What Counting Cards Actually Earns
Updated
Less than almost anyone tells you, and that is before anything is taxed. At the penetration most reachable tables offer, a competent counter with a 1–8 spread earns roughly $1.51 an hour on $25 units. Not a typo, and not a discouragement tactic — here is every step of the calculation.
- Your edge rises about 0.51% for every point of true count.
- At 50% penetration you are at +1 or better on 33.77% of rounds.
- With a 1–8 spread that is about $1.51 an hour at $25 a unit.
- Deeper penetration changes everything: $10.20 at 75%.
The whole calculation, step by step
Six decks, 50% penetration, Hi-Lo, a 1–8 bet spread, correct basic strategy with deviations.
| True count | Share of rounds | Your edge | Units bet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 32.5% | -0.339% | 1 |
| +1 | 19.2% | +0.172% | 1 |
| +2 | 8.6% | +0.681% | 2 |
| +3 | 3.7% | +1.183% | 4 |
| +4 | 1.5% | +1.679% | 6 |
| +5 | 0.8% | +2.183% | 8 |
Multiply each row’s edge by its share of rounds and by the bet size, add them up, and you get about 0.0010 units per round. At 60 rounds an hour that is 0.060 units an hour.
On $25 units: $1.51 an hour.
What actually moves this number
Penetration, by a mile. At 75% the same play earns $10.20 — almost seven times more. The penetration table, and it is the single condition worth walking across a casino for.
Bet spread. A 1–8 spread is already aggressive enough to be noticed. Wider earns more and gets you barred sooner.
Unit size. Everything scales linearly, which is why the numbers only become interesting with a bankroll most people do not have. A $100 unit needs roughly $40,000 behind it to survive normal swings.
The part that is usually left out
That hourly figure is an average over an enormous number of hands. The swings around it dwarf it. A counter earning 0.06 units an hour can lose a hundred units in a weekend without anything having gone wrong.
Which means: you cannot tell whether you are winning from a session, a week, or often a month. You are relying on arithmetic you cannot see working. That is a harder thing psychologically than the counting is technically, and it is where most people stop.
If any of this starts to feel like a way out of a hole rather than a hobby, please read this instead.
How these figures were produced
The edge at each true count was computed by building a shoe with that composition and recalculating the entire game — every player hand against every dealer upcard. The frequency of each true count is the one number on this site that is simulated rather than solved exactly, because it depends on card order: 200,000 shoes, sampled at the start of every round.
Everything else is arithmetic on top of those two tables. Our method in general.
Keep reading
By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
← Back to guides