The Uston SS Card Counting System

Basics of the Uston SS System

At its core, the Uston SS works like any card counting method – it assigns numerical values to each card so that, by keeping a running count, the player can track high versus low cards in the deck. However, this is one of the few level-3 systems, and players should understand that mastering its structure and values will likely take more than a few days. These are the numerical values used in the Uston SS:

• 2, 3, 4, 6 – +2
• 5 – +3
• 7 – +1
• 8 – 0
• 9 – -1
• 10, J, Q, K, A – -2

The imbalance is easy to spot – no card is assigned a -3 to offset the +3 value of the 5s in the deck. In addition, there are four cards worth +2 and five cards worth -2. As a result, the system is unbalanced. You can test this easily – when you count down a single deck, you end up with a final count of +4 rather than 0. Because of this, the starting count is not 0, and this lack of balance actually simplifies the system, as you will see shortly.

As with all unbalanced systems, you do not start counting at 0. In the Uston SS, the initial running count (IRC) depends on the number of decks used in the game; for a single-deck variation the IRC is -4. It reaches -32 for a blackjack game that uses 8 standard decks of cards.

This may sound intimidating to those encountering an unbalanced method for the first time, but it actually makes the system more convenient in real-life play. There is no need to convert the running count to a true count – a requirement for balanced systems. The Uston SS remains accurate when you use the IRC values listed above.

How to Use the Uston SS Count?

Despite its name, this is not the easiest card counting method for blackjack. The hardest part is to memorize the numerical values of all cards in the deck and quickly perform mental calculations. The system starts with a freshly shuffled shoe, and players initially place 1-unit or minimum bets ($1, $5, $25, etc.). Let’s take a 6-deck game as an example – the count begins at -24, and as cards are dealt, their respective values are added to the count.

If the following cards appear – 7, Ace, 3, 3, 10, 5, 2, Jack, and 6 – the -24 IRC rises to -18. Because this is still a negative count, players should keep betting the minimum. Once the running count moves above 0, it is time to increase the stakes. The pivot point is +1, which signals that the shoe is rich in high cards (A, 10) and that the odds favor the player. Bets should be raised as the running count climbs (+1, +2, +3, etc.). When the count slips back into negative territory, players should scale down to the minimum wager.

The exact betting spread depends on the player’s experience and bankroll. Naturally, large spreads – such as suddenly betting 32 times the original stake – are obvious tells of card counting. Therefore, counters who prefer aggressive spreads should learn how to disguise their style of play and appear to be recreational blackjack players.

Here is an example of a more conservative 1-5 betting spread, where the maximum wager is 5 times the original bet, or 5 units. In this case, the player would start increasing the bet size at a running count of +2 and try to maintain a safer betting pattern to camouflage their true intentions.