I am skeptical of much of what Scarne has written in his books about blackjack, so I’ll quote from Mickey MacDougall’s MacDougall on Dice and Cards, which was published prior to any of Scarne’s books: “Many professionals dress up the game by giving prizes for certain hands. A favorite stunt is to offer ten times the size of the wager to anyone holding a natural twenty-one with a blackjack. This adds interest to the game, but it also tempts a player to increase his stakes.”

That curious bonus payout that gave blackjack its name, however, has long since disappeared. There may be some casino somewhere that pays a small bonus if a player is dealt a natural 21 which includes a jack of spades or clubs, but that is no longer a normal rule of the game. Today, a blackjack is simply any initial two cards that consist of an ace and any ten-valued card.

That’s when Ed Thorp dropped another bombshell. Under the auspices of their Vintage Paperback division, Random House published a revised and expanded edition of Beat the Dealer. And the most important addition was Harvey Dubner’s Hi-Lo counting system, which Thorp called the Complete Point Count, with a computer-optimized strategy devised by Julian Braun. To the casinos’ frustration, this was a system that could more easily be applied to multiple-deck games.

Thorp also included a Simple Point Count in this new edition of his book, but at the time that strategy seemed way too simple to most players to gain much of an edge, or to be taken seriously by players who wanted to beat the game. Later, the power of Thorp’s simpler method of adjusting the running count, without keeping a separate count of the exact number of cards played, would be shown.

Card counting doesn’t require a genius analitical mind to use it. Although, it does require the ability to stay focused in unfavorable stressful conditions of the casino. You should master the card counting technique before actually playing a real black jack game. Also, you’ll have to keep in mind that most casinos restrict card counters from playing blackjack, so you better learn how to count the cards without making it obvious to the dealer by the look on your face.

This system is called the Wizard’s ace five count. You start the count at 0, with every ace counting as a -1 and every five as a +1. When the count is 0 or negative you have to bet one unit. When it’s positive, the bet will be two units times the amount of the count: two units at +1, four units at +2. six units at +3 and so on.