A
deck that has previously dealt a bunch of low
cards and is now rich with high cards (10, jack,
queen, king, ace) favors the player, while the
reverse, an excess of low cards remaining (2,
3, 4, 5, 6) favors the dealer.
At your kitchen table, Craig, with a shuffled
deck of cards, try this one-level count system
called Hi-Lo. At the outset, assign the following
count values to each card.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (small cards)....+1
7, 8, 9 (neutral cards)….. 0
10, J, Q, K, Ace (big cards)....-1
With a starting figure of zero, slowly peel off
one card at a time, adding to, or subtracting
from, the constantly shifting figure as each card's
value changes it.
On a live game, you would factor in possible discards,
then vary your bets from one hand to the next,
guided by the constantly updated imbalance figure,
which predicts whether the next hand will favor
you or favor the dealer.
Card counters, in theory, have an advantage varying
between 0.5% and 1.5% over the casino on a hand
held or shoe game. If you are playing at a casino
that offers only continuous shuffling machines,
you gain absolutely NO advantage by counting.
.
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