Basic strategy blackjack bet for card counting

Practice makes perfect
So how do you learn to count cards accurately? Your first lesson is that you don't learn how to count cards in a casino. Your first step is far less glamorous. Set aside an hour or two and sit down with a single pack of cards, shuffle them thoroughly and proceed to turn them over one by one. As each card turns, you should keep a running count. To begin with, you'll do this very slowly. Worry about keeping the right count, rather than the speed of turning at the moment.

At the end of the deck, and if you've counted correctly, the running count will always be zero. Do this over and over until you can accurately count a whole deck in under 30 seconds.You next step is to add a second deck of cards into the shuffle. Now keep a running count, but work out the true count as well. You'll now need some agile mental arithmetic to keep the count, estimate the level of the decks and, crucially, divide the former by the latter to give you the true count. At this point, like many before you, you'll want to give up. Don't. All that has happened is that you've worked out why most people just play blackjack, rather than try to beat it. Quite simply, card counting isn't for the faint hearted.

With practice, you'll be able to keep a true count on two decks of cards and count them all out under 60 seconds. When you can do this five times out of five, with no mistakes, you're ready for the next stage. Now try turning over two cards at a time and keeping the true count. This will take days to master.The final stage is to add another two decks and keep turning two cards at a time. You should also occasionally distort the number of tens in the front or back half of the decks. This will get you used to dealing with bigger counts. After all, you don't want to fluff the maths when you're sat in a casino facing the most exciting positive count of your life.

Your last lesson should be taken online. Many online casinos will allow you to play for free if you like, and although card counting doesn't necessarily work online, it will give you a good feel for the pace and pressure of a real casino. This is valuable practice, but it can't prepare you for the distractions of a casino environment. Sat in front of your PC, a waitress isn't going to ask you if you want another Diet Coke and your fellow players certainly aren't going to chat to you. The only way to simulate that is to add a few distractions of your own. Stick a TV on in the background or have music playing on your PC.

If you're serious about learning to card count like the pros, you'd be wise to invest in a piece of practice software. The Casino Verite software is well worth a look. This not only simulates a casino environment and pace well, but gives you tools for altering the rules being played and can adapt to a number of common counting strategies. It will even provide pertinent data on request, such as the number of cards to be dealt. At around $100 it isn't cheap, but is a worthwhile investment if you mean to take card counting seriously. Take a look at qfit.com/cvroad.htm for more info. You can also download a limited trial version, which replaces all the 5s in the deck with Jacks. This will make counting pointless, but it does show you what the software can do, so you can decide how useful (or not) the software is to you.