The Burn Card in Blackjack: What Do You Do About It? 

Interesting

I usually do the same thing but sometimes I don’t ask, just depends how the vibe is.

where do you deal?

Doing God's work 👏 appreciate people like you

@@szymi131 New Hampshire. Our casinos are smaller as the limit you can do is $200 a hand. Not worth card counting up here when you can go to Massachusetts with no limit. But the nice thing about NH casinos is that in order to exist they have to donate 33% each month to local charities.

Exactly.

I would add that the exact term best describing this concept is 'Unknowns'. If for example you play poker and have a flush draw on the flop, with 35% chances of hitting your flush (11 outs left (13 outs in total minus the 2 that you hold/know)), it doesn't matter how many people folded before you or how many people hold cards after you. It doesn't increase or decrease your 35% chance of hitting, since these cards are 'unknown'. So the best way is also the most simple. Simply ignore 'Unknowns'

I also had this happen a little while back. But the casino shows the cards that they pulled out. It was a 6 card shoe. They pulled a 6 out and then pulled 6 low cards. So before the game even started I had a count of +7. Somehow this was going to stop a card counter.

@@trentongesler9637 LMAO wow

😂 😂 😂

What is a baccarat burn?

@@imurgodsgod in the game baccarat, instead of burning a single card, the dealer burns a card face up, which then determines how many more cards to burn face down.

Sheldon Coope

@Sheldon Cooper There's also this thing that most dealers, like anyone else, picks up false patterns in events.

En el winland de Monterrey queman 3 cartas

Me either. Must be a regional thing.

@@chuckschillingvideos Its a Colin thing, when they see Colin they get callin!

Thanks!

Of course it's cheating....the question is how does it affect your conscious.

That's a good question. The location of the cut card doesn't affect the play up to the cut card, which marks the end of that shoe. What a deep cut (poor penetration) does is deprive you of the best chance for the extreme high and extreme low true counts which make you more money. Do you know true vs running count? The running count is the difference in relative number of high and low cards played. A +5 running count means there are 5 more high cards remaining in the deck than low cards. True count is what we bet on, because it matters whether those surplus 5 good cards are distributed throughout 1 remaining deck or 5 remaining decks. True count = running count divided by decks remaining, which is a measure of the concentration or "density" of good or bad cards as dealt, i.e. is more indicative of our odds of getting one of those good cards on a given next hand. Toward the end of the shoe, as # of decks remaining gets very small, think about what happens: as the denominator get smaller, the ratio (running count / decks remaining) gets larger. This means more extreme high counts, as well as extreme negative counts. But we can make more off the extreme highs than we lose on the extreme lows, including by leaving the table for extreme lows, so this situation favors the player. To your point about possibly getting a bunch of good cards even when the count is low - yes, this can happen, and I think it is more likely to happen (there is more opportunity for it to happen) when you have longer to play due to a shallow cut. But, variance! Hahaha. What matters is not what can happen, but what happens on average or in the long run.

What app?

I don't quite know what you're saying. You seem to be saying that if the next 26 face cards are stalled to keep a high running count. You would bet bigger for longer? The thing is, if you stall the big cards, then you would know that the next cards would be neutral or low cards, which is the equivalent of having a negative true count, but once you hit your face cards, the "true count" would return to normal, or even higher. The thing is, that never happens when counting cards. While counting cards, the probability density of the shoe is always the same thorough the shoe, but the density itself is changed by the count.

no, it doesn't hurt the count at all, but playing online is kinda suspicious

The only thing that really gives a player away as an advantage player is low-high bet swings. A lot of people THINK they can count cards and you can spot them a mile away. That's why the best deterrent to card counting is to just flat bet the player.

Rarely at this point.

colin another question I thought of. when you play bj do you go to the casino with a certain dollar amount you want to achieve or do you go in with a amount of hours you want to play

I guess the more the decks are the less it will affect your EV

@@whyarewestillhere8562 My question really didnt make sense but i just learned about wonging so thats essentially what i meant and want to do!!

He's allowed in my casino, we bring 2 decks per dealer and 1 gets auto shuffled while the game is going on. As long as you shuffle in between every hand (much easier with automatic card shufflers) he won't steal any money. Rude patrons are FAR worse to a casino than winning patrons. If you lose 2 keno players because you kicked a card counter in a rough way out you lost money.

A pitch game where you are not seeing the other players' first two cards does reduce the extra edge from strategy deviations a bit compared to a game dealt face up, but keep in mind that the primary source of your edge when counting is from sizing your bets, and you have the same information in both types of games when you make that decision.

