Omega II - Black Jack Counting card System

 

Black jack counting card strategy is used in various card games in order to determine when a player would have a probable advantage. The term card counting is used mostly to refer to track the ratio of the low cards to high cards in the game of blackjack and in its derivatives like Spanish 21. However, it is sometimes also used in certain trick games like spades or contract bridge.

Counting card system is highly popular in the field of blackjack and has been used since decades.

In card counting the basic principle is that the high cards, particularly the tens and aces are better for a player and he low cards like the 5s and 6s are better for a dealer. Since there is a high concentration of tens and aces, there is a better chance for blackjacks in the game. The tens also give a better chance for doubling in blackjack.

Also, since there are high numbers of tens, the insurance bet also becomes more profitable since it is essentially a bet that the card of the dealer is a 10 which would result in a blackjack. The low cards are also good for dealers since the dealer would have to hit all stiff hands unlike the player who can stand or hit according to their cards. This increases the chances of dealer busing.

Omega II

The Omega II system is an advanced level two balanced strategy which had been described in the book Blackjack for Blood by Bryce Carlson.

The Omega II card counting system is quite good true count level 2 counting system. It is probably the easiest among all of the level 2 counting systems to learn and it also performs better than the HI Lo technique (link to 2.1.) especially in all the single deck blackjack games.

The Omega II card counting system had been very widely used by the professional card counters in the 90s. however, since it is quite difficult it had been abandoned later on in favor of some of the easier and less complex methods. The point values in Omega II are quite different than the other card counting systems. Also, it is less effective if the player would not keep an ace count running on the side so it is best to do that as well when using Omega II. Keeping an ace count on the side makes this technique even more difficult but once a player would master it, Omega II is the most effective technique which can be used in casinos.

Tag Values

Given below are the tag values assigned to the cards in Omega II:

• Count 0- 8, A
• Count 1- 2, 3, 7
• Count -1- 9
• Count 2- 4, 5, 6
• Count -2- 10

Omega II is one of the strongest systems that exist today in card counting. Without an ace count the betting correlation is 0.92 and with an ace count it comes up to 0.99. This is quite a high correlation and for this reason the method is used by many professional counters.