Counting Cards in Blackjack?

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Counting Cards in Blackjack

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He's like Rain Man except you can touch him and shite.

The dealers and pit boss will be totally cool with you staring at your black jack card counting app while you play

I tried once. I got all the way to 46 but then they shuffled.

The problem is the drunks that split 7s when the dealer has a bust card.

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The problem is most blackjack tables are 6 deck shoes and NO ONE can count a 6 deck shoe. If you're playing single or double deck it's much, much easier.

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While it may be frowned upon.

A player can request to know how many cards are left in a particular deck no matter how many decks are in the shoe.

If a dealer is asked, they will have to tell the player.

I am guessing by this post you have no shot

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I mean I understand the "method" and the "how"

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then why do you think this is a winning long term strategy? they have 6 and 8 deck shoes that make the counts not as meaningful and reliable. and the smaller deck shoes, if you can find them which is doubtful, don't have enough penetration to be useful. you're not the first person with this idea...if there was a place to find a countable game, it would have long been exploited, deemed unprofitable, and removed.

you're going to spend a lot of time learning your +1s, 0s, and -1s, and it's not going to amount to any more money. in fact, you'll probably lose, and you'll just go back to memorizing the basic strategy chart.

To answer your question, I don't know of any apps but then I did it before smartphones existed. I learned how by shuffling four decks and then just flipping each card over until I reached the end. You know how many of each card is in the deck, so you should know what your final count is. Keep doing this until you are flipping the cards as fast as you can and get the right number at the end.

If you just want to do it for fun, knock yourself out. But I really think counting only lessens your loss if you aren’t on a team. Your theoretical edge isn’t big enough to compensate for the fact that your bankroll is much smaller than the casino’s. The day will one day come when the count is really in your favor, you bet high amounts, and just by sheer luck will lose a long string anyway and be unable to continue. Someone did a paper on this in the Journal of Financial Economics (believe it or not) showing that you really need a 58% edge or more to beat the casino, and counting won’t get an individual there.

Fact is, plenty of dealers count themselves and know perfectly well what you’re doing. So long as your min bet is under $25 or so and your bet ratio isn’t ridiculous they’re fine with it, because you’re still going to lose.

A good team can win, but the eye in the sky watches very carefully for this sort of thing. The reason we know about the MIT team is, of course, that they were caught.
There are computers you can wear on your person that promise a 60% or more edge. But if you get caught that’s a fairly serious crime in most jurisdictions, and even if not the casino will simply refuse to let you play if you keep winning.

There’s a guy who was famous awhile back for winning ludicrous sums in Atlantic City but he was a big fish who was able to negotiate special rules and was better at estimating their impacts that the casino statisticians. Definitely an outlier.