Is it really cheating when you already know the house has an advantage? A lot of usinos will have a gambling pamphlet that tells you what your odds are. Guess what? They're all negative percentage which means the house will win in the long run.

you probably dont won millions

Casinos dislike all advantage play, because they don't want to lose money XD

That's my go-to (Barton's 93). Lots of single deck games dealt with a cut card, so you don't usually know those cards either.

Nothing. But if you're _really_ picky, if you want to calculate the true count, subtract 5 cards from the "dealt" cards.

If you want to play "normally", you should ask for the burn card. But if you want some cover, depending on how much cover you get, it may be worth not knowing the card if you don't have to worry about getting backed off.

You made a mistake only if you made a mistake with the information _known_ to you. So by definition, you would be able know if you made a mistake.

It’s unnecessary to play at the same table. It’s always better to have one player at each table. Maybe you might lose at your table but your team mate could be winning at another. It’s just better odds

I'm not Colin, but I'll answer 😂😂. Essentially, 1 deck penetration is pretty average. Anything less is fantastic. 1 1/2 deck penetration is kinda crossing the line but you can still get a good game. 2 decks or more, I would 100% avoid. Us card counters want as much cards to come out of the shoe as possible. When casinos cut off that much, we don't get as accurate of information as we can.

What are the odds of there ever being a positive count? You are at -32 from start with no 10's

Those miniscule extra odds don't begin to make up for the disproportionate # of low cards to high cards.

Why be "pessimistic" when everything is already just probabilistic? There is nothing to assume. Just take what you know and use it to your advantage.

Buy in before it starts

Then all of those cards are essentially added to the cards behind the cut card. So if they cut 1.5 decks off AND you miss the first 1/2 deck, then you are essentially playing a game that cuts off 2 decks.

No. Don’t ignore it - ask to see the burn card and include it in your count. You tldr’d it and missed the correct answer. LOL

Thanks for the info I was always counting it as a 10.

Yeah, full tables hurt the edge a little bit. But the real cost of a full table is how much it slows the game down. Heads up, you can play 250+ hands/hour. At a full table it can be as slow as 40 hands/hr. That's 1/6 the EV of heads up!

Blackjack Apprenticeship thanks for the response. If possible, can you run simulations to see exactly how much a full table hurts the advantage card counting? If you could make a video on this that would be great!

Not true. An unseen card is an unseen card. It doesn't matter whether it's on top, in the middle, or on the bottom.

No. As far as you are concerned when counting, there are two kinds of cards. Those you have seen, and those you haven't seen. An unseen card is an unseen card, whether it is at the top of the shoe or the bottom.

@@russlehman2070 The only _real_ thing that burning a card does to the true count is that you have to subtract one card when looking at the "dealt" cards. But it makes such a small difference that it doesn't matter.

If the count is rich, then it is likelier that the card is a high card, and therefore slightly decreases the running count. You're right about that. But the true count is expected to stay the same, because the true count directly tells you the probabilities of the cards, and if a card is burned without you knowing what it is, none of the probabilities change at all. Remember that the true count is the running count divided by (the number of unknown cards/52), if you somehow "knew" the burned card, the number of unknown cards would decrease by 1, and would completely balance out the true count.

No, it doesn't change the "flow" at all. There is no flow in the shoe. The true count tells you the card probability of _all the cards_ in the shoe, not just the top card.

Then what do you think about the 1-2 decks at the end of a shoe that are never played?

@@Zack-vt3zj Cards that have yet to pass so not affect the count

yes. But the point is that you can neglect the card as over time, the impact of low and high cards burned even out. By assuming it as a neg one, you actually hurt your own EV over time

@@TheDougSpot Cards by "definition" don't affect the count if you don't know them. If the dealer takes all the cut-off cards at the end of the shoe and "burns" them all, do you count -1 for every card?

@@danielyuan9862 That’s the dumbest shit you could have said. Cards at the end of the shoe can’t affect the count because they haven’t come out yet. The burn card has come out, so it does affect everything that follows. If the burn card is a 10, the running count is now -1 whether you know it or not

One of many reasons that card counting gives you a small edge, and not a sure thing is that your information is never perfect. A big positive count tells you only that the cards that you haven't seen contain more 10s and As than average. Those good cards can be anywhere: The next cards out of the shoe, the burn card, just in front of the cut card, or they could all be behind the cut card. Sometimes you will hit a high running count early in the shoe, and that count stays high until the cut card come out and the cards get shuffled. Guess what? You now know, too late to do you any good, that that was actually a disadvantageous shoe for you. That's why penetration is important to a card counter. The fewer cards left undealt, the better your chances of actually seeing those 10s and As.