When card counting was first publicized in the 1960’s, the "plus/minus" method of mentally adding and subtracting points for each high or low card that came out became standard operating procedure. Even today, the old tried and true "Hi/Lo" Count from forty years ago remains probably the most widely used card counting system around.

As time moved into the 1970’s and ‘80’s, multi-level "plus/minus" counting systems were developed under the natural assumption that "more is better." But it wasn’t realized until blackjack simulation software became widely used in the 1990’s that these super-structured count systems gained very little in the way of additional performance. That caused system designers to think in the opposite direction. The question now became:

With the help of blackjack simulation software, several simpler, shorter, more user friendly methods of tracking high vs. low cards were developed that might bring beating the house at blackjack within the reach of the "recreational" player. The systems described in this article all fall into that category. They are much easier to use than the standard "Hi/Lo" Count and underperform it substantially as well. Nevertheless, they still carry enough "oomph" to create a net advantage for the player – albeit a small one.

Crossing over the line from being the underdog to being the favorite at blackjack doesn’t get any easier than this. The flip side is, your advantage using the Ace/10 Front Count perfectly will be a mere ¼%. That means if you vary your bets between $10 and $60 (with the averaged wager being around $17), you should net $4 per hour – long term. Even after 100 hours at the tables using the Ace/10 Front Count, your chance of being ahead of the game will be only 55%.

Sound like a waste of effort? Remember the alternative. After 100 hours of playing straight basic strategy $17 per hand, your fighting chance of being ahead would be only 33%. Your average result over that period would be a loss of $800, but with the Front Count it would be a gain of $400. It’s your call, but if you plan on playing blackjack in the coming years anyway, it ought to be worth taking your game up this critical notch. Here are the basics of the Ace/10 Front Count.

The Ace/10 Front Count was designed specifically for the six deck shoe. With that many decks, it usually takes a couple of decks to be dealt out before the shoe can become substantially biased to the high or low side.

That’s the sole purpose of the Ace/10 Front Count. It merely gauges the high/low strength of the shoe at the point where the first two decks have been dealt. Using it as a barometer, you’ll know when to bet more money the rest of the way – and when to leave the table.

A particularly recreational feature of the Ace/10 Front Count is that you stop counting altogether once the first two decks of the shoe have been dealt. From there on out, you just play. That’s why it’s called a "front count".

Methodology: You must start at the top of the shoe. The only cards you pay any attention to are the 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces. This is not a traditional "plus/minus" system; there is no adding and subtracting of low vs. high cards. You simply add together all the 10s through Aces that were dealt out during the first two decks – no further. Do this by starting off at "zero" and counting forward with each 10 or Ace as it appears. Once two decks are in the discard tray, stop counting altogether and bet the rest of the shoe according to how many Ace/10’s you’ve counted.

Since there are sixteen 10s and four Aces in every deck, on average, you will have seen 40 Ace/10s after two decks have been played – but not always. Sometimes you will have seen maybe only 36 Ace/10s in those first two decks. That’s when you’ll have an outright advantage on the shoe and should increase your bets.

The most sensitive part of the whole Ace/10 Front Count system is "eyeballing" when two decks have been dealt. This you do by looking at the discard tray. You’ll need to have a good picture in your mind of what 104 cards (two decks) looks like.

Reality Check: The Ace/10 Front Count is not a key to riches. No card counting system is. It is merely a super-simple, recreational way to gain a very small net edge over the house at blackjack. That’s reality number one. Reality number two is, to play it effectively, you should have twelve times your maximum bet in your pocket before you sit down to play. This rule goes for just about any count system, no matter how simple or sophisticated it is. Playing with any less is just asking to get busted out.

For a complete 13-page instruction booklet on the Ace/10 Front Count, send $9 to Fred Renzey, P.O. Box 598, Elk Grove Village, IL 60009.

The next step up on the performance and complexity ladder for recreational blackjack counting systems is the Speed Count. It’s a bit tougher to learn than the Ace/10 Front Count, but performs somewhat better as well.

