In Part I, I talked about Basic Strategy being the foundation of being a card counter. I want to emphasize that you should continue to keep going through all the basic strategy decisions regularly. Just recite the entire chart from memory in the car once a day, and you won’t find yourself at the casino in the middle of a big hand wondering, “does A,7 hit or stand against 9?”.
In this post, I’m going to talk about practicing counting cards. Ben gives a thorough explanation in one of our videos. But I’m going to give a few tips.
1. The obvious first step is to take a deck of cards and count through it, one at a time. If you don’t end up at zero, then you did something wrong. This will help you in creating new associations with cards. When you’re playing at a table, you want to see a 4 of clubs primarily as “+1″, not as a 4 of clubs. After time, you’ll start to see cards simply as +1, 0, or -1.
2. Have an approach to cancel that is foolproof. I see lots of rookie card counters trying to get too fancy with cancellations at the table. They wait until all the cards are out on the table, and are cancelling a 10 on one side of the table with a 2 on the other side. This is going to result in problems sooner or later. So have a method that you do the same every time, and that leaves no room for error.
3. Practice by going into a casino and standing behind the table, and just watching. If you can get thru an entire shoe without dropping the count, missing a card, or getting mentally fatigued, then you’ll have a better time when you’re actually trying to play while counting.
4. Buy CVBJ. This software will tell you when you’re off on the count, and so much more.
Remember that being a 99% accurate card counter won’t cut it. But a 100% accurate card counter can turn the tables on the casino!
In part III, I’ll talk about practicing true count conversions.
Good post.
It seems that when counting decks the count rarely goes over 3 or 4 on average, maybe hitting 6 to 9 once every 5 or so decks. In a 6 deck shoe for instance, is it possible that you could go 3 or more runs before a good count comes up? It would be nice to see an illustration example of a game hand-for-hand with the count and where & how much to increase your bet up and down.
Clint,
Are you talking about the true count? Yeah, sometimes you’ll go multiple shoes without getting a good positive true count.
As far as betting, that’s the most involved thing to figure out. It depends on the game you’re playing, your bankroll size, the amount of risk you’re willing to play with, the table limits, etc.
The basic principle, though, is that you increase your bet as the true count goes up, and bet as little as possible when the player does not have the advantage.