Because of pop culture and movies, the strategy of card counting is deeply misunderstood by the general public. Casual players assume that to beat the casino, you need a photographic memory who can perfectly remember the exact order of all 312 cards in a six-deck casino shoe. This could not be further from the truth. Real, professional card counting is not about memorizing suits or ranks. Rather, it is a simple heuristic math strategy that uses simple addition and subtraction to groups of cards as they are dealt. Here is exactly how advantage players use simple math to crush the casino.

Assigning the Values: How the Tally Works

The most famous blackjack tracking system is the classic Hi-Lo method. Using this math, you do not remember specific suits; they simply assign a tag as the cards hit the felt. The low numbers help the casino make hands, so when they are dealt and removed from the deck, the counter adds +1 to their running mental tally. High cards (10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces) result in blackjacks, when they appear on the table, the count goes down by one. The middle numbers have very little impact on the math, so they are assigned a value of exactly zero (0) and require no math.