Card Counting Tutorial Day 1

Hang in there over the ten days and 2 - 4 days of live Q&A and you'll be ready to try it in a casino.

Blackjack Tutorial

Going over everything last night and making an outline, I learned it will take 10 sessions to teach you everything you need to know to succeed as a casino card counter. I would like to add, at the end of the 10 sessions, a few days of a live Q&A where subscribers can ask for clarification on some difficult concepts to everyone’s benefit. We’ll want to do this on video so I can show you with cards at that point. If anyone knows how to set those things up, please let me know..

Note: I always refer to dealers as “she”. Dealers can be men or women but I prefer to play with women. There is a practical reason for this. Young attractive women get hired to attract male gamblers to the casino that hired them and they are less likely to cheat; certainly, less likely to cheat than 50-year-old men who have been there for 20 years.

Also, because of the nature of the subject matter, some of it at first will require background that you don’t have yet if you have never played “21”. This happens because there is no perfect place to start. Teaching this goes in a circle and you just have to jump in somewhere. Once the basics are known, we can build on that in a more linear fashion. But I recommend that you come back to read Day 1 after you have the basics down. It will seem much simpler then and you will pick up a few things you may have missed the first time around.

The advanced stuff is composed of a list of tips that will help you make this work in a real casino. If you can master this, you will make money. The amount depends mostly on how much you vary your bets and your ability to find tables with favorable rules while escaping detection by the pit bosses and “eye in the sky”.

In the early 1980s, I won money at a rate of around $200 per hour at the tables actually playing (not walking from casino to casino), betting $2 - $20 per hand. Losing over a whole day was rare; maybe one day in ten and my losses were very limited. Always under $200. Average days were $600 - $800, playing 3 to 4 hours (It’s hard to play more than 5 hours in a single day. Some days, betting wildly after I started counting before I sat down, I had days of $1500 to $2000. This was all 40 years ago. You might triple this if you look at deflation of our currency over that time if you are willing to wager more.

My fellow physics major and study partner from MIT, Eric Shortt, and I, calculated that if we took 200 times our minimum bet and varied our wagers in a ratio of no more than 1 to 5, we would have a greater than 99% chance of increasing our money indefinitely and a less than 1% chance of losing our entire stake. That’s why we took $450 each to Reno that first time in the casino, betting from $2 to $10. Later, we upped it to $2000 when we started wagering from $10 to $50.

Remember, even if you’re counting cards, a particularly unlucky run of cards can wipe you out. As long as you take 200x your minimum bet, the chances of that happening are less than 1 in 100.

I will be asking you to read chapter 3 in my book “STRIKING IT RICH: Golf in the Kingdom With Generals, Patients and Pros” soon, as part of your training. It’s a short chapter that tells the story of our first time trying this in a real casino. (I used it to show how playing professional golf is very similar to card counting except that you have to figure the odds yourself on the golf course. With card counting, you merely have to do what the computer-derived system tells you to do.[By the way, SIR is available for purchase. Just send me a check for $20. As a benefit to subscribers, I’ll pay the postage]

Eric and I used the hardest system available at the time called the Beat the Dealer system. You are going to learn a much simpler system. It’s easier to count and your memorization duties will be much, much simpler. You won’t have to do long division to the hundredths digit either, don’t worry!

I called the Chapter you’re going to read, “The World’s Biggest ATM” and as I said near the end of it, “… casinos are the world’s biggest automatic teller machines, and you don’t need a credit card.”

Day 1

In Blackjack (BJ), everyone plays against the dealer. Your goal is to draw cards with a value as close to 21 as possible without going over. Getting a total of 21 is the best you can do. A hand that goes over 21 is called a “bust” as in “You busted”. Each player has to beat the dealer's hand to Win. You do this in one of two ways: 1) Have a card total greater than that of the dealer without going over 21 or 2) Win by the dealer busting. A tie is called a “push” and no money changes hands.

 When you approach a casino blackjack table, look for the minimum and maximum bet placard. {Think about why the tables place a limit on how much you can bet] This little placard is on every table and will not only display the minimum and maximum bets, it will display the rules for that table such as: “Doubling down allowed on hard totals of 10 and 11 only”, or “No soft doubling” or “May split Aces only once per hand”. These “table rules” will become very important to you as you learn more and more in this course because they will impact how much you can expect to win. The rules vary from casino to casino and from table to table. It behooves you to play at tables with the most favorable rules so it is a good habit to learn which rules are limiting and to avoid those tables. Generally, you want to sit at tables that restrict doubling down only minimally or not at all.

Some tables only have the minimum and maximum bets displayed. This means you can do anything within the rules of BJ.

