Zen Counting System

Breath Counting Meditation is a strength-building exercise for the mind. It cleanses away distracting thoughts and builds concentration power. You will know that you're building mental strength because it will become easier and easier to reach 10 and go back down to 1 again. When you can do this with ease, increase the count to 20. The Zen Count works similar to other blackjack systems. You give each card a value. The Zen Count assigns each card the following values: 2, 3, 7 – Count +1; 4, 5, 6 – Count +2; 8, 9 – Count 0; 10, J, Q, K, A – Count -2; This is a balanced system. So when you practice counting through an entire deck of cards your count should end at 0. 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.

Card Counting Guides

Zen Card Counting System

The unbalanced Zen II count is very similar to the regular Zen count. The only difference is the unbalanced system gives the '3s' cards a +2 count instead of a +1 count. Otherwise the indexes are the same. The unbalanced Zen 2 is sometimes just known as UBZ2 count and it is a slightly more advanced system because it uses a multilevel indices system.

In fact, this is a level 2 system, which means the numbers used in the count that are assigned to each card will range from (-2,-1,0,+1,+2), so there are five of them to keep track of. This is still an intermediate system in terms of difficulty and it is made easier because of the unbalanced properties. This strategy was made famous by George C. and it was designed to be a hybrid of the Zen and the Reverse Point Count (RPC).

The index or distribution of count values are shown below. Each of these values is assigned to one type of card. In the chart below for example, the left column tells you what card you are looking at and the right side of the table shows the index count vale assigned to those cards.

Zen Card Counting System

This system was actually optimized for betting correlations. In fact, this system has a very nice 97% correlation and great efficiency as well. It was also a great system for being used for switching back and forth between games using a shoe and hand-held games with one or two decks of cards. The unbalanced nature of Zen II is great for players who are looking for a more powerful system. It is known that players who use the KO (Knock Out) system enjoy using the Zen II system to get more power and a better edge.

Typically with an unbalanced system, you need to multiply -2 by the number of decks being played. For example, with two decks, your starting count would be -4. Then you just continue normally with blackjack and counting until your count gets above zero. Once the count is above 0, you normally have a 1% edge over the house and you can then start betting. This is why any unbalanced method tends to work great for beginners or people who would like some reference to know when their edge is higher than that of the house.

Remember that with the Zen II card counting system, you need to bet high when the count is positive and bet low when the count is negative. The higher and more positive your count gets, the better odds you will have and betting more at this point will maximize your advantage. Likewise, you will also have some extra information when your count is negative that will tell you when to ease up on the betting when the house has the edge against you.