Card counting 101: unlike dice or roulette where every outcome is entirely independent, blackjack has "memory"... all the cards that have previously been discar

Card counting 101: unlike dice or roulette where every outcome is entirely independent, blackjack has "memory"... all the cards that have previously been discarded are unavailable in future hands. Blackjack starts out with a casino advantage of only about 0.3 to 0.7%. When a lot of 5s (and to a lesser extent, 6s and 4s) have been used already, that can move the advantage up to about 2 percentage points into the players favor, therefore, going from -0.5% to as high as +1.5%. The idea is to bet as little as possible under normal circumstances, and then for the hands where the advantage has shifted to the player, increase the bet as much as the casino will allow. So for example in theory, 40 hands x $10 x -0.5% + 3 hands x $500 x +1.0% is net positive. But not a lot, and good luck getting a 50x bet spread past a halfway decent pit boss.