SEEK OUT AND SIT AT THESE TABLES

For example, suppose you are dealt a “6” and “3” (suits don’t matter in BJ) and the dealer has a “5” as her up card. Suppose also, that your count is very high positive (this will mean more to you when I teach you to count but for now, understand that it tells you there are many 10-value cards left in the unused portion of the shoe (of which the dealer’s hole card is one). This means there is a better-than-average chance she has a ten-valued card under her 5 for a total of 15 and a better-than-average chance that she will draw a 10 to it (because she must hit when her total is 16 or less). This will cause her to bust which means you will win. (A high positive count also means there are few 2 – 6-valued cards she would like to draw because she doesn’t want to bust and every card of value 2 – 6 will give her a hand of 17 – 21 which is good for her.

You’d like to double down on that total of 9 you were dealt, wouldn’t you, so you could get one of those plentiful 10s dealt to you for a total of 19 with her having a 5 showing. You’re probably going to win a hand like that 80+% of the time so you’d like to be able to double your bet before she hits you and hits herself. If that table restricts you to doubling down on hard totals of 10 and 11 only, you wouldn’t be able to. IF POSSIBLE, AVOID TABLES THAT RESTRICT YOUR FREEDOM TO DOUBLE DOWN ON ANY TOTAL.

 Let’s Play

Find an appropriate bet-limit table. You don’t want to sit at a table with a minimum so high that you’re uncomfortable betting ten times that much because there are plenty of times you are going to need to do that to make counting cards pay off. [MUCH more on this later].

Sit down and wait for the current hand to be finished. It’s best to sit down when she is between shoes so when you start counting, you’re doing so before any cards have been played. Before she starts the shoe, place your cash on the table in front of you (NOT in the "betting circle” or "betting square", where you place your bets) – and say, "Change, please.” The dealer will understand this to mean you want to join the game. The dealer will then take your cash, count it, spread it on the table so that the Pit Boss can see it, announce the amount, and convert your cash into an equivalent amount of playing chips, in various denominations. She probably won’t give you any chips valued at less than the table minimum. For $200 at a $5 minimum table, she might give you ten $5 chips, five $10 dollar chips, and five $20 chips.

 Place a bet with the chips in the designated area. The dealer then begins the game. Get ready to start counting every single card that hits the table whether directed at you or any other player at the table. You will have to do this inconspicuously. Don’t bob your head every time a card lands.

It’s much easier to count if you are playing alone (and advantageous to play alone for other reasons) so I recommend you do this whenever you can; especially at the beginning. You usually can find an empty table with favorable rules at 9 in the morning because there aren’t many people in the casinos then. You usually cannot at night because the tables are full of players.  (Casinos never close. They stay open 24 hours, 364.4 days a year. If they ever closed, they’d be violating the Cardinal Rule of Casino Management:

“THOU SHALT NOT, IN ANY WAY, DISRUPT THE NATURAL AND SPONTANEOUS FLOW OF CASH FROM PLAYER TO CASINO.”

Depending on how many people are playing, the dealer will deal each player two cards (face up). The dealer will also deal herself two cards, one face up, and one face down. (The dealer’s faced down card is referred to as the "hole card" because the back of it is covered by her up card. This keeps players from cheating. Cheaters could identify the hole card’s value by putting fingernail crimps on the back sides of those cards. In fact, they won’t even let you touch the cards any more. [If you aren’t allowed to touch the cards, why do they hide the hole card under the up card? Think about that one…]).

Once the cards are dealt to all the players, the dealer then looks to the first player on her left and moves in a clockwise circle allowing each successive player to make decisions regarding their hand.

The above photo shows a game in progress. Let’s go over it. The player on our far right (the dealer’s left) was dealt a 2 and a 3 and asked to be hit against the dealer’s up card of 6. He got a 9 for a total of 14. He hit this. (If he was counting, the count must have been very negative for him to do this). He got lucky and received a 6 for a total of 20 and stood. Then comes our turn in the center of the table. We got dealt a 3 and a 7 which is a great hand against an up card of 6. We doubled down and shoved out the amount equal to our original wager and doubled our original bet. According to the rules, we get one and only one more card. We got a 9 for a total of 19. Now the dealer must play out her hand.

She flips over her hole card and gets an Ace for soft 17. She plays on . There must be a table rule telling her to hit soft 17. (This rule varies. Sometimes the dealer must stand on soft 17). [Ponder this: Is hitting on soft 17 a help to the player or the casino? Why?]

She hits her hard 7 and gets a 5 for a total of 12. Since this is less than 17, she hits again and gets an Ace for 13, then a 3 for a total of 16. She must hit again. The two players are anxious. If she draws a 5, she will beat both players.

She draws a queen and busts. Both players win.

DAY 1 ends