Zen Count Blackjack

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Basic blackjack strategy. The single most important thing that you need to understand about the game of blackjack is that it is a game of player decisions. Unlike any other game in the casino, when playing blackjack your decisions can have an outcome on how the hand plays out and thus can contribute to the wins or losses of the players at the table. Complimentary blackjack, craps and roulette lesson are offered at noon every day. The five-acre pool area has four pools, a few whirlpools, and more than 20 private cabanas. “Temptation Sundays” is a longtime weekly pool party geared towards the gay market with $10 entry for hotel guests and $20 for everyone else. Blackjack players have been trying to master the greatest of card games for decades and along the way they have managed to find certain solutions that can arguably improve a player’s control over the game. Amongst numerous strategies, tips, trick and tactics is the Zen card counting system. Card counting is one of the most. The Zen Count takes the middle ground and gives aces a value of -1 and tens -2. Personally, I have tried both and would recommend against a count that requires a side count of aces to a person ready to take up card counting.

The Unbalanced Zen card counting strategy is easy to use but
relatively old, having been sold as an affordable proprietary
system since 1995. It is an unbalanced, 2-level count (we’ll
explain both of those phrases later on this page) that works for
both single deck and multiple deck blackjack games. It’s
slightly more accurate and useful than the Knockout System, but
it’s also a little harder. The creator of this system is George
C.

The purpose of this page is to explain in a general way how
to count cards and then how to apply this specific system to
blackjack. We go on to analyze how well this system works
compared to other systems.

How to Learn to Count Cards

Card counting works because of a couple of factors that are
intrinsic to the game of blackjack. The first has to do with the
3 to 2 payout for a “natural” or “blackjack”. That’s a 2 card
hand with a total of 21. It always wins unless the dealer also
has a blackjack. There’s only one combination of cards in the
game that can total 21 with just 2 cards’a card worth 10 and an
ace.

Winning hands in blackjack pay even money except in the case
of a natural.

The other factor has to do with the deck having a memory of
sorts. In most gambling games, the odds don’t change from one
bet to another. But in blackjack, once a card is dealt, it’s no
longer in the deck, and the odds change. Imagine if you were
playing in a game where all 4 aces had been dealt already. You’d
have a 0% chance of getting a natural at that point, right?

But what if a deck still has lots of aces and 10s in it,
while most of the lower cards have already been dealt?

Zen Count Blackjack

Zen Count Blackjack Meaning

Can you see how, in that situation, you might have an edge?

After all, you have a better chance of getting a hand that
pays off at 3 to 2.

What card counters do is assign a value to the low cards and
another value to the high cards. (Sometimes they assign multiple
values.) They keep a running count based on those values, and
this running count enables them to estimate the edge they either
have or don’t have. When the deck is relatively rich in aces and
10s compared to low cards, a card counter will raise her bets.
When the reverse is true, the card counter will reduce her bet
to the table minimum.

Card counters also use basic strategy to make sure they’re
facing a game with the lowest possible edge to begin with. Basic
strategy is just a shorthand term used to describe the
mathematically best play in every situation. But when the
composition of the deck changes, so do some of the correct
decisions. Card counters know when to deviate from standard
basic strategy based on the count.

Zen Count Blackjack

Insurance is another example. Normally this is a sucker bet,
because it’s basically just a side bet that the dealer will have
a blackjack. But when the deck is rich in aces and 10s, the odds
of the dealer having a blackjack improve. So a bet that would
have a negative expectation in some situations has a positive
expectation in others.

Simpler card counting systems only have one level—usually
signified by + or -1. In these systems, you adjust the count by
1 based on which cards are being tracked. These systems are
usually “balanced”, too. That means if you count through an
entire deck of cards, you’ll wind up with a 0. There are just as
many positive values as negative values in that situation.

More complicated counts have multiple levels and might or
might not be balanced. These more complex systems are supposed
to get a player more of an edge. The game of blackjack already
has one of the lowest house edges in the casino, at 0.5%, but
when you’re counting cards, you can gain another 1% to 2% on top
of that. The Unbalanced Zen 2 System falls into the more complex
category.

Here’s how the UB Z 2 System works:

How to Get an Edge Over the Casino with the UBZ 2 System

The first step in learning a card counting system is to learn
the values assigned to the cards. In the case of the Unbalanced
Zen 2 System, the following values are in place:

  • Aces = -1
  • 2s and 7s = +1
  • 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s = +2
  • 8s and 9s = 0
  • 10s = -2

In balanced card counting systems, you start the count at 0
and move the count up or down based on the card counting values.
But in unbalanced systems like the Zen 2, you start the count by
multiplying the number of decks by -2. So in a single deck game,
the count would start at -2 and move up and down from there. In
an 8 deck game, the count would start at -16.

