Comparing Blackjack Card Counting Systems

Ever since Blackjack first became prominent in the 1960’s, there has been a huge debate about the respective merits of the various counting systems that have been on the market. For years it was assumed that the more complex level three and level four systems were the most powerful in terms of how many profitable situations they found.

By the way, what level three and level four actually means is that these systems count in units up to three and four respectively. When you have to add and subtract the numbers one, two, three and four very quickly after also having to convert a playing card into a numerical value then you can well imagine how tough these black jack counting systems can be to learn and to operate.

Only in later years did it become known that the more basic level one and level two systems were not as inferior as first thought. Back when I had my first blackjack team, we only ever used the basic high/low count. I used this for numerous reasons. Firstly I had to teach several beginners so this count suited the bill perfectly.

Secondly I wanted them to be as invisible as possible and using a simple system allows you to do other things like interact with casino staff for instance and look around the casino and not at the table all the time. So a level one system gave us extra cover and it also meant that we had far less counting errors than we would have had if we had been using a complex level three or level four system!

Another factor when using simple level one systems (a counting system that only adds and subtracts in units of one) is that it also allows you to do other disciplines like shuffle track as well. So all in all, the high/low count was the perfect counting system even though it has often been derided as being too simplistic to be of any real use for a pro.

In fact there are counting systems out there like Bryce Carlson’s Omega count that keeps a separate track of the aces. Once again it was proven that the supposedly lesser systems were far more powerful than even the mathematicians at that time thought that they were.

Another revolutionary jump with regards blackjack counting systems came when the unbalanced counts came to the fore. Basically up until then, all counting systems began the shoe at zero and ended it at zero. This was because there were the same numbers of negative cards as there were positive. These were known as balanced counting systems.

But there were several counting systems on the market that didn’t do this and were equally powerful. The most recent of which was the KO count which was invented by Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs. This system had what was called entry and exit points and because it was an unbalanced count, this meant that there was no need for doing a true count conversion.

True count conversions are necessary when adopting a balanced count because not all running counts offer the same advantage. A running count of +5 for instance would be substantially different after only five cards had been dealt than if there were only ten cards remaining to be dealt.

In each instance the running count is the same but the ratio of positive cards for the player in relation to negative cards is far higher. Doing this conversion entails assessing the number of decks that have been dealt reasonably accurately. The downside to unbalanced counts is that shuffle tracking is more difficult and in some cases impossible. So you really have lots of choice with counting systems and there really isn’t much to choose between any of them for the vast majority of users.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson