Live Blackjack Card Counting
added 17.11.2011, 1:00PM
One of the biggest crazes in online blackjack right now is live dealer blackjack, where a real dealer handles the cards, and video is streamed straight to your computer. The obvious draw to this version of online blackjack is that you get a live casino feel since there's a dealer present. But one of the less obvious draws to live blackjack is that people think there's a chance to count cards against the casino.
The reasons why people think that they can count cards is because a real person is dealing the cards from a blackjack shoe. Contrast this to normal online blackjack where the software automatically shuffles cards after every hand. Furthermore, if you were successful at counting cards, the online casino would have little way of finding out because they can't actually see you.
Unfortunately, live blackjack casinos are no doubt aware of the fact that people can count cards under normal circumstances, so they take care to prevent this from happening. The biggest thing that live dealer casinos do is shuffle the cards halfway through the shoe. For example, if the shoe is eight decks, the casino will shuffle cards after four decks have been dealt so that players can't penetrate the deck enough to effectively count cards.
In addition to this, some online casinos only offer solo live blackjack, meaning you cannot see the other players' cards that are dealt. This being said, it would be awfully hard to count cards without knowing what else has been dealt, or when the shoe is shuffled halfway through.
Long story short, you're not going to catch a break in your card counting efforts at live dealer casinos. However, this doesn't mean that you have to totally avoid them because playing live dealer blackjack from home is really fun. And if you're a guy, you can especially appreciate the fact that many of the live dealers are beautiful ladies who you can chat with (when the option is allowed). Furthermore, you can lower the house edge to 0.5% by using correct blackjack strategy, which gives you a decent chance to win when comps and other bonuses are factored into the equation.
