---
title: 'Card Counting 101 - Mike Aponte - MIT Blackjack Team'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=lHgPBqfua5Y'
video_id: 'lHgPBqfua5Y'
date: 2026-09-27
duration_sec: 233
channel: 'Mike Aponte'
---

# Card Counting 101 - Mike Aponte - MIT Blackjack Team

> Source: [Card Counting 101 - Mike Aponte - MIT Blackjack Team](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lHgPBqfua5Y)

## Summary

Mike Aponte, a former leader of the MIT blackjack team, explains the basics of card counting using the high-low system. He breaks down the three card groups, how the count works, and demonstrates a practical tracking technique.

### Key Points

- **Introduction and Credentials** [00:00] — Aponte introduces himself as a leader of the MIT blackjack team, which used card counting to beat casinos for millions, inspiring the book 'Bringing Down the House' and the movie '21'.
- **Three Card Groups** [00:27] — Card counters focus on three groups: neutral (7,8,9) which are ignored, high (10-A) which favor the player, and low (2-6) which favor the dealer.
- **Why High Cards Favor the Player** [00:54] — High cards give blackjack (3:2 payout), increase dealer bust probability on 12-16, and improve doubling/splitting. Low cards turn dealer's 12-16 into winning totals.
- **The High-Low System** [01:35] — The high-low system is balanced with equal numbers of high and low cards. The count starts at zero at a new shuffle.
- **How the Count Works** [01:47] — Each high card dealt subtracts one; each low card dealt adds one. A positive count means more high cards remain, favoring the player.
- **Betting Strategy** [02:42] — Bet little or nothing when you don't have the advantage, and increase bets proportionally as the count rises.
- **Practice Technique** [03:14] — Aponte demonstrates pairing high and low cards to cancel out, ignoring neutrals, to quickly track the count.

### Conclusion

Card counting is a learnable skill based on tracking the ratio of high to low cards, allowing players to bet more when the odds are in their favor. With practice, anyone can master the high-low system.

## Transcript

Hi, I'm Mike Aponte and I'm at DEF CON 20. I was one of the leaders of the MIT blackjack team and we used card counting to hack Las Vegas and beat the casinos
for millions. Our story became the basis for the best-selling book, Bringing Down the House and the major motion pinnature, 21. Now a lot of people think that you have to be a math whiz or rain man to count cards but actually it's quite the
opposite. So right now I'm going to give you card counting 101. Now with card counters they're concerned with three different groups of cards. First we have the neutral cards 7, 8, and 9 and overall the neutral cards don't favor the dealer
or the player. So ultimately card counters actually ignore these cards. So that leaves us with the high cards 10 through ace and the low cards 2 through
Now the high cards are really good for the player because these are the cards that give you blackjack which plays 3-2. They also make it more likely that the dealer will bust when hitting on totals of 12-16
and they also make better draw cards when doubling down and splitting. On the flip side, the low cards 2-6 favor the dealer because these are the cards that turn the dealer's bad totals of 12-16 into winning totals of 19, 20, and 21.
So the more low cards remaining, the fewer blackjacks that will be dealt, which are good for players and bad for the dealers. So as you can see, there are an equal number of high cards and low cards.
So this is a balanced count system called the high-low, which is what the MIT team used. So at the start of a brand new shuffle, the count is zero because you haven't seen any cards.
And then as the cards are being dealt the count just constantly fluctuates Every time a hard card comes out 10 through ace the count goes down by one Now the reason the high cards have a count value of minus one even though they good for the player
is that every time one of them is depleted, that's one less high card that can benefit players in the future. Conversely, every time a low card is dealt, two through six, the count increases by plus one,
because that's one less low card that can hurt the players moving forward. Now as the count increases on the positive side, that means there has to be more of the
favorable high cards remaining. So what a card counter does is keep track of the count in order to identify the rounds, the situations when they're more likely to get black jacks, the deer is more likely to
bust. So you want to bet little or nothing when you don't have the advantage as a card counter, and then proportionally more as your advantage increases. So as you can see, card counting isn't as complex as people think, but of course like
anything it takes practice to become really good at it. So let's steal one round of cards and see if you can keep track of the count.
Now scanning these cards over, what we can do is group up the high cards versus low cards in pairs so that they cancel out. So for example, this ace cancels out the three, this queen cancels out the four, and then
we can ignore the seven, eights, and nines because they don't affect the count at all. So that leaves us with two low cards, which each have a count value of plus one, so the of these cards is plus two, which means there has to be two more favorable cards remaining
in the shoe.