Can You Count Cards in Oklahoma Casinos?

One way to get an advantage when gambling at a casino is to count cards. This is no easy task even for experts, but it’s an option that some people might want to explore. Here’s the question, though – can you count cards in Oklahoma casinos and get an edge over the house?

The answer might surprise you.

How Card Counting Works in Oklahoma or Anywhere Else

The casino’s mathematical advantage over the player in blackjack is a statistical measure of how much you’re expected to lose on average per hand over the long run. Blackjack is a great game because the house edge is usually lower than the house edge in any other casino game.

In fact, under the right playing conditions, the house edge for blackjack might be between 0.3% and 0.5%. This assumes that you’re using perfect basic strategy, though – making the mathematically correct play on every hand.

Counting cards enables you to get an edge over the casino by changing the size of your bets based on which cards have already been dealt and which cards are still in the deck.

Since a blackjack – a 2-card hand totaling 21 – pays off at 3 to 2, you stand to win more money when you have a higher probability of getting a blackjack.

To get a blackjack, you must get an ace as one of your cards and a card worth 10 as you other card. When there are more of those cards in the deck than usual, proportionally, you raise your bet sizes to take advantage of the higher chance of getting the bigger payout.

How to Actually Count Cards

The actual process of counting cards isn’t as hard as you might think. You don’t have to track specific cards at all. You just assign values to each card and keep a running tally in your head. The easiest way to do this is to count some cards as +1 and other cards as -1.

Since you want to raise your bets when there are more 10s and aces in the deck, you add 1 to the count when the low cards are dealt – any 2-6 counts as +1.

Any time a 10 or an ace is dealt, your probability of getting one of those cards goes down, so count those as -1.

7s, 8s, and 9s are basically neutral and don’t affect the count.

When the count is positive, you bet more. The higher the count, the more you bet.

You also must account for how many decks are being used, and you must be able to do these calculations without looking like you’re doing the calculations. At most large casinos, the game conditions make it impossible to count cards and get an advantage.

How Casinos in Oklahoma (And Elsewhere) Thwart Card Counters

It’s easy to see how a casino might thwart a card counter. The first way is by dealing blackjack from multiple decks. Every deck in use dilutes the effect of a card that’s dealt. Obviously, if an ace is dealt from a 52-card deck, it has more of an effect on your probabilities than if it’s dealt from a 416-card deck.

Casinos also might use continuous shuffling machines to prevent card counting. After all, if the cards get shuffled back into the deck, the ratios of high cards to low cards hasn’t changed at all. You’re starting over on every hand.

Some casinos even lower the payout for a blackjack from 3 to 2 to 6 to 5. This has the effect of increasing the house edge by 1.39%.

Counting cards generally only adds 1% to your expected return. This can turn a house edge of 0.5% into a player edge of 0.5%.

But adding 1% to your expected return on a single deck game only reduces the house edge to 0.39% plus whatever the house edge was before, so you’re still looking at a big difference.

Getting Backed Off and/or Barred from Oklahoma Casinos

I don’t think it’s really prevalent in Oklahoma casinos, but it’s not unusual for a casino to back someone off their blackjack games if they play “too skillfully.” Unlike casino pit bosses in the movies, in real life, pit bosses are usually friendly and polite when they back you off.

They’ll usually tell you that your play is too good, and they’ll tell you that your action is welcome at their other table games and their slot machines.

If you try to get around this, you can earn yourself a ban from the casino. This means that the casino has asked you to leave and not return. If you continue to try to gamble there after having been banned from the casino, they can call the police on you for trespassing.

Card counting isn’t illegal in Oklahoma or anywhere else.

But casinos are allowed to change the conditions of their games so that you can’t get an edge by counting cards.

Oklahoma casinos don’t have to back off or bar players, though.

Here’s why:

Oklahoma Casinos Charge a So-Called “Ante”

An ante is a forced bet in poker that drives the action for the game. If no one ever anted, everyone would just wait until they had the nuts to play.

And what fun would that be?

But when you play table games in Oklahoma casinos, you’ll be forced to pay a fee that they call an ante. It’s not an ante, though, because it’s not a bet. It’s literally a fee.

It’s not a bet because you lose the amount regardless of whether you win or lose.

This fee varies based on the stakes you’re playing, but it has a major effect on the house edge for the game. The minimum fee to play blackjack for real money (or any other table game in Oklahoma) is 50 cents.

Let’s say you’re a low roller just getting started with counting cards in blackjack, but you’re confident you can add 1% to your expectation. If your betting units are in increments of $5, on most of your hands, the house edge is over 10%.

That’s because you’re going to lose the 50 cents on every hand regardless of the outcome. 50 cents is 10% of $5.

But you can ameliorate this somewhat by playing for higher stakes. The fee for the blackjack games at the Winstar, for example, stays at 50 cents until you start betting $100 a hand.

So, if you have the bankroll for it, you can use a $50 unit instead of a $5 unit. This adds 1% to the house edge instead of 10%. That’s enough to where you can get the game close to break-even.

The fees go up when you start betting $100 per hand or higher, though – at those stakes, you’re looking at $1 per hand up to $1000 per hand.

If you’re betting between $1000 and $2000 per hand, the ante goes up to $2.

On any action of $3000 per hand or higher, the ante is $3.

The house edge for the blackjack games at Winstar, if you ignore the ante, is actually pretty good – it’s about 0.6% under their typical game conditions.

This means that if you use $75 as your betting unit, you can get a tiny edge over the casino.

It’s not enough to make it worth most card counters’ while, though. After all, the casino still has all their other tools at their disposal to thwart card counting.

And you can bet that the casinos pay more attention to $75 per hand bettors who are ranging their bets from $75 to $300 per hand than they are to players betting $5 to $20 per hand.

So, CAN You Count Cards in Oklahoma Casinos?

Realistically speaking, you can’t get enough of an edge in the blackjack games in Oklahoma to make it worth the effort of trying to count cards.

You could count cards if you just wanted to lower the house edge at the lower stakes, but you’re still facing a game with an outrageous house edge if you’re not playing for higher stakes.

My guess is that security at places like Choctaw and Winstar watch high roller action at the blackjack tables closely even with their silly ante in place.

There are better games in better casinos to count cards at elsewhere in the country. I suggest you try those instead of the casinos in Oklahoma.

Conclusion

Sure, you can count cards at blackjack in Oklahoma, but it’s probably not worth the effort. You can’t get enough of an edge to compensate for the 50 cent per hand ante that the casinos charge.

Even if you play at high enough stakes to make that ante meaningless, you’re going to face serious heat from the casino.