Why Does Blackjack Card Counting Not Work?

In the 1980s card counting was popular at the blackjack tables in land casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Many players, including the famous MIT blackjack team, made fantastic sums of money from this activity. The current generation of blackjack players has read about the successes of the card counters. It is natural that they too would be interested in blackjack card counting. However, card counting no longer works, whether in online casinos or land casinos. This article explains why. Before doing this, however, it is necessary to provide an overview of blackjack card counting.

Card counting tracks the relative proportion of low denomination cards compared to high denomination cards in the slot. If there are more low denomination cards in the slot, it means there are more high denomination cards remaining in the shoe. If there are more high-value cards in the slot, it means there are more low-value cards in the shoe. If there are even more high quality cards in the shoe, the situation is beneficial for the player. Therefore, you can increase the stakes and cash out the advantage. If there are more cards of low value in the shoe, the house has the advantage. Hence, you should lower the stakes and minimize the losses.

Blackjack in online casinos and land casinos is usually played with six or eight decks. A position of advantage or disadvantage is almost always reached after about half of the cards in the shoe have been dealt and discarded. And this is the source of the problem for blackjack card counters today.

In online casinos, every blackjack game is played from a complete set of decks. If you play single-hand games, the game ends with about ten cards. In multi-hand blackjack games, this can be up to thirty. After that, you’ll start with a full set of new decks. So the card count won’t even have any effect.

In the 1990s, land casinos made some changes in response to blackjack card counting. The most important of them was that they changed shoes after half the cards were dealt. This made the benefit of blackjack card counting so insignificant that the activity was no longer worth it. They also developed computerized mechanisms to keep track of players who may be counting cards. These players were first politely asked to leave the game. Otherwise, they threatened other means if they refused.

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