Advantage Play & Game Integrity
Card counting machine blackjack
Card counting machine blackjack is the use of a mechanical or electronic device to track exposed cards in blackjack, maintaining a count so the player can adjust bets or playing decisions.
Key points
- The device tracks exposed cards and maintains a running count to infer whether remaining cards are rich in high or low cards14.
- Unlike mental card counting, using a machine is explicitly illegal in some jurisdictions, including Nevada2.
- The player uses the count to vary bet size and sometimes playing decisions12.
Where this term is used
Not the same as
- Blackjack card counting — the general strategy of mentally tracking cards without a device
- Card counting machine — the same concept without the blackjack context; no distinct meaning is established in the sources4
Related terms
Advantage play
Blackjack card counting
The general strategy of mentally tracking cards in blackjack.
Advantage play
Card counting machine
A device used to track cards in any game, not only blackjack.
Advantage play
Card counting
The broad advantage-play technique of tracking dealt cards.
Advantage play
Blackjack card counting bot
An automated program that counts cards in blackjack.
Advantage play
Blackjack odds with card counting
How card counting changes the player's edge in blackjack.
Advantage play
Hi-lo blackjack card counting
The most common card counting system, assigning values +1, 0, -1 to cards.
Sources
- Card counting en.wikipedia.org Defines card counting and the use of devices to track cards.
- Blackjack en.wikipedia.org States the house edge for basic strategy and the illegality of external devices in Nevada.
- MIT Blackjack Team en.wikipedia.org Provides the figure that card counting can give an edge up to about 2%.
- MindPlay - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org Describes MindPlay as a branded blackjack-monitoring system that counts cards.
Sources are drawn from regulators, universities and published research, and each one is labelled with what it actually is — a preprint is not called a paper. Bookmaker and affiliate pages are never cited here, because a page that sells betting is not a neutral authority on it.