BLACKJACK TOURNAMENT E-BOOKS BY BJI AUTHOR KEN SMITH! How to Win EVEN MORE Blackjack Tournaments - Volume II... only $14.95. Ken Smith's second e-book on tournament blackjack contains more of his winning strategies that have made him one of the best tournament blackjack players in the world. Or, purchase both Volume I and Volume II together for $24.95... over 15% off! NEW! Read how Ken used skill to win a recent blackjack tournament. Get his books and you could too!

Speed Count... Everything you were not Afraid to Ask but Wanted to know!

Read what our students are saying about the course!

We've completed our first few GTB courses this year, and the positive response is outstanding! The course was full (we'll be using larger facilities and more instructors in the months to come to handle the extra enrollment demand), and reception from our students was fantastic! CLICK HERE to read what our students thought of the GTB course. CLICK HERE to see our schedule of upcoming courses and locations, and to sign-up now before the sessions fill up again.

$100 off until the end of the year for BJI Subscribers... call 1-866-WIN-BJ21

Introducing... Speed Count

As many of our fine readers now know, Henry Tamburin (editor of BJI) and myself (Dan Pronovost, production editor of BJI) teamed up to develop a new card counting system for Blackjack, called Speed Count. The result of two years of intense research and development is a new card counting system, different from anything before, that is many times easier to learn and master. It brings the potential of blackjack card counting to the masses of gamblers who pay without a positive edge, or have tried counting and failed.

We have licensed Speed Count exclusively to Golden Touch Blackjack, run by Frank Scoblete and Dom LoRiggio (yes, the same guys who teach the dice control course, Golden Touch Craps). Speed Count will ONLY be available through the two-day course taught by GTB. Professional instructors, including Henry and Frank, will teach the course, with hands-on training sessions at practice tables. You will not just learn about Speed Count, you will learn to master it in live play.

Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of buzz about Speed Count. Since the system is 'Hush-hush', with few details revealed, there are a lot of skeptics and doubters! Fair enough... this section of our web site is devoted to provide as much information as we can on Speed Count, to answer the various questions we have been challenged with. We'll continue to update this section as further details can be exposed.

Professional Reviews

Since Speed Count is marketed as a private course, you want to know that it works. To help you gain the confidence that the system is as good as we say, we've engaged independent gaming industry consultants to review and test Speed Count under Non-Disclosure terms (i.e. they get to see everything about the system and provide their feedback, but can't disclose the details of Speed Count). The following professional reviews have been completed to date.

Note that Speed Count has been fully simulated, tested, verified and audited with my own Blackjack simulator, Blackjack Audit, and these results are available in the course and to all reviewers.

Review by Dr. Catlin:

We asked Dr. Don Catlin, an independent gaming industry consultant and professor of Mathematics at University of Massachusetts, to review Speed Count. Mr. Catlin used his own blackjack simulator software to test Speed Count and verify our performance data. Here are his comments:

Comments by Dr. Don Catlin:
"Speed Count is the easiest card counting system I have encountered. I designed and ran a simulation of the Regular Speed Count using a 6 deck Blackjack game with doubling after splitting, dealer hits the soft 17, late surrender, split up to three times (total of four hands), Aces are split once and receive one card each. My result was that the players edge per game was 1.014% and was 0.33% per unit wagered; this was based on 1 billion hands."

Notes: We ran identical simulations in Blackjack Audit as a benchmark to compare against Dr. Catlin's work. The exact benchmark game was: six decks, DAS, H17, 75% penetration, no resplitting aces, one card draw to split aces, max three splits, no insurance ('regular' Speed Count, without insurance, wonging, hand spreading, or higher bet spread). With a one billion round simulation in Audit, the identical game generated a player edge (total profit divided by sum of all wager) of 0.3364%. Hence, the difference from Dr. Catlin's simulation was only 0.0064% (1.9% difference) in player expectation. This independent analysis based on completely different simulation software provides further evidence supporting the Speed Count card counting system.

Dr. Catlin has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.A. in Mathematics, both from Penn State University. He has have a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Florida. He was a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Massachusetts from 1965 to 2001. Since 1995 he has been involved in gaming analysis and writes the monthly mathematics column for the web site www.scoblete.com. In September of last year he published a soft cover book entitled The Lottery Book, The Truth Behind the Numbers.

Review by Michael Shackleford:

Here are the official comments from Michael Shackleford, who runs the excellent blackjack portal www.WizardofOdds.com:

Comments by Michael Shackleford:
"The authors of Speed Count were kind enough to share their strategy with me. While I can't explain the concept in detail I can say it bridges the jump from basic strategy to conventional card counting. Speed Count is appropriate for the basic strategy player who wishes to gain an advantage with less effort than conventional hi-low card counting. Built in camouflage I believe will help the Speed Counter confuse counter-catchers and thus buy more bet variation. That will roughly compensate for lost accuracy relative to a hi-low count. Although I have not personally verified the claims of Speed Count I have looked at simulation results provided to me by Dan Pronovost and believe they are trustworthy. So if you are a basic strategy player ready to take the next step, or have tried a hi-low count and found it too difficult, then the Speed Count may be just what you're looking for to start winning at blackjack."

Review by Bill Burton at About.com:

Here is a segment of Bill Burton's review of the Golden Touch Blackjack Course (which he attended). Bill is the author and editor for the About.com web pages on casino gambling. You can read his complete review at: casinogambling.about.com.

Review by Bill Burton:
"I attended the two day course and was surprised with the ease in learning the speed count method. In the past I have studied the Hi/Lo count but had difficulty utilizing it in the casino. I switched to the KO method but fond that I could not sustain it for long. I learned the speed count in two days and was able to easily use it at the casino. The course is very hands on. You learn by playing and practicing at the blackjack table with other students in a simulated game situation. If you can learn basic strategy then you can learn the speed count."

A new FAQ

First, we have a FAQ (frequently asked questions) report provided by GTB that you can read. It may answer some of your questions. CLICK HERE to read the GTB course FAQ.

Blackjack Bulletins Board

The forums are burning up with talk about Speed Count... what is it, how can they claim it's so easy to learn, is it a scam, surely it's nothing special, etc. Leveraging Speed Count as a high-end course, rather than a easily accessible and cheap book, is going to create this kind of fervor, and we accept that.

If you want to join in the discussions, or read the various posts, feel free to view the free forum pages at www.advantageplayer.com and www.bj21.com. We've posted a few replies in some cases, trying to stick to the facts and avoiding the less professional and outspoken retorts when possible.

Included below are some posts and rebuts we've made that have further fats and information on Speed Count.