Is it possible to still count cards

Can a dog eat an entire tray of brownies? You bet it can! But, only if you let it keep eating them. This is the perfect analogy about card counting and has nothing to do with the fact that I just had to fight my dog off of a tray of brownies while writing this.

Seriously, though, it is a great analogy. You see, card counting works as long as you are left alone and allowed to card count. Card counting is extremely successful. The MIT blackjack team that is so famous for taking card counting to the next level made millions. A lot of other gamblers throughout the years have made a boatload of cash counting cards against the casino. It works; there is no question of that. The problem, though, is that the casino is not in business to make you rich. As you probably expect, the casino did not just sit back and let counters take them to the cleaners.

They took the tray of brownies away. Casinos all across the world started kicking counters out of the casino and blacklisting them from playing at any other properties. While card counting is not illegal, it is frowned upon, and the casino reserves the right to refuse service to anyone they see fit. However, the casinos were forced to go further. Well, the card counters got smart.

You see, the casinos would start looking for players that were winning and varying their bets greatly. What the counters did was started working in teams. They would have one player at the table counting and playing low stakes who would signal to a big bettor when the count was hot, and the table was primed to make a profit. When that happened, the big bettor would come over and start making big bets to try and clean up on the high count.

It took the casinos a while to catch on to this, but they certainly did. The response was big. Casinos now utilize video surveillance and experts to spot individual card counters and card counting teams. They also created and installed systems that will card count themselves and track the bets the player is making.

If the player starts betting along with the count or a big bettor comes over multiple times on a hot count, the casino will be on to them. They used to deal 1 deck with very favorable rules. BUT, there were only a handful of casinos in the country at that time. And if you got banned from Las Vegas and Atlantic City, your career was effectively over. Now there are hundreds of casinos across the country not to mention internationally offering beatable blackjack games.

Yes, but not all casinos are that smart. Is card counting easy money? Your implied assertion, Gary, that counting cards is considered a form of cheating is erroneous. Card counting is NOT illegal under federal, state and local laws in the United States as long as players don't use any external card-counting device or people who assist them in counting cards. In their effort to identify card counters, casinos can ban players believed to be counters — sort of.

It depends on where you are playing. For instance, in Atlantic City, casinos will let you take a whack at counting cards — again, sort of. The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that players cannot be discriminated against because of their playing skills counting , even if they're detected. As a result, Jersey shore casinos employ countermeasures to hinder card counters.