Blackjack strategy VIII – more card counting
Card counting, as used by skilled and experienced blackjack players as a winning strategy is widespread a technique. It has been found that card counting is combined with basic strategy can give the best winning formula although such a combination is difficult to apply in real life game situations. However, if it is used, then the player can double down on more occasions if he has applied the card counting method and arrived at the conclusion that several ten-valued cards are still remaining to be distributed and hitting such a card would strengthen his hand value and make it a possibly winning one.
It may appear a strenuous activity to count all the cards but players are not required to memorize all cards that have been played and other easy systems can be utilized. So, the card counting blackjack player can devise the ingenious point system and assign it to the cards and just by keeping track of the points as the cards are dealt out he can maintain the technique.
It has been estimated that while basic strategy can reduce house advantage for casinos to almost nil if only a single card deck is used and lower it to less than 1% for multi-deck games, the house advantage against card counting players is also extremely less and ranges between zero to 2%. Sometimes casino houses use multiple card decks and deal out the cards from a shoe so that card counting can be minimized.
An interesting point to note which is advantageous for the players is that most places in the United States don’t consider card counting as a cheating technique and the gambling laws have legalized the use of this tactics. However, casino houses reserves the right regarding whether or not to prohibit gamblers from further playing if he engages in card counting and so it is advisable that the blackjack players using this tactics should not make it conspicuous and give the casino an excuse to disallow him.
