Card counting basics
To have any chance of avoiding losing your money in casinos, you need to play with a minimum bet of 200 units. For example, if the base bet is $1, you will need at least $200 to play. With this amount of chips, there is a 40% chance of losing all your money.If you have $400, your chances of losing everything drop to 20%. With $500, they drop to 10%. With $1,000, they drop to 1%. This is why professional online blackjack players never play with less than $1,000.When counting cards, you must always pay attention to which cards have been dealt. Take the base value as 0 and always add or subtract 1 from it. If the card is a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, add 1 to your current count. If it is a 10, jack, queen, king or ace, subtract 1. If a 7, 8 or 9 is dealt, do not add or subtract 1; the value remains the same. When the dealer shuffles the deck again, reset the count to zero.Some casinos use multiple decks of cards to confuse card counters. If this is the case, you need to calculate your true count. This is done by dividing your current count by the number of remaining decks. For example, if your current count is 5 and there are 6 decks remaining, your true count is 5 ÷ 6 = 0.83.Once you have your true count, subtract one from it, multiply it by your base bet and place that amount. For example, if your true count is 4 and your base bet is $25, bet $3 x 25.Increase your bets as your true count increases, as this means there are more high cards than low cards among the undistributed cards, which favours you. Similarly, if your true count is negative, there are more low cards than high cards remaining, which is unfavourable, so reduce your bet.
