When you first start to learn blackjack strategy then learning basic strategy is essential. This is the process of how to play every single possible hand that you are dealt against every possible up card that the dealer shows.
Once this is learnt then the next stage is learn a counting system although many people do this the other way around…….it is still imperative that you know both. But learning a counting system and knowing nothing but the running count isn’t enough because you then have to do a true count conversion.
If you are using the hi-lo count for example and the count is +10 then this is a very vague piece of information as to whether or not the player has the advantage and if so by how much. To better assess this then you need to find out what the ratio of high cards to the total remaining cards left to be dealt actually is.
The remaining cards will be richer in tens and aces if there is only one deck remaining to when there are three decks remaining and the count is +10 in both instances. So we need to do a true count conversion and fortunately it is very simple.
You simply take the running count total and divide by the number of decks left to be dealt. So with one deck to go, the true count would be 10 divided by 1 = 10. With three decks to go it would be 10 divided by 3 which is 3.33. So we can see that the difference in two separate counts of +10 is three times greater with one deck to go.
This is why it is so crucial to do true count conversions as it helps the player to better ascertain what their real edge is and just knowing the running count does not allow a player to properly do this.
