Side counts are used by some players to increase the accuracy of their betting or play. Keeping more than one count at once is significantly more difficult and not advised for a new player. In fact, few professionals use side counts these days. However, they do have their purposes. Six types of side counts are described in this section. All of these are supported by Casino Vérité Blackjack for practice.

Ten Side Count for Insurance Purposes

A perfect side count for Insurance purposes would count Tens as -9 and all other cards as +4. However, I know of no one that uses this. The method used by Casino Vérité is to use an unbalanced count found in the 1981 version of Stanford Wong’s Professional Blackjack. Here, Tens are counted as -2 and all other cards as +1. Insure if the count is greater than four times the number of decks. The Ten Count can also be used for the Bust Out bet if you can find that rule anywhere.

Ace Side Count for Betting Purposes

This method is valid only with ace-neutral strategies (e.g., Hi-Opt I, Hi-Opt II, Omega II, Uston APC, Expert, and Revere Advanced Plus-Minus). If you are using any of these systems, the true count is quite accurate for strategy purposes, but less accurate for betting purposes. To correct this, use the following procedure:

Ø  Calculate the number of excess aces (may be negative) in the remaining cards

Ø  Multiply the number of excess aces by the absolute value of the point count value assigned by the current strategy to ten-value cards (usually one or two)

Ø  Temporarily add the result to the running count

Ø  Recalculate the true count for betting purposes only

Ø  Note: The adjusted count is also used for Wonging.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger