Card Counting - Expected Profit

Expected Profit

Blackjack played with a perfect basic strategy typically offers a house edge of less than 0.5%, but a typical card counter who ranges bets appropriately in a game with six decks will have an advantage of approximately 1% over the casino. Advantages of up to 2.5% are possible at normal penetrations from counting 6-deck Spanish 21, for the S17 or H17 with redoubling games. This amount varies based on the counter's skill level, hands per hour, penetration (1 – fraction of pack cut off), and the number of betting units that the counter is able to spread from. The variance in blackjack is high, so generating a sizable profit can take hundreds of hours of play. The deck will only have a positive enough count for the player to raise bets 10%-35% of the time depending on rules, penetration and strategy.

At a table where a player makes a $100 average bet, a 1% advantage means a player will win an average $1 per hand. This translates into an average hourly winning of $50 if the player is dealt 50 hands per hour.

With typical bet ranging and typical Las Vegas six-deck rules, a player whose strategy yields an average profit of $50 per hour will likely face a standard deviation in the neighborhood of $1,400 per hour. Therefore, it is highly advisable for counters to set aside a large dedicated bankroll; one popular rule of thumb dictates a bankroll of 100 times the maximum bet per hand.

Another aspect of the probability of card counting is that, at higher counts, the player's probability of winning a hand is only slightly changed and still below 50%. The player's edge over the house on such hands does not come from the player's probability of winning the hands. Instead it comes from the increased probability of a blackjacks, increase gain and benefit from doubling, splitting and surrender, and the insurance side bet, which becomes profitable at high counts.

Many factors will affect a players expected profit while attacking a game such as

• The overall efficiency of a card counting system at detecting player advantage, this affects how often the player will actually play a hand at an advantage per period of time
• The overall efficiency at creating player advantage as a whole, a system may indicate a small advantage when in fact the advantage is much larger, this reduces the overall ROI of the system while in play.
• The rules of the game.
• Penetration will almost directly affect the magnitude of player advantage that is exploitable, and the rate that hands are dealt to a player at an advantage.
• The number of players seated at a table will slow game pace, and reduce the number of hands a player will be able to play in a given time frame.
• Game speed, table with side bets will be dealt at a slower pace than tables without them which will reduce the number of hands dealt over time.
• The use of an automatic shuffle machine or in rare cases, a dealer dedicated solely to shuffling a new shoe while another is in play, will eliminate the need for the dealer to shuffle the shoe prior to dealing a new one increasing game speed.