If you count cards playing Black Jack, do you have to start at zero everytime the shoe is shuffled.?

Question

If so, you will almost never get to a plus 10 or higher. How did those MIT students win so much in the movie 21.

Answer 1

Yes every time the cards are randomised you have to start at zero, since zero is the measurment of unbalanced nature relevant to a fresh deck/shoe.  You are measuring imballance, and there is no imballance at the begining of the shoe, unless for somereason read below, you know that there is.

The mit team employed other tactics in addition to counting cards, one of them is known as shffle tracking which involves folwing groups of cards or individual cards through the shuffle and manipulating the stack wiht the cut card so that it its favorable for the player.

If for example at the end of the shoe you notice the count is negetive 20, you know the remaining undealt portioin of cards has +20 of points in it.  perhaps during the shuffle the mix it with an equal portion of unknown cards for this ***example*** we will assume those cards to have a point value of zero since they are unknown  the newly stcked mixture fo those cards now has a count of +10 so you tak the cut cards and cut it so that when the dealer inserts the cut card, 2 decks in on an 8 deck game they will be out of play because they are behiond the cut card,  you now start the count at +10 and als begine treating the entire game as if it were 6 decks not 8 for some aspets

Answer 2

yes the count must be restarted after a shuffle because the cards that were being counted are now back in play. same number of high/low cards in the playable deck. they got higher than plus ten by playing at a table with multiple decks. in the movie they didn't show you a table that was in minus numbers because no big bets were being made which doesn't make for a good movie.

Answer 3

Yes, you start again at zero with each shuffle of the cards in the shoe.

Here is a link to a brief explanation of how counting works.

http://www.thedoverpro.com/blackjack/bla...

While the movie 21 is based on a real incident, don't forget it is a FICTIONALIZED account, with a lot of drama thrown in! It would be a boring movie if they did not show the team winning lots of money! LOL.

Since that original incident, the casinos have made many changes in the game in an attempt to thwart card counting teams, and have been successful for the most part.

Good luck and have fun at the tables!

Answer 4

The whole idea of card counting is to determine if the deck is in your favor or the casinos favor.  Obviously once the deck is shuffled completely you cannot have knowledge of what is in the deck, so you start again.

Remember that the movie 21 is a movie, that is loosely based on a true story.  While the movie may appear to be shot in the present, the actual MIT thing too place well over ten years ago, and it started out even before that.

These days casinos know what card counting is all about.  They have single deck blackjack and all kinds of ways to mess with the rules to give themselves a better edge.

If it were that easy to count cards, the casinos would probably stop offering blackjack altogether.

Answer 5

Not sure, but I know this: If you get CAUGHT counting cards, the number of casinos where you'll be allowed to play in the future will be .... Zero.