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There is no more sought after technique in card games than card counting. Here is the last part of a 3-part guide for beginners to get acquainted with mathematical art that is card counting.

The first two parts of this series covered the basics of card counting: how to split the deck to keep track of the cards that have been exposed, how to calculate the remaining high cards, and how to evaluate your options when you’re looking for small cards. These techniques can be applied to poker as well as blackjack. Now it’s time to bring it all together into a betting strategy!

So… should I hit or what? You’ve got all this information – now what? Let’s add 5% to the 53% we calculated and get 58%. So 58% of the time, you’re dead. But before you go screaming into another card – let’s look at what cards you can hit to win. You could hit a 7 for 21 (2 of those left) a 6 for 20 (2 of those left) a 5 for 19 (4 of those left) a 4 for 18 (4 of those) and maybe a 3 for a push (4 of those) for a total of 16 helpful cards. 16/38 = 42% of the time, you’ll get a good card. But that 42% is a little misleading as the only sure thing in blackjack is a dealer bust or a 21 – everything else is beatable.

So while you are going to help your hand 42% of the time, you are only going to make a really strong hand (19 or better) 8 out of 38 times or 21% of the time. And on the other hand, any card higher than seven is going to bust you: you are going to bust yourself exactly 50% of the time, but the dealer is going to beat you 58% of the time. Very tough decision, but mathematically speaking you have to hit. After all, more than half of the time the dealer is going to make a hand and only 50% of the time you are going to bust. Gotta hit.

Play Hearts: The best game (other than Blackjack) you can play to get better at counting cards is Hearts. Hearts teaches you how to pay attention to specific cards and keep track of what is and is not left in the deck. And just about every computer (PC or Mac) sold over the past twenty years comes fully equipped with a 100% free of charge Hearts program. Play Hearts – you’ll get better at Blackjack.

Counting cards is not only a valuable Blackjack strategy – it works in any game involving a deck. Counting cards in the popular poker game Texas Hold’em can pave the way for some very smart semi-bluffs while counting cards in Stud and Razz is the only informed way to know whether or not to follow draws. But again, card counting only helps to shape your decision mathematically – there is no sure thing in gambling. Even when you feel like you’ve got great odds, you could easily lose. Look at it like this: say you’ve worked out that you’ve got a 70% chance of winning a hand.

That still leaves you with a 30% chance of losing which is an awfully big number: in the baseball world, a player who gets a hit 30% of the time is considered a really good hitter (that would be a .300 hitter.) So before you go betting your kid’s college fund with a 70% chance of victory you should remember that you are virtually betting against Barry Bonds getting a hit (Bonds was a career .298 hitter).

Over the long haul will you make more money counting cards? Of course. But no matter the odds, make sure that you don’t make a single bet big enough to prevent getting to the long haul along your way there.

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