Blackjack › Questions › Card counting
Does card counting work online?
Not against standard online blackjack, which shuffles the whole virtual shoe before every hand, so there is never anything to count. Live dealer blackjack streams a real shoe, but it is usually cut around the middle and shuffled often, which leaves too little of the shoe for a worthwhile edge. The one place it works as in a casino is a live game with deep penetration, and operators avoid dealing one.
With a fresh shoe every hand the count is always 0, and basic strategy is the best anyone can do: 0.53% house edge on the common six-deck rules, 0.56% at eight decks.
Continuous shuffling machines
Casinos answer counters with the same idea in hardware: a continuous shuffling machine returns the discards to the shoe after every round, so the shoe never drifts. Counting still works against an automatic shuffler that only shuffles between shoes; it is the continuous kind that ends it. The felt usually says which one the table has.
Why
Counting works because cards already dealt are out of the shoe until the shuffle. A random-number blackjack game deals every hand from a full shoe, like a continuous shuffling machine in a casino, so the past hands say nothing about the next one. Live dealer tables do use real shoes, but the operator sets the cut card, and a cut at 50% with a shuffle every few minutes keeps the count from ever getting far from zero while the bets are watched. The upside of online play is practice: a trainer that flags mistakes is the fastest way to get basic strategy perfect before you count anything.
What online play is good for
Learning. This trainer deals a real six-deck shoe to a cut card, shows the running and true count under the table, and asks for the count now and then, so you can practice exactly what a casino shoe demands, with virtual chips and no sign-up.