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""The card counting technique in blackjack works because it challenges an assumption we make when discussing 'basic strategy':
The assumption is that the probability of drawing any of the 52 cards remains constant, meaning each card is drawn from an infinite number of decks, or in other words, each card is independent of the others.
Clearly, there is no such deck composed of an infinite number of decks; the cards drawn earlier will always affect the cards drawn later. In the early days of card counting, casinos still used a single deck to play blackjack, making this effect even more pronounced. For example, when the dealer deals the cards, and you receive two 10s (including J, Q, K), the dealer's face-up card is also a 10, and the hole card is also a 10, the probability of the next 10 appearing is no longer 4/13, but 12/48, which is 1/4, slightly less than 4/13. Similarly, the probabilities of other point values appearing are no longer 1/13 but 1/12.
We use a card counting method called ""High-Low."" During the game, we assign a value of +1 to each 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 that appears, 0 to 7, 8, 9, and -1 to 10, J, Q, K, A. We add up these values, and the higher the result, the more low cards have been dealt previously, which is favorable for the player. Conversely, if the result is negative, it means that more high cards have been dealt previously, which favors the dealer.
For example, if the previous cards dealt were:
4, 9, 10, 5, J, A, 8, 10, Q, 2, 6, K, J, 7
The point count would be 4 low cards minus 7 high cards, which is -3. Of course, during the game, you cannot ask the dealer to pause and calculate. You have to mentally keep track of the count with each card. For instance, in the example above, from the first card dealt, you should mentally keep a running count like this:
1, 1, 0, 1, 0, -1, 0, -2, -3, -2, -1, -2, -3, -3""" |