card counting: a standalone construct

Card counting is a technique for games played from a depleting deck, chiefly blackjack, in which a player keeps a running estimate of the remaining composition and raises bets when the undealt cards favor the player. Thorp's 1961 A favorable strategy for twenty-one proved that because blackjack is dealt without replacement, the odds shift as cards are removed, so a player who tracks the balance of high and low cards can turn the house edge into a player edge in favorable counts. The referent is a conditional-probability advantage method, measured by the expected edge gained as a function of the count, and it is the practical root of the bankroll question the Kelly criterion answers.[1]

Unit

The expected player edge as a function of the running count

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Quantified by the player's expected edge conditional on the count, from the changing composition of the deck