True Count
Now we come to the more difficult area. Just after the shuffle in a six-deck game, removing one card from the shoe has little effect. It is only one out of 312 cards. But when you are deeper in the shoe, removing a card has a larger effect as it is being removed from fewer cards. Suppose you knew that there were ten extra aces in the shoe. Clearly, this would be far more important if there were only 20 cards left instead of 300 cards left. To account for this problem, we divide the running count by the remaining decks in the shoe to create a true count, or count per deck. The true count more accurately estimates the richness of tens in the remaining cards. We can now use this more accurate number for betting and playing decisions.
Calculating the true count requires two additional skills. First, you must estimate the remaining decks and second, you must divide that number into the running count to create the true count.
To estimate the remaining decks, we normally use the discard tray. There exist other methods discussed later. If this is a six-deck game and there are two decks in the tray, then there are four decks remaining. So, we divide the running count by four to obtain the true count. Thus a running count of +12 and four remaining decks gives us a true count of 12/4 or +3. There is no need to calculate exactly the remaining cards — rounding to the nearest full or half deck in shoe games is acceptable. There is also no need to deal with fractions. Simply round the answer down to the nearest integer. So, it the running count is 7, and there are 4 remaining decks, the true count is 1. That is, 7/4 rounded down to 1. This is called “flooring.”
Single-deck games are more complicated. First, in single-deck games you should estimate to the nearest quarter-deck. Secondly, you will often be dividing by a fraction. So, if the running count is 10 and ½ deck remains, you divide by ½. This is the same as multiplying by 2. So, the true count is 20. If ¼ deck remains, you divide by ¼, which is the same as multiplying by 4. If ¾ deck remains, you multiply by 4/3. A running count of 10 times 4/3 is 40/3 or 13. Here the true count is 1/3rd more than the running count. This is a bit more difficult, but will become easy with practice drills. Eventually, you will not make calculations at all, but
© 2009 Norman Wattenberger
