The game of blackjack dates back hundreds of years but the practice of card-counting – a strategy used by some players that allows them to determine when the remaining cards in the deck are statistically favorable, which allows them to gain an advantage over the house – developed only in the mid-20th century. Vegas casinos monitor blackjack players carefully and remove them from the casino floor if they suspect them of counting cards because the practice lowers the casino's house edge.

So it would seem that if you play blackjack online, where the casino can't watch your actions, you should be able to engage in the practice with impunity. Can you gain a statistical advantage by counting cards when playing at the online casino?

Take a break from online slots real money play and explore casino blackjack as you learn how to achieve the best results from your gaming fun.

Counting Cards

Card counting in blackjack is an advantage play technique that allows the gamer to gain a slight statistical edge over the casino. Card counters keep a running mental tally of cards played so that they can determine when the deck is rich in high-value cards (which are favorable to the player) and when there are fewer high-value cards. It's not about memorizing every card but rather about maintaining a constant running tally under pressure.

To be good at card counting in blackjack, you need a combination of specific mental skills, intense discipline, and a foundational mathematical understanding of the game.

Casinos began to encounter card counting in the 1960s after a book by Edward Thorp, Beat the Dealer, was published, establishing that perfect play, when combined with tracking the card composition, can flip the house edge into a player edge of around 0.5% to 1.5%.

Card counting gained attention in the latter 20th century after the 1988 movie, Rain Man was released. Rain Man featured Dustin Hoffman as an autistic savant who helped his brother beat the casino through his phenomenal memory of numbers. Rain Man was followed by other movies that featured card counting in the casino, including Rounders in 1998 and 21 in 2008. More recently, actor Ben Affleck was caught counting cards at the Hard Rock Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas and was banned from that casino.

Can You Do It?

If you're going to successfully count cards in a game of blackjack, you need a phenomenal memory, a knowledge of the basic strategy, phenomenal emotional control, and the ability to quickly and accurately estimate the situation with the deck every few minutes.

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It would seem that, if you have those abilities, you should be able to apply them to online blackjack games, but can you? In fact, it would actually seem easier to count cards online because when you're playing on an online platform you don't have to contend with land-based casinos' security and cameras, which are on a constant watch for card counters.

Is card counting effective in an online environment?

How Do You Count Cards?

Card counting involves tracking, in your head, the ratio of low to high cards that remain in a blackjack deck after every play.  The goal is to determine when the odds favor bets of higher amounts which allows you to gain an advantage over the casino. Card counters need to determine the advantage that the card has for the player.

They do this by assigning (mentally) values to the cards in their hand and comparing those values to the cards that the dealer holds. For example, if the player holds a high card (an Ace, face card or a 10) it is considered favorable because it increases chances of hitting a blackjack. Low cards (2s to 6s) are regarded as being more favorable to the dealer.

There are different systems for card counting but in the end, all of them focus on those basic principles. Card counting is banned by almost all casinos, but it's not illegal and therefore, not prosecutable. Casinos are allowed to exclude card counters when they are caught.

Online Card Counting

Vegas and other brick-and-mortar casinos identify card counters by monitoring their behavior. So it's possible to beat the house odds when playing online, right?

Online card counting is tricky and presents a number of challenges.

  1. If you're playing online, you are probably playing a blackjack variation where multiple decks of cards are being used. When you have several decks of cards, it's much more difficult to keep an accurate count of which cards are still in the shoe.
  2. These days, online casinos are better able to detect the use of card counting techniques through the use of various AI software systems that can identify wins that defy accepted odds or that come too close together. Like land-based casinos, online casinos have policies that prohibit the use of strategies like card counting that can allow a player to gain an edge and have protocols in place that allow them to exclude such players.
  3. Unlike land-based casino blackjack, where you play against a live dealer, online blackjack is powered by a Random Number Generator. By shuffling and dealing the decks after each hand, the RNG software can guarantee that every deal is random and will never be connected to any previous deal. Card counting techniques cannot work in such circumstances.
  4. There's little time to do the mathematical calculations needed to count cards when you're playing in a fast-paced online environment.

Due to the use of shuffling methods, online casino monitoring software and RNGs, it's basically impossible to count cards when playing online. To make your Blackjack gameplay more effective, it's advised to learn the Basic Blackjack Strategy and stick to its guidelines.

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