NRS - Simple Example
Let us start with a trivial example. In this example, the Track Zone and Play Zone are both exactly one deck and contain the same cards. So, we know the running count of the Play Zone. (This shuffle actually exists, although it is extremely rare.) The Play Zone is at the start of the shoe. Suppose the running count of the Zone is -10. We know there are excess high cards in the first 52 cards. When we start the shoe, we are essentially playing a one-deck game that has extra high cards. (Think about the advantage that this gives you.) We can ignore the five later decks for now and just concentrate on this one deck. In NRS, we call this a pseudo-deck. We can start the count at +10. That is, we have an initial running count that is the opposite of the count in the PZ. Therefore, when we reach the end of the PZ, the count will have dropped to zero.
To calculate the true count, we divide the running count by one deck since we have one pseudo-deck. At the start, we have a true count of +10 (10 divided by 1). So, we can bet very high and also use +10 for indexes to deal with the excess high cards. If halfway through the pseudo-deck, the running count has dropped to +5, then the true count is still +10 (+5 divided by ½). On average, the true count will be +10, although it will bounce up and down.
Once we have completed the Play Zone, we then subtract the initial running count from our current running count. We added it temporarily at the start of the PZ, and we now subtract it back out. We then go back to using the normal true count calculation for the remainder of the shoe.
NRS – More Realistic Example
Unfortunately, the above example rarely exists. In most cases, the Track Zone is smaller than the Play Zone, and there are uncounted cards in the Play Zone. So let us look at that example.
We can see in the image below that we have a Track Zone (TZ) of 39 cards and a Play Zone (PZ) of 78 cards. We know the running count of the TZ. That means we know the running count (RC) of
© 2009 Norman Wattenberger
