This card counting technique was brought to the big screen in the excellent movie Las Vegas 21, in which brilliant students from the prestigious American university Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more commonly known as MIT, fly to Las Vegas to try to hit the jackpot at the blackjack tables. In this film, the students and their blackjack instructor are presented as math prodigies.
Of course, before you go in blind, you have to go through the theory. You need to learn how the strategy of counting cards during games to determine the house edge works, so you can apply it and know how to count cards in blackjack. If you have a couple of hours to spare, we recommend watching the movie Las Vegas 21, which shows how the MIT group of players teaches its members how to count cards.
To get a general idea of how to count cards in blackjack, let’s start with an overview
The strategy, as you will see in our article, is quite simple but it takes a lot of practice, so you have to play and play again to get the mechanism to work in your mind.
On the surface, the method is very simple. It involves counting the cards played during the game to determine the cards remaining in the shoe. This is done by assigning a number of points to a card or group of cards and subtracting or adding them together as the cards come out of the shoe. The player has to mentally count and decount the cards coming out of the shoe, while remaining focused on the game. Based on the calculations, the player will be able to determine when he can increase his bet at will.
Let’s take a closer look at the most common blackjack card counting technique
The card counting technique has variants that we will introduce to you as well, but here is the most commonly used of them. Again, it’s no more complicated than that, it just takes understanding and application: we’re sure you’ll love the concept.
Let’s take a closer look at how to count blackjack cards like a real pro: cards 2-6 are worth 1 point, 7-9 are worth 0 points, 10, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces are worth -1 point. So each time you have to add or subtract the value of the cards coming out of the shoe.
So far, nothing very complicated. For example, if I have a 7 and a 3 in a hand, my total will be 1 point. The player should bet when his blackjack card count is highest. The reason for this is that small cards are worth 1 point and big cards – 1. If the total card count is high, it means that a lot of small cards have already been dealt out, so the player has a better chance of seeing big cards in the remaining cards in the shoe.
