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[[Image:Blackjack board.JPG|thumb|300px|A blackjack game in progress]]

'''Card counting''' is a strategy that enables the skilled [[Blackjack]] player to make a long-term profit.  Blackjack became the most popular casino game in the 1960s and 1970s after the publication of <i>Beat the Dealer</i> by [[Edward Thorp]], which introduced manageable card counting systems.

The larger the proportion of aces, face cards, and tens remaining in the deck, the more favorable the odds are for the player.  Players take advantage of this by increasing their bet sizes and altering playing strategy.  Some casinos consider this cheating and will ban card counters from playing.

That the player can win with card counting results from a simple rule:  Although the player can stand or hit on any total, the dealer must take a hit until reaching 17.  The greater the richness of the deck in ten-value cards than a neutral deck, then, the greater the chance of the dealer busting, leading the player to place larger bets and make less conservative strategy choices in such cases.  The converse is true is ten-value card poor decks.

Although blackjack dilettantes create an encyclopedia of analysis and manufacture unwieldly jargon to provide a scientific aura around card counting, that rule is the dominant mathematical factor and the basis for all card counting systems.