hi and welcome to our series of educational videos
that are designed to make you a smarter gambler my name is Steve Bourie
I'm the author of the American casino guide which is the number one
bestselling book in the US on the subject of casino gambling and travel
and the only book that comes with more than one thousand dollars in casino
coupons
If you want to know more about me or my book be sure to visit my website at
americancasinoguide.com
In this video we'll be hearing from blackjack
expert henry Tamburin and we'll be talking all about card counting and
blackjack
Henry has written several books on casino gambling including Blackjack take
the money and run
He publishes the monthly blackjack Insider newsletter devoted to the game
and is also an experience card counter as well as a seasoned blackjack tournament
player
and he also writes monthly gambling columns for a half-dozen
regional and national magazines and has appeared on several TV documentaries
about casino gambling in america
I've sure learned some interesting things from Henry about card counting and
blackjack
and now here's henry Tamburin A lot of players asked me what
is card counting Card-counting is nothing more than keeping track
of cards since the shuffle and the cards we keep track of are the high cards
and the low cards and by keeping this ratio high cards to low cards
it gives the card counter a prediction on whether or not he has the edge on the next hand
A lot of players ask me oh you know card counting is
a great technique but do you have to be a genius
in order to master it? The answer is no. Anybody with an average intelligence can
learn how to count cards and this is how it works
We just simply assign a plus value or a minus value
to specific cards in the deck Generally the low cards we count plus one
a high cards we count -1 and what a card counter does is he just tracks
each of these plus cards and minus cards as he sees them on the table
and he keeps the sum of these cards and that
gives him his running count and that's what he uses to know whether or not he
has the edge
Now are there more than one card counting systems? The answer is yes
generally there are very simple card counting systems and one of the
simplest ones
is speed count there are others like the
k.o. rookie count these are card counting systems which I would recommend for
average players who are basically basic strategy players and want to
try card counting so I would recommend that they start with one of these simple
card counting systems
and something like speed count you can learn in an hour or less
now the more complex card counting systems are systems like high low and KO
they are much harder to learn but you'll get a greater edge than you will with the
simple card counting systems
I'm always asked is card-carrying
legal and my response is
it's perfectly legal to use your brain when you play blackjack
and that's all you're doing when you're card counting you're using your brain so
the
short answer to the question is yes it is perfectly legal to count cards
now the second question I get asked is well you know
are the casinos gonna let you card count
and the answer is yes and no Basically if you're a low limit player they're not
going to get excited if you're counting cards but if you come in with a team
or player
and you're in there for hours on end betting thousands of dollars yes you're
going to get the casino
nervous and they're gonna watch you play and if they feel that your play is too
strong
meaning you're going to affect their bottom line yes they can ask you to
leave
also the public has a misconception that if you're a card counter you're going to
win every time you play and that's
furthest from the truth the fact of the matter is card counters will win but
they'll win over a specific period of time
generally we like to say we have the edge
and it's a long term edge meaning in the short term
which is any individual session or even a week's worth a play and sometimes even
a month
we could lose money The analogy I like to make is
compare card counting to investing in the stock market
If you invested in the stock market for twenty or thirty years you certainly
have more money than you started with
but on an individual daily or weekly or monthly basis
your stock portfolio probably whent up and down but the curve went straight up
that's what it's like with card counting we go up and we go down but the curve
always goes up Players always ask me how do the casinos know that a player is card
counting
And there's one characteristic of all card counters
and there's one thing that card counters have to do no matter what system you
learn
and that's to vary your bet size card counters win money by betting more when
they have the edge and bet small when they don't have the edge
so this bet variation is one of the indicators that the casino uses
when they suspect somebody is counting cards
so that's why you don't want to go to a casino if you're a card counter and start
betting five dollars and then throw out a hundred dollar bet
that's kind of a flag that lets the casino know that
more than likely you're counting cards
What are the negatives if you want to be a card counter? And and I say negatives
just because a lot of people don't understand this concept of a bankroll
generally you need money in order to make money if you're a card counter
and that's because of the short term losses that you can anticipate when you
play blackjack as a card counter so as a general rule of thumb
you need about a hundred times your maximum bet
and that should be your bankroll so let's say you're gonna spread from ten
dollars to fifty dollars as a card counter
you should have fifty times a hundred which is a five thousand dollar bank roll
set aside for the sole purpose of using it when you played blackjack
spreading ten to fifty dollars
Now as your bankroll grows then you can increase your bet spread and when your
bankroll takes a hit
then you should go down in your bet spread and try and keep that 1-100
ratio
How long does it take for an average player to master card counting?
Again it depends on the complexity of the card counting system
if you wanna learn the popular high low card counting system
it's going to take you several months of practice
two to three times a week And how do you learn card counting?
