Hi-Lo card counting chart: every value, explained
Every card counting chart ever printed for the Hi-Lo system fits on an index card. Three rows, thirteen ranks, three numbers: +1, 0, −1. People search for a card counting cheat sheet expecting something the size of a tax form, and the whole thing is smaller than the hand you're dealt. That's not because counting is trivial. It's because the difficulty was never in the chart.
This post gives you the complete chart, then does the part most cheat sheets skip: explaining why each group of cards carries the tag it does, what the one formula on the back of the sheet means, and what a counting cards chart is actually for — because it isn't for bringing to a table.
The complete counting cards chart
Here is the entire Hi-Lo card counting chart. Suits never matter; only ranks do. You start at zero when the dealer shuffles and add the tag of every card you see — yours, other players', the dealer's — as it hits the felt.
- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 — count +1. Low cards leaving the shoe help you, so they push the count up.
- 7, 8, 9 — count 0. Neutral cards; ignore them completely.
- 10, J, Q, K, A — count −1. High cards leaving the shoe hurt you, so they push the count down.
- The running total is the running count. Divide it by the decks still undealt and you get the true count — the number betting decisions actually use.
The chart is perfectly balanced, and that matters
Count the ranks and you'll notice the symmetry: five ranks tagged +1 (2 through 6) and five tagged −1 (tens, the three face cards, and aces) — twenty cards of each in every deck, with the twelve neutral 7s, 8s and 9s in between. Deal out any complete deck or shoe and the count ends exactly where it started: zero.
That balance is what makes Hi-Lo a so-called balanced count, and it's also your practice tool. Count down a full deck at home and you must land on zero. If you don't, you miscounted somewhere — the deck grades your work automatically, no answer key required.
Why the low cards are +1
The tag records a departure. When a 5 leaves the shoe, the cards remaining just got slightly better for you — so the chart awards a +1. The reason lives in the dealer's rules: the dealer has no choices and must keep hitting every stiff total of 12 through 16. Small cards are what rescue those hands, turning a 15 into a 20 instead of a bust.
Every 2 through 6 that gets dealt is one less rescue card waiting in the shoe. Strip enough of them out and the dealer's forced hits start connecting with tens instead, and the dealer busts more often. A rising count is literally a tally of the dealer's lifelines leaving the game.
Why tens and aces are −1
A shoe rich in tens and aces is the best thing that can happen to a blackjack player, for stackable reasons. Blackjacks come more often — and while the dealer's blackjack only wins your bet, yours is paid 3-to-2, so extra naturals are pure profit for your side of the asymmetry. Your double downs on 10 and 11 connect with ten-value cards more often. And the dealer, forced to hit those stiff hands, busts more often when the shoe is heavy with tens.
So every ten, face card or ace that leaves the shoe takes a little of that future advantage with it, and the chart records the loss: −1. This is the sign convention that confuses beginners — high cards are good for you, but seeing one dealt means it's gone, which is bad. The count tracks what remains, not what you like looking at.
The 7, 8 and 9 sit in the middle because their effect on the remaining shoe is small enough that a one-level system rounds it to nothing. Sharper systems give some of them nonzero tags — Omega II counts the 7 as plus one, and Wong Halves goes as far as half-points; Hi-Lo trades that sliver of accuracy for a chart you can execute at full dealing speed.
The card counting formula on the back of the sheet
One line of math completes the cheat sheet: true count = running count ÷ decks remaining. The running count is raw information; the true count is that information corrected for how much shoe is left to dilute it. A running count of +8 with four decks still undealt is +2 true — mildly interesting — while the same +8 with two decks left is +4 true, a genuinely rich shoe.
The true count is what everything else keys off: bet more as it rises, and adjust a handful of borderline plays at specific thresholds. But all of that sits downstream of the little chart above. If the tags aren't instant, nothing built on top of them works.
Where this chart comes from
The Hi-Lo values weren't scribbled by a gambler; they were presented at a computer science conference. In November 1963, an engineer named Harvey Dubner showed his simplified high-low point count at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in Las Vegas, on a panel about computers in games of chance moderated by Edward Thorp — the mathematician whose book Beat the Dealer had just proven blackjack was beatable. Dubner handed out his strategy on 3x5 index cards, and the session was mobbed.
Thorp and programmer Julian Braun then refined Dubner's idea with computer analysis, and Thorp published the polished version in the 1966 revised edition of Beat the Dealer as the complete point count. Sixty years later, the chart at the top of this page is still recognizably Dubner's index card — the rare piece of gambling advice that has survived six decades of computer checking essentially intact.
What a card counting cheat sheet is actually for
Here's the part the search results never say out loud: a counting cards blackjack sheet is a study aid, not table equipment. Cards come off a live shoe faster than one per second across the table. There is no version of glancing at a crib sheet, finding the rank, and reading the tag that keeps up — and a player consulting notes while their eyes track every card is handing the pit a written confession. The chart only works from memory, at reflex speed, which means the memorizing happens at home or it doesn't happen.
The good news is that this chart is small enough to actually finish learning. Drill the tags until pairs cancel on sight — a king and a 4 net to zero before you've consciously added anything — then count down decks until zero is boring. The free reference section here has the full version of this cheat sheet alongside sheets for the KO, Hi-Opt I and Omega II systems, plus a full basic strategy chart that updates live with your table rules. Study from the page; play from your head.
The whole chart is thirteen ranks and three numbers — the skill is recalling them at dealing speed. The full reference lives here for free: every counting system's cheat sheet and a rules-aware strategy chart.
Open the free chart & cheat sheets →