Skip to content

Categories:

Five’s in Chemin de Fer

[ English ]

Card Counting in twenty-one is really a way to increase your odds of winning. If you’re good at it, it is possible to truly take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters increase their wagers when a deck rich in cards that are advantageous to the player comes around. As a basic rule, a deck rich in 10’s is better for the player, because the croupier will bust extra typically, and the player will hit a black jack more often.

Most card counters maintain track of the ratio of superior cards, or 10’s, by counting them as a one or a minus 1, and then provides the opposite one or – 1 to the reduced cards in the deck. A number of techniques use a balanced count where the variety of minimal cards could be the same as the number of 10’s.

Except the most interesting card to me, mathematically, is the 5. There were card counting techniques back in the day that required doing absolutely nothing more than counting the number of fives that had left the deck, and when the 5’s were gone, the player had a major advantage and would elevate his bets.

A very good basic technique player is getting a ninety nine point five % payback percentage from the casino. Each 5 that’s come out of the deck adds point six seven per cent to the player’s expected return. (In an individual deck game, anyway.) That means that, all other things being equivalent, having one five gone from the deck offers a player a modest benefit more than the house.

Having 2 or three 5’s gone from the deck will basically give the player a fairly substantial advantage more than the betting house, and this is when a card counter will normally raise his wager. The problem with counting five’s and nothing else is that a deck very low in five’s occurs pretty rarely, so gaining a big benefit and making a profit from that situation only comes on rare situations.

Any card between 2 and eight that comes out of the deck raises the gambler’s expectation. And all 9’s. 10’s, and aces boost the gambling den’s expectation. But eight’s and 9’s have very tiny effects on the outcome. (An 8 only adds point zero one % to the gambler’s expectation, so it’s usually not even counted. A 9 only has 0.15 per-cent affect in the other direction, so it’s not counted either.)

Comprehending the effects the lower and superior cards have on your anticipated return on a wager will be the initial step in learning to count cards and play blackjack as a winner.

Posted in Blackjack.


0 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

You must be logged in to post a comment.