When many players learn the rudiments of card counting then they tend to learn the basic high/low system first. There is nothing wrong with this system and to call it “basic” is misleading. The high-low count captures most of the advantage opportunities that more sophisticated counts capture but it also has the advantage of simplicity.
This allows the player to keep count more accurately and for longer periods without fatigue. It also allows the player more “down” time to be able to interact and do other normal casino activities. The high-low count attributes a score of -1 for all tens and aces and +1 for all low cards of a deuce through to a six.
The sevens, eights and nines are considered neutral and are not counted or counted as zero which is the same thing. Keeping a total of the cards that have been dealt is called the running count. But yet many players use the running count to base their betting decisions and this is a big mistake in multiple deck games.
This is to do with the ratio of high cards to low cards and you could get two identical running counts and yet the advantage for the player is vastly different. Let us look at a count of +10 in two separate situations in a four deck game, one where only one deck had been dealt and the other where three decks had been dealt.
In the first example with only one deck dealt, there are exactly 156 cards remaining and a count of +10 equals on plus point for every 15.6 cards. In the second example with only 52 cards remaining and the same +10 count then we have a ratio of one point for every 5.2 cards. This means that the ratio of high cards to non high cards is greater in the second example……far greater.
