An excerpt from the book - how to explain counting.
In the last 10 years or so a lot of people have said, “I’ve listened to many explanations of why card counting works and still don’t get it. Explain it one more time.”
I pondered long and hard and hit on the explanation; both of basic advantage and playing differently depending on deck composition. Here goes:
I’m sitting at a single deck table head-to-head and after the dealer shuffles he accidentally exposes the burn card, it’s a deuce. In the next three hands I split 8’s, 9’s and 6’s: each 4 times. The end result is after those three hands 31 cards have played with NO ACES OR TENS! So with the deuce already gone the deck left is four Aces and 16 Tens.
The dealer has 20 cards left so he is going to deal at least one more hand, maybe two. At this point I have a TREMENDOUS ADVANTAGE! I bet as much as I can, stand up and say,” Last hand, I have to go”.
What happens next? This is much simpler to figure than most cases so here goes.
How can we lose?
Way number 1 – the dealer gets a blackjack with a ten up and we don’t have one. This will happen about 11.5% of the time.
Way number 2 – the dealer gets a ten up and does not have a blackjack. We get a Pair of Aces and split and DRAW THE OTHER TWO ACES! We lose two bets about1/100 of 1% of the time.
How do we push?
Way number 1 – The dealer gets an Ace up blackjack, we have twenty and win insurance.
Way number 2 – the dealer gets twenty and we split Aces and draw one Ace and a ten.
Way number 3 – the dealer gets a ten up blackjack and we get a blackjack. There’s a fourth way but see:
How do we win?
Way number 1 – the dealer gets a twenty and we get a blackjack.
Way number 2 – we split Aces against the dealers twenty and get two tens. We win two bets.
Way number 3 – the dealer gets a blackjack with an ace up and we get a blackjack And bet insurance – win one bet.
Way number4 - notice so far we have played basic strategy except we bet Insurance. Now we make a BIG change. If we get a twenty and the dealer gets a twenty we SPLIT. If the next two cards are not aces, we will win from zero (this is the push mentioned above) to four bets depending on how many aces are in the next four cards. If the first two were aces we would win two bets.
Way number 5 – the Dream situation. We have 20, the dealer has an Ace up. We bet and lose insurance. We’ll now win 4 bets when we split Unless the next two cards are Aces – less than 1% of the time.
Our advantage is 69.5%
But the odds of the cards coming our like that are slim, but imagine if one six was left with all those tens and aces. Well, the dealer could show a six and would only be able to get an 18 at best. If we could split our tens 4 times we would win four hands. If we got the six we could draw until we busted or got a twenty (not very likely) to push. We would have about the same advantage.
Now imagine a five in addition to that six in the mix.
Now we could double on 11 and win two bets or lose two bets. The dealer could show a five or six and draw a 21, taking however many bets we had out. We may hesitate to split 10’s more than twice if we don’t pull an ace. We now don’t have quite the advantage.
Add a 4 and our advantage drops and the math gets much more complicated. Keep adding cards and the advantage keeps dropping until we have added the last card to get back to a full deck.
IS THIS AN EASIER TO UNDERSTAND EXPLANATION OR WHAT?
