Is Card Counting Illegal?
GamingNo, counting cards is not illegal, but it is heavily frowned upon. In fact, there should be a good movie coming out with Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey called, “21.” It’s a group of M.I.T. students who setup a card counting team. I read the book called, “Bringing Down the House.” It was a very good book and these students had a great system. Unfortunately, I believe this movie will induce people to gamble more.
Do you remember the poker craze? Well, it’s still going on. However, it’s not as strong as it was when Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker. After the movie comes out, I believe people will try to learn how to count cards, in order to win at blackjack. However, they will find this will be a losing battle. I know this from experience because I was a card counter. I was betting up to $5,000 a hand at blackjack. That is, until I went bankrupt.
Counting cards is based on a positive and negative system. This means for every 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace, you would count them as negative one (-1). Cards like two, three, four, five and six, you would count them as positive one (+1). Cards, such as seven, eight and nine are considered neutral, so you wouldn’t count these cards. Anyways, all you had to do was count the cards as they came out. For example, if a King came out, you would count that as negative one (-1). If a four came out, you would count that as positive one (+1). Then, you would add all the numbers. The goal was to have a really high number. Once, you get a really high number then you’re supposed to bet big.
Anyways, there are a lot of flaws in this system, which I explain in my book. However, whether you buy this book or not, I just wanted to let you know that blackjack is a losing battle. Even though, you can count cards or not.
Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.