Lesson description
Card counting requires time and practice, but there are tricks to speed up the process. Mr Blackjack shares his top exercises for learning how to count cards quickly.
When you're first learning to count cards, don't rush to the nearest casino and drain your bankroll. There are several exercises you can do at home for free first that let you practice this skill and improve quickly.
Exercise #1
Grab a deck of cards and flip the cards one by one and keep the count. When you get to the end you will also be at 0.
Once you can master this faster and faster, you can move on to live situational practice.
Exercise #2
Start by watching blackjack videos so you see action in full time, or refer to the Casino.us card counting practice area to sharpen your skills.
Exercise #3
When you learn to count cards you must simplify the experience. One that I use is zero-sum elimination.
So if you see a 10 and a five together you don’t even look at it because it’s a -1 and a +1. You want to eliminate any hands that cancel each other out to keep track of the rest of the cards.
Similarly, you need to also glance over any hands that combine 0 sum cards like 7-8-9. These hands should also be eliminated.
If you apply this approach to your games, you will be able to look at a five-player blackjack table and quickly establish a running count.
The main takeaway for anyone learning card counting is to practice. It takes time to build these skills and turn them into reflexes.
Refer back to Casino.us to practice blackjack card counting so you can sharpen your skills. There is no substitute for practice. If you can’t do it in practice, don’t even try doing it live.