The Speed Count makes unique use of the handy statistic that says the average completed blackjack hand happens to contain 2.7 cards. Now, since the key low cards in the game (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s) comprise 38% of all the cards, then on average, almost exactly one of these low cards should appear for every completed blackjack hand.

Speed Count developer, Dan Pronovost saw that this could be a simple way to "infer" the number of low cards that have been dealt thus far. In fact, the more decks that are used, the more accurate this "inference" turns out to be. Here’s basically how the Speed Count simplifies and avoids that tedious "plusing" and "minusing" of low and high cards as they come out, which is so traditional for full scale card counting systems.

The Method: As the hands are completed, you simply tally up how many 2s through 6s were in all the hands, including the dealer’s hand. If there were four players and one dealer, there should’ve on average, been five low cards on the table. In reality, there could’ve been any number. So what you do is subtract the number of hands from the total of low cards to see whether that round contained an average, an excess or deprived number of low cards.

If there were seven low cards on the board, your Speed Count will have gone up two points -- indicating that two extra low cards have been dealt out of play. If there were only three low cards, your Speed Count will fall two points. A rising Speed Count for the round is a good thing and a falling number is bad.

Perhaps the toughest part of the Speed Count is that you must remember and carry over your net total to the next round, and keep updating all the way through to the shuffle. If your net Speed Count on the first round went down a bit and on the second round it went up a lot, you’ll have a small positive net Speed Count total. Once your Speed Count has risen far enough above your starting point to erase the house edge and create a player edge, it’s time to increase your bets.

Performance: In a typical six deck game, my own simulations and analyses suggest that the Speed Count, played appropriately would yield a net player advantage between 4/10% and 1/2%. As with any card counting system, you still need to have about twelve maximum bets available for action at the beginning of any playing session.

For complete details on how to implement the Speed Count, get a copy of "Golden Touch Blackjack Revolution" by Frank Scoblete. It retails for $24.95.

Once you go beyond the improvisational card tracking methods of the Ace/10 Front Count and the Speed Count, the next practical rung up the card counting ladder would be an entry-level, abbreviated "plus/minus" count. That’s basically what the KISS Count is. It stands for "Keep It Short & Simple."

Although the KISS Count is an honest-to-goodness "plus/minus" system, it counts only 50% of the cards, ignoring less significant ones. In doing so, the KISS Count still gives garners about ²/3rds as much net edge over the house as the old full scale Hi/Lo plus/minus count. The KISS also avoids the traditional need to divide your running count by the number of remaining decks in order to determine your advantage, or "true count."

Perhaps the most desirable part of the KISS Count however, is that it’s directly upgradeable to a better, more expanded system once the user has become comfortable with it. The KISS I, II and III systems were all developed together with each succeeding version being a natural progression of the last. This allows the user to ease his way from entry-level card counting to full scale counting one soft step at a time.

The System: With the KISS I system, you count the picture cards (Jacks, Queens and Kings) as -1 point when they come out, while the 4s, 5s and 6s are +1 point. The black deuces (but not the red 2s) are also grouped in with all the 4s, 5s and 6s as a +1 to "unbalance" the system. That eliminates the old stumbling block of "converting" to a true count, and enables the user to bet and play entirely by the running count.

To avoid ever dealing with negative counts, the KISS player begins his running count off the top of the shoe at a positive number, then pluses and minuses his count from there. When the count rises to a given point, he will have the advantage and should begin increasing his bets.

Once a player becomes comfortable with the short KISS I system, he can opt to upgrade to KISS II by simply adding one low and one high card to his count structure as +1 and -1 cards, respectively. Beyond that, he can later upgrade to KISS III by adding in yet one more high and low card.

Performance: In a typical six deck game, the KISS I Count will gain about a 1/2% net advantage over the house. KISS III is a full scale unbalanced plus/minus counting system and performs on a virtual par with the standard Hi/Lo count.

Complete detailed instructions on how to play and use all three KISS Counts are presented in Blackjack Bluebook II by Fred Renzey. It retails for $16.50 and is available from the Blackjack Insider store.