Black Jack odds Card

David L. Ryan/Globe Staff/File

Blackjack is a game where the only winning strategy is to play smart, play long, and play deliberately.

When Ben Affleck was thrown out of a casino in May for allegedly counting cards, it made for good tabloid news. Somehow, though, Affleck doesn’t fit the stereotype of the card counter. Going back to Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” or sensationalized tales of the MIT blackjack team, card counting stories tend to be nerd-revenge narratives, where the uber-sharp outcast uses his underappreciated skills to beat the house and prove his worth.

Affleck is not a nerd. He’s a charismatic celebrity with the acting skill to make his face into a mask. He belongs at the poker table.

What makes blackjack more suited for nerd-revenge is that there’s no bluffing, no intimidation, no necessary artistry. It’s a game where the only winning strategy is to play smart, play long, and play deliberately. If you follow a proven approach, calibrate your bets carefully, and learn how to effectively count cards, you can tip the odds ever so slightly in your favor, and then slowly rack up the winnings.

Basically, the goal is to keep track of which cards have been dealt and which remain in the deck.

If the dealer throws a lot of low cards, then you know there must be a larger-than-normal number of face cards still to come. The more face cards that remain, the better the odds for the player. Among other things, that’s because face cards increase your odds of getting blackjack, raise the likelihood that the dealer will bust, and make it more profitable to double down.

Now, keeping track of every card that comes out is more than most counters can manage, particularly when they’re playing with multiple decks. Instead, they can do what’s called “high-low counting, ” where you assign certain point-value to the cards and then track the points.

Low-cards below seven are one point, mid-range cards are zero points, high cards above nine are negative one. As the cards come out, you add up the point values, and keep a running total, which is blandly referred to as “the count.”

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