Why is counting cards such as bad thing?

Why would you sit on 13 against a dealer 10?
Those are the decision that cost you money. If everyone at the table plays correct basic strategy, you can get the odds to around 50%.
I don't criticize other players at the table, but it is frustrating when someone refuses to play correctly at a table where everyone else folowing the correct strategy.

Poker is me against you. Blackjack is a team game, us against the house.

 

You'll lose money about 9 times faster ...

wizardofodds.com

 

This is probably the single most influential strategy among gamblers, too. It's pretty funny.

 

Read what I said. The house's advantage is that the house wins when you both bust. If you never bust, you win the hands when a dealer has a 10 and turns up a 2-6 and ends up busting. It's just a theory.

I know how to play blackjack. I'm just putting an alternate theory out there.I suppose if you're counting cards and you know the deck has a bunch of small cards ...

But like I said, here is where the house gets its advantage: You get 17, the dealer gets 17, it's a push. Same with 18-18, 19-19, 20-20 and 21-21. But when you bust and the dealer busts, you lose.

 

OT ... Read above ... The house edge for your strategy is a bit more than 9 times that of basic strategy.

And Buck, blackjack is you against the house. I know, I know ... You've seen dumbos make dumb plays that lead to the dealer not busting when he/she would have otherwise. But those cut both ways. For all intents and purposes, the dealer is dealing out of a shoe that has an infinite number of cards. What anybody else does at the table is, over the long run, irrelevant.

 

An EXTREMELY high plus count (a deck ultra-rich in 10s)

 

Nevada joints like to call counting illegal . . . it's against their rules, whatever. They'll shuffle up on you in a minute if they think they're onto you.

Jersey's long been more "liberal", relatively speaking . . . but then, Jersey deals a LOT more 6/8-deck games, which take a good deal longer to count down in a satisfactory, advantageous fashion. A cut card eliminating from play most or all of the shank two decks doesn't leave much promising territory for prospecting.

 

One of my pet peeves is people at the table who berate other people for playing incorrectly because it "messes up the game." It's ridiculous.

The cards are random. What if you picked the cards out of a big pile instead of one at a time off the deck? You wouldn't suggest that someone picking one card had any impact on your card. So if the pile is organized suddenly one card has an impact on the other?

Obviously it does have an "impact" but it's random and just as likely to be positive as negative.

It's dumb.

 

Yeah, but when you have a huge bet out and someone hits a 12 against dealer's 6 and draws that 10, the emotions can boil.

 

No doubt. As long as you admit it's emotion and not rational, boil all you want