Card counting drills

In various threads of WoV, experienced card counters say a good drill is to count down a single deck in about 30 secs. (Yes, I've read some can do this in 20 secs!).

Some posters also advocate trying 2 cards at a time, 3 cards at a time, and even 2 whole decks (or more).

My question today is what is a reasonable time goal for counting down 3 cards at a time?

That way, I can have a yard stick.

(I'm still in the high 40s for counting down a single deck).

FWIW, I've not yet applied card-counting, but plan to this coming Apr.

Thanks for your feedback, or even other drills I can use to practice card counting.

First, I'm sure you'll get a response or two of people who say "counting down a single deck is a worthless drill" but my opinion couldn't be further from that. I think it is like having training wheels on a bike to count down a single deck. Sure, while some parents promote just shoving the kid on the bike and letting them fall a few times until they figure it out, I personally believe going in moderate steps and learning a skill slowly with a TON of repetition is the key to honing any skill.

Counting down a single deck in under 30 seconds, CONSISTENTLY, lets you know you're ready for the training wheels to come off... but that doesn't mean that's the best. There's plenty of pros that used to be able to do it even faster than that. In my hay day I could do it pretty consistently around 15-20 seconds, and I could do it 'moderately consistent' 10-15 seconds. The one thing I do like about forcing yourself to do it that fast is it really does become a more advanced drill where you're just seeing flashes of cards and you need to remember and count them correctly. The whole under 30 seconds consistently is to prove you're ready to try more difficult training, that's all.

AFTER you can count a deck down in under 30 seconds CONSISTENTLY (notice the over use of this word) then you can move on to more, such as counting down a deck while drawing multiple cards at a time. This multiple card approach should be faster than your 1 card time because clearly you're dealing out more cards. The idea behind this approach is to learn the Cancellation Principle. When you flip over 3 cards, there's a good chance two of them will "cancel" each other out... So say you flip over 3-9-J... You should easily be able to "cancel out" the 3 and the J and know that pack of 3 is worth 0. This is applied on the tables by WAITING until the 2nd round of cards comes out before you start counting... That way you can "cancel out" peoples hands... Seat 1: J-3 (nothing), Seat 2, K-9 (-1), Seat 3: 10-6 (nothing). Then when you get good at ignoring the canceled out cards you only see a couple numbers on the table you have to count. It's a way of making something that should be easy with good training, even easier.

Stick with 1 deck until you can get under 30 seconds and correct 5 times in a row, on more than one occasion. Then move to 3 cards at a time and train that until you can beat your 1 deck time (which should be pretty easy to do). After that you should move on to dealing yourself a 6D shoe and playing 5 hands with perfect basic strategy. Then after you can do that well do the same thing but play like you're counting and using indexes on 2 of the hands, while keeping the others just basic strategy. All of this should be done slow ONLY to start, but then as fast as possible with the radio and TV and a conversation with your friend/partner/etc/etc at the same time. Then when you get to a casino, card counting will be like breathing... You won't even have to 'try' and you'll be able to do it.

Quote: Romes

Stick with 1 deck until you can get under 30 seconds and correct 5 times in a row, on more than one occasion. Then move to 3 cards at a time and train that until you can beat your 1 deck time (which should be pretty easy to do).

This will be my initial target, the 1 deck < 30 sec, correct 5 times in a row on at least 3 different occasions.

Then I'll graduate myself to 3 cards at a time, working on the "cancellation" principle", working to beat my 1 card at time record.

I can easily associate with making card counting like breathing - as I've mentioned before, I do have a respiratory ailment called SOB (shortness of breath, not the other SOB). Even when I do my gym routines, or swimming, everything is breathing-oriented.

Thank you for the suggestions!