 Hi, I'm Mike Aponte and I'm at DEFCON 20. I was one of the leaders of the MIT Blackjack team and we used card counting to hack Las Vegas and beat the casinos for millions. Our story became the basis for the bestselling book, Bringing Down the House, and the major motion picture, 21. Now a lot of people think that you have to be a math Liz or Rain Man to count cards, but actually it's quite the opposite. So right now I'm going to give you card counting 101. Now with card counters, they're concerned with three different groups of cards. First we have the neutral cards, 7, 8, and 9. And overall the neutral cards don't favor the dealer or the player. So ultimately card counters actually ignore these cards. So that leaves us with the high cards, 10 through ace, and the low cards, 2 through 6. The high cards are really good for the player because these are the cards that give you blackjack which plays 3 to 2. They also make it more likely that the dealer will bust when hitting on totals of 12 through 16, and they also make better draw cards when doubling down and splitting. On the flip side, the low cards, 2 through 6, favor the dealer because these are the cards that turn the dealer's bad totals of 12 through 16 into winning totals of 19, 20, and 21. Also, the more low cards remaining, the fewer blackjacks that will be dealt, which are good for players and bad for the dealers. So as you can see, there are an equal number of high cards and low cards. So this is a balanced count system called the high-low, which is what the MIT team used. So at the start of a brand new shuffle, the count is zero because you haven't seen any cards. As the cards are being dealt, the count is constantly fluctuating. Every time a hard card comes out, 10 through 8, the count goes down by one. Now the reason the high cards have a count value of minus one, even though they're good for the player, is that every time one of them is depleted, that's one less high card that can benefit players in the future. Basically every time a low card is dealt, 2 through 6, the count increases by plus one because that's one less low card that can hurt the players moving forward. Now as the count increases on the positive side, that means there has to be more of the favorable high cards remaining. So what a card counter does is keep track of the count in order to identify the rounds, the situations when they're more likely to get black jacks, the deer is more likely to bust, and so you want to bet little or nothing when you don't have the advantage as a card counter, and then proportionally more as your advantage increases. So as you can see, card counting isn't as complex as people think, but of course like anything, it takes practice to become really good at it. So let's deal one round of cards and see if you can keep track of the count. Now scanning these cards over, what we can do is group up the high cards versus low cards in pairs so that they cancel out. So for example, this ace cancels out the 3, this queen cancels out the 4, and then we can ignore the 7, 8, and 9s because they don't affect the count at all, and so that leaves us with two low cards which each have a count value of plus one, so the count of these cards is plus two, which means there has to be two more favorable cards remaining in the shoe.
 Hi, I'm Mike Aponte and I'm at DEFCON 20.
 I was one of the leaders of the MIT Blackjack team and we used card counting to hack Las
 Vegas and beat the casinos for millions.
 Our story became the basis for the bestselling book, Bringing Down the House, and the major
 motion picture, 21.
 Now a lot of people think that you have to be a math Liz or Rain Man to count cards,
 but actually it's quite the opposite.
 So right now I'm going to give you card counting 101.
 Now with card counters, they're concerned with three different groups of cards.
 First we have the neutral cards, 7, 8, and 9.
 And overall the neutral cards don't favor the dealer or the player.
 So ultimately card counters actually ignore these cards.
 So that leaves us with the high cards, 10 through ace, and the low cards, 2 through
 6.
 The high cards are really good for the player because these are the cards that give you
 blackjack which plays 3 to 2.
 They also make it more likely that the dealer will bust when hitting on totals of 12 through
 16, and they also make better draw cards when doubling down and splitting.
 On the flip side, the low cards, 2 through 6, favor the dealer because these are the
 cards that turn the dealer's bad totals of 12 through 16 into winning totals of 19, 20,
 and 21.
 Also, the more low cards remaining, the fewer blackjacks that will be dealt, which are good
 for players and bad for the dealers.
 So as you can see, there are an equal number of high cards and low cards.
 So this is a balanced count system called the high-low, which is what the MIT team used.
 So at the start of a brand new shuffle, the count is zero because you haven't seen any
 cards.
 As the cards are being dealt, the count is constantly fluctuating.
 Every time a hard card comes out, 10 through 8, the count goes down by one.
 Now the reason the high cards have a count value of minus one, even though they're good
 for the player, is that every time one of them is depleted, that's one less high card
 that can benefit players in the future.
 Basically every time a low card is dealt, 2 through 6, the count increases by plus one
 because that's one less low card that can hurt the players moving forward.
 Now as the count increases on the positive side, that means there has to be more of the
 favorable high cards remaining.
 So what a card counter does is keep track of the count in order to identify the rounds,
 the situations when they're more likely to get black jacks, the deer is more likely to
 bust, and so you want to bet little or nothing when you don't have the advantage as a card
 counter, and then proportionally more as your advantage increases.
 So as you can see, card counting isn't as complex as people think, but of course like
 anything, it takes practice to become really good at it.
 So let's deal one round of cards and see if you can keep track of the count.
 Now scanning these cards over, what we can do is group up the high cards versus low cards
 in pairs so that they cancel out.
 So for example, this ace cancels out the 3, this queen cancels out the 4, and then we
 can ignore the 7, 8, and 9s because they don't affect the count at all, and so that leaves
 us with two low cards which each have a count value of plus one, so the count of these cards
 is plus two, which means there has to be two more favorable cards remaining in the shoe.