The reason for this wasn’t immediately obvious to us when we
first started learning about counting cards, but it makes sense
when you think about it. The effect of a particular card being
dealt out of multiple decks is not as pronounced as it would be
if it were dealt out of a single deck. Let’s use an example that
we already used to illustrate why:

Remember how we said that if you dealt 4 aces out of a single
deck of cards, your chances of being dealt a blackjack are
reduced to 0%. But if you’re playing in a game with 8 decks,
there are 32 aces to begin with. Dealing 4 of them only leaves
28, which reduces your chances of getting a blackjack. But it
clearly doesn’t reduce the odds to 0%.

Most card counting systems compensate for this by converting
the running count into a true count. That’s accomplished by
dividing the count by the number of decks left in the shoe. So
if the count is +6, and the shoe still has 6 decks left in it,
the counter makes her decisions based on a true count of +1.

The count is important, because based on how high or low it
is, your bet will be correspondingly higher or lower.

The higher the count, the more you bet, and vice versa.

Also, strategy decisions only change when you hit certain
counts.

The Pros and Cons off the Unbalanced Zen System

The Pros

QFIT (and presumably some other sources) measure the
effectiveness of various card counting techniques based on
how well they estimate how much you should raise your bets
(betting correlation), how well they advise you on changing
your strategy decisions (playing efficiency), and how well
they indicate whether or not insurance is a good bet
(insurance correlation).

The Unbalanced Zen 2 System has a betting correlation of
0.97, which is probably as close to perfect as you might
need. (A perfect score, of course, would be 1.) The playing
efficiency is always a significantly lower number, and that
holds true in the case of this system, too—it’s 0.62, which
sounds low, but is actually high compared to many other
systems. And the insurance correlation is 0.84, which is
also quite high.

The Cons

You pay for those high numbers, though, in terms of how
hard it is to learn and use this system. Other systems are
much harder, but there are also plenty of systems which are
much easier and offer much better numbers. The Knockout
System, for example, is significantly easier to learn and
implement. And it actually providers a higher betting
correlation (0.98). But the playing efficiency of 0.55
is significantly lower, and the insurance correlation of
0.78 is also not as good as the Unbalanced Zen Count.

Some of this relates back to what kind of card counter
you want to be. We know some counters who are content to get
almost all of their edge just from raising and lowering
their bets. They don’t even bother with basic strategy
adjustments. If you fall into that category, you’re probably
better off using a simpler system.

But if you love a challenge and want to get every tenth of a
percentage in edge that you can against the casino, you could do
a lot worse than the Unbalanced Zen 2 System. As with many
gambling techniques, much of making the correct decision depends
on understanding your own temperament and tendencies as a
player.

Summary

The Unbalanced Zen 2 card counting system is a relatively
hard-to-use system. It has 2 levels, and it’s also unbalanced.
But in terms of accuracy, it’s more efficient than most other
systems of similar difficulty. We don’t recommend this to
players just starting off as counters, but if you’ve been doing
this for a while and want to get a bigger edge, this one is
worth considering.

Blackjack card counting systems require a lot of practice in order for you to get a winning edge. If you are new to blackjack card counting then this guide will be of great help.

The unbalanced card counting techniques is the fundamental/gateway to learn how to count cards during game play. The unbalanced card counting systems are the easiest to learn as they focus mainly on the running count and point values.

The unbalanced counting systems take note of the Running Count (RC) and the point values to determine whether the shoe deck is high card or low card rich. Let’s take a look at two unbalanced card counting systems – the KO Card Count ands the Zen II Count

KO Card Count also known as the Knock-out Card count is a popular unbalanced card counting systems that is well suitable for beginners. Unlike other card counting systems that exclude the 7, the KO count includes the 7 in the RC.

One thing you need to understand is that with the unbalanced card counting system, no conversion of the Running Count (RC) to True Count (TC) is required.

The point values of the KO Count are as follows;

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 0 0 -1 -1

From the above, we can see that the only point values we need to remember is the +1 and -1. The cards 8 and 9 cause no effect to the RC and are known as the neutral cards.

For instance, one the deck has been reshuffled and the dealer deals a K and Q, this would reduce our RC to -2 and when two more cards are dealt – 10 and 5 the RC is -3. Therefore, if the RC is negative, this would indicate that more high cards have been dealt on the table and the deck is low card rich.

The Zen II Card Counting is similar to the regular Zen Count the only difference between the two is that the unbalanced Zen 11 count assigns a positive to 3 cards.

Unbalanced Zen II Card Point Values

Zen Count Blackjack

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A

Zen Count Blackjack Game

+1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +1 0 0 -2 -1

Now, comparing the Zen II count and the KO Count, we find out that there are more point values you need to remember when using the Zen II count. The Zen II count assigns a point value of +1 to 2 and 7, +2 to 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 and -2 to 10 and -1 to A.

Zen Count Blackjack Games

The Unbalanced Zen II requires more practice in order for you to master the system and it gives out better results than compared to the KO Card Count system.