Gambling Streaks and the Standard Deviation, Part 4: Blackjack Card Counting

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This video shows a deviation expectation table for a blackjack card counter. The table is only a rough approximation of actual card counting play. For one thing, blackjack isn’t an even-payoff game. The blackjack hand pays 1.5 to 1, and splitting pairs or doubling down increases your risk relative to your initial bet.

Furthermore, the player advantage is not a fixed 0.6 percent, but varies as the cards are dealt out, and the remaining composition of the deck changes. The card counter bets more when the deck is favorable and bets less when it’s unfavorable, so the house edge and bet sizes are constantly changing.

Nevertheless, this approximate model gives you some idea of what can happen in card counting sessions, where the player has an overall tiny advantage. The model is an even-payoff game with a constant player edge of 0.6 percent.

This video is the fourth in a series, which starts here:

Gambling Winning and Losing Streaks, and the Standard Deviation

The video concludes with some information for casino managers. Here are some related videos:

How to Identify Card Counters (without counting cards yourself):

What to Do About Card Counters:



Source: YouTube

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Gambling Streaks and the Standard Deviation, Part 4: Blackjack Card Counting

5 thoughts on “Gambling Streaks and the Standard Deviation, Part 4: Blackjack Card Counting

  1. Great info and well put to the casinos and pit bosses. Banning card counting is ridiculous – there are other counter measures casinos can employ to limit the card counters advantage.

  2. I got backed off tonight at virgin river in mesquite nv. Never played more than $50 and for just over an hour. Ended up $20 up when they did it.. and they did it right at the table, in front of the other players. It surprised me how they went so cheap like this.

  3. You're right, card counting is pretty obvious when am wonging in and doing a high spread bet on high count, minimum bet on low count. What am winning is incomparable to what my surrounding players are losing. I do lose when luck is just not kicking it for example 20 vs blackjack for the dealer. A few times in row can pretty much stop the night for me and winnings be zeroed out. Unless someone is doing huge spread in the thousands then you probably should bar him/her. If the casino is losing 20$ an hour due to a card counter, it's free advertisement really in it self. It really brings in the heat to the crowd when they see someone winning. Then again I don't think casino really cares, or maybe my plays are kind of bad.

  4. Hi G Chang,

    I watched your video about how you were sponsored in the 80s. I have a couple of non-counting, advantage play strategies that I would like to show investors/sponsors. Any suggestions as to where I can find such people I can demonstrate to? Thanks.

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