I once read about a group of MIT students who used card counting methods to win at blackjack. I had to try this out for myself so I wrote this little program to experiment. This isn't an extensive look into various card counting methods, but it's enough to get an idea of the difficulty and time involved in making money by playing blackjack even when playing perfectly.
In the story I read about the MIT group card counters betting small inconspicuous amounts signaled "whales" to bet large amounts when the count was favorable. This speeds up profit making, but a small number of big bets at odds only slightly in your favor can still result in big losses.
- At it's basic level this program will allow you to play blackjack.
- It can also be set to enforce basic strategy which is the best way to play your cards without counting cards.
- Practice counting cards.
- Computer play to demonstrate card counting and test profit making.
- Extensive statistics to analyze play.
- Play with the rules of major gambling locations (Vegas, Atlantic City...) or choose your own rule combinations.
Download CountBlackjack program (50KB).
To install: Just save the download to a folder and run the exe file after unzipping to a directory of your choice. As long as your computer has the Visual Basic Runtime files for VB6 it will run. Windows 8 comes with that already installed. If you do get an error message when trying to run the program then you can get the runtime files from Microsoft or from Download.com.