Deep within many suspicious gamblers is a belief that not only will their luck change but it will do so because the game will level itself out. What do I mean by this? Take a game of chance such as roulette. People often take the even bets such as Hi-Lo, Odd-Even or Red-Black. If the LCD read-out on the table shows an imbalance of reds, the player could be tempted to play black as it must be evening out sometime soon. The statistical answer to this is that the probability is exactly the same as the previous spin and the next and so on. This is often referred to as the Gamblers Fallacy, the odds of the game must be even, so they must be even soon. OK, lets take about 60 million plus spins of the wheel and we should see something close to equal distribution across all numbers and colours of the wheel. The larger the sample, the closer the distribution, unless there is a bias in the wheel, but more on that in another article.

So, in a game like roulette, the wheel has no memory and a lack of predictable result with manual tracking of the results. A game played from a deck of cards, or a shoe of cards, does have memory, ie you can see what has come out and how this will effect the residual of the cards. Over a shoe of perhaps 6 decks of cards, there may be some loading of the values of the cards that would favour later playing strategy, or not. A high proportion of low value cards that have been played, would indicate a higher proportion of high value cards later on, which is favourable to blackjack players. This means that there are higher chances of quality hands and in making more accurate prediction of insurance side bets. Does the house not share the advantage? No, because the player has more playing options, such as surrender, double down, not hitting, splitting etc.

Essentially the higher this perceived edge over the house, the higher the value of the chips in play to take advantage of the opportunity presented. None of this is going to have customers running away with the bank, very few have the mental agility and experience to be a risk to the house. The “count” is a simple sum taken from adding or subtracting based on the visible cards on the table. Most counts start at zero and you work from there. A basic count system is one called “Hi-Lo”. For each ace or ten value card, subtract 1. For 2-6, add 1. There are 5 minus and 5 plus values equalling zero, so this a “balanced” count. As you work through the cards, the number you calculate is the running count, or RC. As you are probably playing with more than 1 deck, you would need to try and divide this by the estimated number of remaining decks to get the true count, or TC. The TC is what you would then base the value of your next stake on.

Several things work against the card counter, apart from having problems with casino surveillance. To gain the maximum advantage from a game the counter requires several factors:

1 A shoe that is played as far as possible before shuffling. Many games are cut at 70-80% of cards played from the shoe.

2 A shoe. This may sound daft, but there is no edge to be gained with a continuous shuffler machine. However, many player don’t like this technology on the table plus the machines are very expensive.

3 A powerful count system. The better the system, the more the effects of played cards mirrors the potential advantage of the remainder of the shoe.

4 Total freedom of play. If the player can move their stakes up and down at their complete discretion, they can maximise their return.

5 Favourable rules. Splits, early surrender, insurance and double downs all can be used alongside a count.

6 Sobriety. The level of skill required to pull off effective card counting is contra to drinking.

If the casino can interfere with one or more of the above six, then the advantage could be lost.

More next time on camouflage and countermeasure.