them as a one or a minus 1, and then gives the opposite 1 or minus one to the reduced cards in the deck. A few systems use a balanced count where the variety of lower cards may be the same as the amount of 10’s.
Except the most interesting card to me, mathematically, would be the 5. There were card counting methods back in the day that engaged doing absolutely nothing far more than counting the number of fives that had left the deck, and when the 5’s were gone, the gambler had a big benefit and would elevate his bets.
A very good basic technique gambler is acquiring a ninety nine point five per-cent payback percentage from the casino. Every 5 that’s come out of the deck adds 0.67 per cent to the gambler’s anticipated return. (In a single deck game, anyway.) That means that, all things being equivalent, having one five gone from the deck gives a player a tiny advantage over the casino.
Having 2 or three five’s gone from the deck will basically give the gambler a pretty considerable advantage over the casino, and this is when a card counter will typically raise his bet. The dilemma with counting 5’s and nothing else is that a deck low in 5’s occurs pretty rarely, so gaining a major advantage and making a profit from that scenario only comes on rare instances.
Any card between two and 8 that comes out of the deck increases the player’s expectation. And all nine’s. 10’s, and aces enhance the gambling establishment’s expectation. But 8’s and nine’s have quite modest effects on the outcome. (An eight only adds 0.01 per-cent to the gambler’s expectation, so it’s normally not even counted. A 9 only has point one five % affect in the other direction, so it’s not counted either.)
Understanding the results the very low and high cards have on your anticipated return on a bet is the initial step in learning to count cards and wager on pontoon as a winner.