Counting cards in chemin de fer is a method to increase your chances of winning. If you are very good at it, it is possible to basically take the odds and put them in your favor. This works because card counters elevate their wagers when a deck wealthy in cards that are beneficial to the player comes around. As a general rule, a deck wealthy in ten’s is much better for the player, because the dealer will bust a lot more frequently, and the player will hit a black-jack much more often.
Most card counters maintain track of the ratio of superior cards, or 10’s, by counting them as a 1 or a minus 1, and then gives the opposite one or – 1 to the low cards in the deck. A number of techniques use a balanced count where the amount of reduced cards may be the same as the variety of 10’s.
Except the most interesting card to me, mathematically, could be the five. There were card counting methods back in the day that required doing absolutely nothing more than counting the variety of fives that had left the deck, and when the 5’s had been gone, the player had a big advantage and would raise his bets.
A very good basic strategy player is acquiring a 99.5 % payback percentage from the gambling house. Each and every 5 that has come out of the deck adds 0.67 % to the gambler’s anticipated return. (In a single deck game, anyway.) That means that, all other things being equal, having one five gone from the deck gives a gambler a little advantage over the house.
Having 2 or three five’s gone from the deck will basically give the gambler a quite substantial edge more than the gambling den, and this is when a card counter will normally increase his wager. The dilemma with counting five’s and absolutely nothing else is that a deck reduced in five’s occurs fairly rarely, so gaining a large benefit and making a profit from that scenario only comes on rare occasions.
Any card between two and 8 that comes out of the deck raises the gambler’s expectation. And all nine’s. ten’s, and aces increase the gambling establishment’s expectation. Except eight’s and 9’s have really tiny effects on the outcome. (An eight only adds 0.01 percent to the player’s expectation, so it’s usually not even counted. A nine only has 0.15 per-cent affect in the other direction, so it is not counted either.)
Understanding the effects the reduced and high cards have on your expected return on a wager is the first step in discovering to count cards and wager on black-jack as a winner.