Zen Count

Zen Count is a two level, balanced card counting system popularized by author Arnold Snyder in his book Blackbelt in Blackjack. This is one of the more advanced blackjack card counting strategies out there, and requires a lot of experience counting cards in order to master. Its accuracy is quite good, and using Zen Count correctly can give players a significant advantage.

The basic version of zen count keeps track of four levels of cards, assigning each card in a deck with one of four different values. The final count for an entire deck is zero, making this an balanced card counting system.

2, 3, 7	Count +1
4, 5, 6	Count +2
A	Count -1
K, Q, J, 10	Count -2

Using this chart, players can calculate the running count of a deck. In a game, this must be converted to a true count by dividing four times the number of decks remaining in the shoe. For example, if a game is being deal out of an 8 deck shoe, and 7 decks remain, the running count must be divided by 32.