Why Card Counting Doesn’t Work Like
It Used To
Card counting worked for a while. Books have been written on the
escapades of card counters and teams of card counters. Ken Uston
spent half of his book, Million Dollar Blackjack, talking about his team
and his lawsuit in New Jersey. The M.I.T. team was the subject of Ben
Mezrich’s book, Bringing Down the House. Players from the team are
celebrities now, with appearances in the World Series of Blackjack.
Millions were won by these teams, and these are just the ones written
about. Countless others operated under complete anonymity.
Those days are probably over; just a memory of the glory days. They
have been hurt by casino countermeasures and security advances. The
casinos seem to have been just behind the counters and shuffle
trackers. Now they seem to be running beside them. In a few years
they will be running ahead of them.
Blackjack was predominately a game played with a single 52 card deck
prior to the card counting revolution. Early casino countermeasures
included the introduction of multiple deck blackjack. These games
included two deck hand tossed games, and four, six and eight deck
shoe games. The effect of having more decks smoothed out the
extremes where the count would be advantageous to one side or the
other. Today’s blackjack software can be used to test the effect of this
dilution. The house advantage tells a small part of the story. The
house advantage for single deck, 3:2 blackjack is about 0.2%. The
house advantage for a six deck shoe game is around 0.6 to 0.7%. At
first glance this seems like a very small change, so it shouldn't make
that big of a difference whether you play single deck or a shoe game.
The amount you win when counting cards should only decrease about
0.4%, right? WRONG! Look at the following simulation results. The
player advantage using a basic Hi-Lo system, 3:2 single deck with 100%
penetration under current Las Vegas rules, with a 1 to 6 unit spread
and a $5 unit yields:
Player Advantage: 3.476%
Hourly Win Rate: $39.99, or 8 units
Using the same rules, same penetration, and same payoff, but playing 6
decks yields:
Player Advantage: 1.563%
Hourly win rate: $13.60
As you can see, there was a dramatic drop seen with this change alone.
The next change was the addition of the burn card. By burning a card
in single deck play, the count could be off by one. In a multi-deck game
the difference was less. But, the casinos weren’t done yet. The next
step was to change the penetration of the deck. A little piece of plastic
placed half way through the deck can make a huge difference in
advantage and win rate enjoyed by the player. For example, in a single
deck game, just as above, but with 50% penetration yields the following
results:
Player Advantage: 1.497%
Hourly Win Rate: $14.03.
You can see the casinos chipping away at the card counter advantage.
The casinos, being greedy as they are, also put a cut card in the six
deck shoe. It is generally at the 75% penetration point, with 1 ½ decks
left in the shoe at the shuffle. So, how much damage did this do to the
card counter?
Player Advantage: 0.222%
Hourly Win Rate: $1.59
One would think they would be happy with this. It’s essentially an even
game. But No! The greedy bastards (pardon my French) just keep on
changing things in an effort to eliminate card counting altogether.
The latest change is to change the payoff for a blackjack. There are
variations on a theme, but the most common change is to change to 6:
5 instead of the traditional 3:2. In other words, instead of receiving
$7.50 for every $5 wagered, the player receives $6. You will recall that
the blackjack payoff is the highest of the “extras”. So the effect was
very dramatic. A single deck 3:2 game has a house advantage of
0.2%. A 6:5 single deck game has a 1.6% casino advantage. The
effect on counting cards is equally dramatic. Using the same conditions
as before, with a 50% penetration, 6:5 single deck game yields:
Player Advantage: -0.068%
Hourly win rate: -$0.64
We have gone from an advantage of 3.476% to -0.068%.
We have gone from winning almost $40 per hour to losing 64 cents an
hour. This is why card counting is not working any more. We have
great, very effective systems developed, but the rules are changing and
there isn’t a thing we can do about it. Remember the golden rule: He
who has the gold makes the rules. Unfortunately, we don’t play by the
same rules we did years ago.
So, where can a card counter go to get the best game? Probably
Reno!