Well first thing you should do is is is read a good book on what card counting
is all about
and then you need a deck of cards and you gotta practice keeping that running
count
flipping the cards and adding the pluses and minuses and you've got to be able to
count down a deck of cards
accurately in about 30 seconds or less so it takes a little bit of a practice
to do this
now if you're going to learn a simple card counting system like speed count
card counting system like that you can learn in less than an hour
One of the most important conditions that card counters want to see in a
blackjack game
before they sit down and play is what we call the penetration
penetration is the percentage of the cards that are dealt
before the dealer shuffles so for example if you're playing a two-deck
game
and one deck is played out and now the dealer picks up the cards and shuffles
that's a fifty percent penetration you've only seen
one out of the two decks that's not
a very good game for a card counter what a card counter would prefer
is a two-deck game where more than one deck is played
before the dealer shuffles so the greater the percentage of the cards
that are dealt
the greater will be the card counters edge
so card counters always look for games with deep penetration
as a benchmark for a two deck game you want at least a sixty percent penetration
and for a six deck game you want at least 75 percent penetration
A lot of players have seen the movie 21 and they've seen the MIT guys
beating the casinos but they play in teams
and some the most successful card counters
are the ones who have played in teams and why is playing in teams so important
and the answer is if you're playing as an individual
you're playing against your own bankroll if you play on a team
you have a joint bank and everybody on that
team can play against this larger bank
so if you play on a team you can bet at a much higher level
and therefore your profits are much greater and you're doing this with
absolutely no additional risk to your bankroll
so that's why a lot of the professional blackjack players
tend to form teams when they play in casinos
If you go the casino you might see signs on some other table that says
"no mid-shoe" entry and a lot of players ask me why did the casinos do that
Well if you ask a casino manager why do you have that sign why don't you let
a player jump in in the middle of the shoe
he'll probably say because the players at the table
don't like it when somebody jumps in because they're gonna change the flow of
the cards
and they'll cause players to lose well that's a lotta hog wash the real reason
that casinos don't want players to enter in the middle of the shoe
it's because of a technique that card counters use which is quite
profitable
and the technique is known is back counting and what card counters do is
they'll
stand behind or on the side of the table
to wait for the shuffle they'll watch the cards they'll keep the count
and when the count goes positive then they'll jump out jump into the game
they'll make big bets they'll continue to make big bets when then they have the
edge
and then when the count goes negative they'll leave and then they'll wait for the
next table to go positive and jump in
so that's a very profitable technique for players and that's the reason why
casinos
have those signs to not allow players to jump in
in the middle of the shoe. There have been a lot of
card counters who got a lot of publicity over the years and I think the
the first person to go on national television
as a blackjack card counter was Kenny Houston he appeared on 60 minutes
and he kinda explain what card counting is and it really became
a popular avocation for a lot of people after seeing him on TV and
there have been other players
who've gotten a lot of publicity and certainly the MIT team
I received a lot of publicity but there's also been a lot of players
who haven't been in the limelight that are really legends in the field
of blackjack
and there's a book called the legends of blackjack
written by Kevin blackwood and Larry Barker and it's an actual book
the scribes a whole host of players
who have made a ton of money as blackjack card counters and I encourage
anybody who wants to learn about these legends
to get a hold of the book legends of blackjack
and you can get that book on our website BJinsider.com
A lot of players who watched the movie 21
saw this technique that card counters use
with a BP which is known as a big player
and that's a popular technique that the professional players use and this is how
it works
basically you'll have a player at a table
keeping track of the count and when a count goes positive
instead of this player making large bets
he will signet one of his team players known as the big player
and he will then go to the table after he gets a signal
and he will make the large bets now from the casinos perspective he's just gonna
look like an average player walking up to a table making big bets
now he'll continue to make the big bets until his partner on the table
signals and that the count
has now gone negative and then the BP will then
leave the table and then he'll walk around and he'll wait for the signal from
one of his confederates who
are on other tables in the casino So by using this technique
they're having one player known as the big player making all the large bets
whenever the count was positive so this is how
team players can win a lot of money in casinos by using the
big player concept A lot of players ask me how can I become a successful card counter
one of the things you have to do is you have to be committed to learning not
only the technique of card counting
but you have to be able to understand the risks involved and you have to have
enough money
for your bankroll to sustain you when things
don't go your way and you will have some
variances when you play blackjack and sometimes you're gonna lose some money
so you've got to understand all this plus you have to have a certain
comportment when you play
you can't just sit there and always watch the cards and never talk
and never drink
you'll just a stick out like a sore thumb that you're probably card counting
because you're just staring in looking at all the cards
so all of these techniques and skills you have to master
and the way to do that is again you gotta get a good book
you gotta read about card counting you gotta practice
and don't practice at home with a deck cards
when there's no noise because in the casino there's a lot of noise so you
need to practice at home with the TV on the Radio on
and you have to continue to practice and to you can master the
skills and counting down a deck you gotta understand risk a rowing you gotta
have the right bank roll
and you really need to start out at a low level of betting
until you feel comfortable that you're not making errors and then you could
advance to a higher level of betting If you wanna learn more about me and some
of my blackjack books
and some of the articles I've written you can go actually to three sources one
is my Blackjack Insider newsletter
and you can just go to the site
bjinsider.com in fact we offer a three month free subscription
go to the website
bjinsider.com/freetrial
just put in your email address and we'll send you three free issue of our
newsletter
you can also go to my other site smartgaming.com
and there I have plenty of articles on blackjack
I also write a column for on blackjack for about a half a dozen different
publications
Don't forget that you can see more of our educational gaming videos on our
YouTube channel
just go to youtube.com/americancasinoguide