My neighbor Howard asked me the other day at the mailbox. He had been reading one of those magazines his son leaves at the house when he visits. Howard wanted to know if card counting and hole carding were the same thing. I told him they were not, and I told him why, and then I wrote it down for him because Howard never remembers things you tell him standing up.
This is more or less what I wrote.
The short of it
Card counting is a quiet head game you play against the shoe. Hole carding is noticing something the dealer showed you without meaning to. Both can be profitable, both can get you shown the door, and only one of them is treated like a problem by the courts. Here are the questions Howard had, and a few I added because I knew he would ask them next week.
What exactly is card counting?
Card counting is keeping a running tally of high cards versus low cards as they come out of the shoe. When the deck is rich in tens and aces, the player has a small edge and bets bigger. When it is poor, the player bets the table minimum and waits. It is arithmetic, done in your head, at speed, while pretending to be interested in your cocktail.
And hole carding?
Hole carding is when the dealer, without meaning to, flashes the bottom of the hole card as they tuck it under the upcard. A player with sharp eyes and the right seat can sometimes glimpse a corner. If they see a face, they know the dealer has twenty. If they see a low card, they know the dealer has a stiff. That is a very different game than counting.
So one is math and the other is eyesight?
Put crudely, yes. Counting is a system you study and practice until it becomes second nature. Hole carding is situational. You cannot practice your way into a dealer with a sloppy tuck. You have to find one, or be found by one, and then make the most of it while you can.
Is either of these cheating?
Now this is the part where people get worked up. In most American jurisdictions, neither is cheating in the criminal sense. The courts have generally held that using information the casino gave you is your own business. Counting is legal. Hole carding is legal. The casino can still ask you to leave. They just cannot have you arrested for it.
Then why do casinos hate counters more?
Because counters are scalable. A trained counter can walk into any blackjack game with a decent penetration and make money over time. Hole carding is rare and ends the moment the dealer learns to tuck the card properly. One is a structural problem. The other is a dealer training issue.
Can you get barred for either?
You can get barred for both, and for neither, and for no reason at all. Casinos are private businesses in most places. They decide who plays. You may get a polite tap on the shoulder, or a phone book delivered to the room with your name in it, and that is the end of that casino for you.
What about those famous MIT stories?
Those were counters, mostly, working as a team. Big players sat down when a spotter signaled the count was hot. That is not hole carding. It is team counting, which the casinos came to dislike very quickly and which is still technically legal, though harder to pull off now with the cameras what they are.
Is hole carding something I could learn?
Probably not, and I say that kindly. The angle you need to catch a flashed card is narrow, the opportunity is gone in a second, and most dealers these days are trained carefully on the tuck. Players who profit from hole carding usually are professionals who have played thousands of hours and can spot the game quickly.
What is edge sorting then? I have heard that one too.
Edge sorting is another thing entirely. It is when the backs of the cards have tiny manufacturing irregularities, and a player convinces the dealer to rotate certain cards during a shuffle. Phil Ivey made that technique famous at baccarat. It is not counting and it is not hole carding, but it lives in the same neighborhood.
If the casino hands you information across the table, that is theirs to stop handing you. If you do arithmetic in your own head, that is yours.
Why does any of this matter to a regular player?
Mostly it matters because people confuse these terms and then get upset at the wrong thing. A grandmother who plays forty dollars a session is not counting. She is also not hole carding. She is just playing, and she deserves to know that counting is not a criminal offense when her grandson tells her casinos will arrest you for thinking.
Last question. Should any of this change how I play?
No. Play the strategy card they sell in the gift shop. Bet what you came to lose. Leave when the drinks start tasting better than they should. The professionals will do their thing at the high-limit pit. You do yours at the five-dollar table.
That was what I wrote for Howard. He called the next day with two more questions, neither of which was about blackjack, and that is how most conversations with Howard go.
