Totaling cards
CaseyCat said:
I'm not always quick enough totaling my hand to keep up, and often have to trust the dealer. Books (Arnold Snyder's) say even the best dealers screw up, and you should ALWAYS check them on total and pay-out.
I'm sure that's learned the same way you get to Carnigie Hall: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE! Can anyone suggest easier methods of totaling or how to practice besides dealing hands or using flash cards? Online games haven't helped because they total the hand or disappear too fast to verify.
Guess I should have paid more attention to the addition tables in grade school, but hell ..... I got through college algebra, trig, advanced calculus and an MS degree in Computer Science counting on my fingers! :laugh: Unfortunately that method doesn't cut it at a table.
Casey
It's no wonder people have some difficulty with different aspects of card counting. A counter is dealing with the same cards in many different ways.
First they are looking at the cards on the table to see the rank but then disregarding that rank and assigning an imaginary value to it. Then the player is comparing the cards to one another using the imaginary value. Then the player must keep a running total in his head and they may have to do this while staring at other values, i.e. the running total is +5 but the player is looking directly at a two of hearts. How the total in the head and the number the player is looking at can be different can mess with a player a bit.
Second, the player looks at the cards dealt in previous rounds and completely disregards the rank and the imaginary value that was assigned to it. The player must now quantify the cards, looking at the discards to see how many have been played. But that isn't the number a player uses. The player uses the number of discards to figure out the number remaining. Again what the player is looking at, the discards, does not coincide with the actual number they must use, the remaining cards.
A player must also perform various mathematical calculations while playing but still keeping in their head the original values they calculated plus the new values also. Finally the rank value on the card is used to total the cards and more values (the player's total vs. the dealer's total) are calculated, to be compared against the values (the true count) calculated previously in the round. Then a chart containing more numbers must be used to tell the player to hit or stand or double or surrender, etc..
Depending on a player's routine they may switch back and forth between processes many times during the same round and that increases the difficulty. No wonder many people think card counting is difficult because it is.
However this difficulty can be lessened through, you guessed it, practice, practice, practice.
One thing that I read on the internet about counting visually is that a person who performs visual counting methods will increase in accuracy and ease-of-use after using a method for 21 days straight. Any missed time will lead to a decrease in their performance. In other words, practice, practice, practice.
