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When it is impossible that certain cards be dealt to you, the original composition or “balance” of the full deck(s) is obviously skewed. A particular card can no longer appear completely at random. This situation could easily happen, for example, if you were to observe that all four Aces had already been used up in a single-deck game. Your chances of being dealt a blackjack before the cards were shuffled again would be zero. Not an ideal situation, of course. Also, you could not receive any soft hands, which normally represent big gains for the player (they gravitate toward winning totals about 65% of the time). Nor could you hope to split Aces, your most advantageous of all possible splits.
With the Aces gone, the player is at nearly a 3% disadvantage in a single-deck game, as seen in Thorp’s table.
Although obviously possessing no intelligence per se, the deck in the above example nevertheless must “remember” that the Aces are no longer available and that none can appear before the next shuffle. If you had noted this fact, you would have a definite advantage over other players who were not watching the cards as carefully. You would, therefore, likely decide to place a smaller than usual bet for your next hand, because of this “privileged” information concerning the lesser likelihood of your winning with a blackjack. Another example of the counter’s edge over the casino, this kind of thinking represents one of the cornerstones of all counting systems, i.e., risking less when the odds of winning are obviously reduced.
At the other extreme, if you were to note that no Aces had been seen in a game, and the last hand before the shuffle was about to be dealt, you would be wise to increase your wager at that point, since your odds of getting a blackjack on the next hand would be much greater than immediately after a shuffle. The dealer, too, will have the same increased likelihood of a blackjack, but your blackjack pays you 3 to 2, while his wins only even money; therefore, you would generally wind up ahead under such circumstances. All other factors being equal, counters wager in a similar fashion; they place larger bets when the probability of winning is greater.
Suppose that the first ten cards that come out in a single-deck game were all painted. The chance that the very next card to be dealt would also be a face card is not as good as it was originally, since the number of available T’s is now very much depleted. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a face card could not appear immediately, just that it probably would not. Similarly, if you saw that the first ten cards were all of low rank, the odds would be diminished that the very next card to appear would also be a small one. Since every deck is composed of a finite number of cards of each rank, the probability of any particular card being dealt at any specific time is entirely dependent upon which cards still remain to be chosen from the available pool.
Bet more when your chances of winning are greater, and less (or nothing at all) when the odds favor the casino. This is the counter’s credo. The more favorable your odds, the more money you can justifiably risk. This may sound like obvious advice, and it is certainly an ideal strategy, but the question now is this: How can even a counter know where the advantage lies, and how great it is, all the time? The answer: by simply developing accurate card-tracking abilities, which are well within the grasp of every motivated individual.
Playing skill, and only skill, forces the house to relinquish its edge in the game of blackjack. Remembering which cards appear during the course of normal play, adjusting the size of your bets up or down according to your advantage, and playing your hands in the best possible manner these are the skills of a counter. They can make virtually anyone a big winner. With practice, you too can be a participating member of this elite and very successful group.
“Counting” or “tracking” or “casing” all refer to methods by which one takes note of the cards as they are used up in a game. Hopefully, you now possess an inkling of how a counter makes use of this data to calculate the relative player advantage (or disadvantage) that exists at any given time during the game. This “extra” information allows the card-tracker to better determine the appropriate size of his next bet and to range it accordingly. If you are playing at a $2 minimum table, for example, you can normally change your bets up and down between $2 and $10 in direct proportion to the advantage you enjoy, without drawing undue attention from the dealer or floor personnel. The larger the unit bets, however, the more careful you have to be in ranging your wagers.
Depending upon which cards have already been exposed during the game, a counter may also wish to modify BS plays, since the probability of drawing certain cards is no longer completely random. Similarly, the card-counting player exploits the use of all proposition bets (i.e., surrender, doubling, splitting, and insurance) to full advantage in order to make the overall odds lean even more significantly in his favor. In this way, a card-counting system rewards the tracker’s skill by providing the essential data necessary to increase winning opportunities.