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Going to take some time and learn how to track what I call the Core Ratio.
How many Core cards are in a deck? There are sixteen per deck, the same amount as there are tens.• There are thirty-two in a two-deck game; 128 in an eight-deck shoe. This means that there are four Core cards per quarter deck. The quarter deck is the unit that we'll use to determine the Core Ratio. (In the CORE System, you could say that each deck adds up to + 16, but this isn't very simple.)
Those of you who can already track tens will find that combining an informal ten awareness with tracking the Core cards will make a very potent system! Keep this in mind: A ten rich deck with a Heavy Core is a player-killing game. It's the weight of the Core that determines whether a ten-rich game is really good or not.
Rarely does an eight-deck shoe get dealt out past six and-a-half decks, so you usually won't have to go past that, if you're playing shoes.
A simple principle comes into play when you think of the decks or shoes in terms of quarters. Simply multiply the numerator by the denominator (the first number by the second) in the fraction representing the amount of quarter decks and it quickly gives you the number of Core cards that should normally be in a deck that size.
Example: 1-112 decks = 6/4 decks. By multiplying 6 X 4 = 24, we know that there are normally twenty-four Core cards in one and a half decks. If one and a half (6/4) decks have been used and you've seen less than twenty-four Core cards dealt out, the remaining deck( s) contain a Heavy Core; if you've seen more than twenty-four, the remaining deck( s) contain a light Core.
It is a good policy to know how many decks, and therefore how many Core cards are in the game before you start to play. Here is the process again:
-Multiplying the number of decks in the game by four will tell you how many quarter decks that you have. -Multiplying the numerator by the denominator in the quarter decks number will tell you how many Core cards are in them.
-Learn to count from zero to 128 by fours. (It's on the Conversion Chart.)
The next step is to learn how many quarter decks are in any pile of cards that you're looking at. This is an eyeball job, yet that can be quite effective.
Start with two decks. See what they look like. Remove one and see what it looks like. Put them back together and remove a half deck and see what one and a half decks look like. Casino that offer hand-held one- and two-deck games often instruct their dealers to hold the decks tightly and slide the top cards forward. You can learn to read the amount of quarter decks even though they are tilted like that. Or you can do what I do, which is to simply look at the discard pile, usually kept stacked to the side in normal fashion, and add the cards on the table for the current hand to the number in the used pile.
For estimating the amounts remaining in four-, six and eight-deck shoes, you will have to learn to approximate the number of quarter decks while the cards have that peculiar slant that they get in a shoe. Sometimes part of the shoe covers the front section of the cards, so you can't see them all. It's not hard to learn to assign a value to that unseen part, because its size never changes. Try doing it while the shoe is completely full, before the fusty cards are dealt out During the game, if the casino keeps the discards visible, directly in the back of the shoe, or piled to the side on the table, this can make your mid-game estimations that much easier.
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