You may be wondering to yourself, just exactly how difficult is it for the average person to learn the techniques of counting cards at blackjack.  If so, let me first start by saying, if I can do it, pretty well anyone can learn to count cards. 

Over the years there has been a mystique about counting cards.  Hollywood made the idea of counting cards famous in the movie Rain Man about a challenged man who had a fascinating and nearly phenomenal ability to remember things.  He was able to remember exactly how many of which cards had come out of the shoe at the casino, and was in turn able to exploit that knowledge in order to determine most probable timing for winning hands.  When the odds were good, he would bet high, and more often than would win.

This form of counting cards in blackjack is very unlikely to prove rewarding to most players and the vast majority of the population cannot remember the cards and count into a six deck shuffle.  The odds are significantly against anyone who wants to count cards in this manner.

That being said, there is a new method of counting cards, not a secret but rather popularized once again by Hollywood in the Kevin Spacey movie 21.  In this movie, there high achieving grad students from MIT who had exceptional memory as well, and were trained to count cards and practice their counting techniques ad nauseum before entering the casino.

This method is also based on using the principle of penetration of the deck in order to know statistically when the odds of pulling a high value card are very high.  The deeper into the deck the dealer deals, the more concentrated high and low value cards can become.  When more high value cards remain, there is a likelihood that the dealer may bust (go over twenty one) when they pull the next card.  The worst case scenario is that the dealer has a hand that looks like they will bust, but they pull a lucky low card, and don’t bust but beat the table.  This and its opposite case of knowing when they are likely to pull a high value card, and bust are increasingly possible with the use of counting cards in blackjack.

The good news is that this technique is not only statistically proven to increase a players odds against the house from statistically losing averages to statistically favorable averages, it is also relatively easy to learn.

If a person is able to read cards as they come out of the deck add and subtract by ones or by twos then they are already equipped with the necessary skills to learn how to count cards in blackjack.   The skill doesn’t necessarily come overnight, but it is learnable, and with a little bit of practice, can be mastered by nearly anyone.  You do not need to be an MIT grad, let alone even have gone to college in order to learn this skill.  You may be a high school drop out, a white collar worker, or even the guy who collects trash every week.  It does not make a difference.  The only thing you need is a pack of cards, and the willingness to practice over and over until you are confident about your skill.