Card counting is an effective strategy that can certainly give you a winning edge. There are several types of card counting techniques available and some are easy to learn while others are complicated. However, the card counting technique is based on one similar concept – determining whether the shoe deck is high card or low card rich.

Understanding the card counting principle

Card counting is a technique that is used to determine if the shoe deck is high card rich or low card rich. There are several card counting systems available and each system assigns a point value to each card and as the cards are played on the table, the count value gradually increase and decreases.

Generally, all card counting systems make use of the Running Count (RC) that is used to determine the cards in the shoe deck whether they are high card rich or low card rich. Usually, low cards are assigned a positive value while high cards are assigned a negative value. The middle cards – 7, 8, 9 are assigned a neutral value – 0 at which they do not cause any effect to the Running Count (RC).

Generally, the idea of card counting is to keep track of the Running Count (RC). When low cards are dealt on the table, the RC increases and when high cards are dealt on the table, the RC reduces. Thus, when the RC is in the positive range, this would indicate that there are more low cards that have been dealt on the table, the deck is high card rich, and the reverse is true.

However, card counting systems are grouped in two categories – Unbalanced card counting systems and balanced card counting systems. The difference between the two is that the unbalanced card counting systems make use of the RC while the balanced card counting system makes use of the True Count (TC) that is derived by dividing the Running Count (RC) over the numbers of card decks used in the variation. Depending on the counting system being used, the RC starts of at 0 or with a negative point value as soon as the deck is re-shuffled.

If you are new to card counting, the easiest system to start with is the unbalanced level card counting systems. After you have mastered this level then you can proceed to the advanced system that is the balanced card counting systems.

The Balanced card counting systems also include Betting correlation (BC), Playing efficiency (PE) and Insurance correlation (IC). These betting options will be discussed later in the article titled ‘The Unbalanced Card Counting Systems’.