Blackjack is without doubt one of the most popular casino games, offering an exciting mix of chance and skill. As in many other games involving skill, players try to use various strategies to increase their chances to be the ones leaving the table with a thicker wallet. One of them gained particular famous not only among players, but also outside the world of casinos – card counting.

Basic idea behind card counting is that by observing the cards that are being drawn from the deck by the dealer in the course of the game a player can estimate which cards will be drawn next and based on that plan his strategy. Of course remembering all cards used in the game would be beyond the capability of an average brain, card counting is much about statistics and math. Most commonly cards are divided into groups with specific assigned values, like +1, 0 or -1, and as the game goes the player keeps the track of the sum of these values.

This statistic method comes as no surprise as it was statisticians who first came up with a consistent blackjack strategy. In 1950 a group of mathematicians published an article with a first version of what today is known as the basic strategy. Several years later an MIT scientist Edward O. Thorp, using one of the university modern computers, proved that a blackjack player’s advantage is higher when the cards left in the game are mostly high, such as aces, jacks or tens. This way knowing which cards are left in the game we can modify the size of our bet.

While this blackjack strategy seems successful, it is usually not allowed in casinos. While the method itself is not illegal, players caught on card counting may be asked to leave the casino and perhaps even put on a black list.