# How Often Each True Count Comes Up

How often each Hi-Lo true count occurs, from about 414 million simulated six deck rounds: most rounds sit near zero, negative counts edge out positive ones, and high counts are rare.

Source: https://21trainer.app/articles/true-count-frequencies/
Updated: October 9, 2026
Publisher: 21 Trainer, makers of Blackjack Strategy: 21 Trainer, an educational blackjack trainer for iPhone and Android (App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/blackjack-strategy-21-trainer/id6759527695, Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.blackjacktrainer)

> **Educational content, not gambling advice.** 21 Trainer and this article teach blackjack strategy and card counting as skills, using virtual chips only. No strategy or counting system guarantees winnings, and nothing here encourages real-money play. If gambling is a problem for you or someone you know, call 1-800-522-4700 (National Council on Problem Gambling).

Counting is usually taught as a stream of moments: keep the [running count](https://21trainer.app/articles/running-count-vs-true-count/), divide by the decks remaining, act on the answer. What is rarely mentioned early enough is how those answers are distributed. If you wrote down the true count at the start of every round you ever played, what would the list look like?

We answered that with a simulation. About 414 million blackjack rounds, one player against the dealer, a flat bet of one unit, basic strategy for the rules with no count-based plays, and a Hi-Lo true count recorded before each round. The setup: six decks, dealer stands on soft 17 and peeks, blackjack pays 3:2, double on any two cards, double after split, split to four hands, one card to split aces with no resplitting, no surrender, and the shoe dealt to a cut card at 75 percent penetration.

The list looks like a lopsided bell. Most rounds sit near zero, the tails shrink fast, and one side of the hill is quietly bigger than the other for two separate reasons, only one of which has anything to do with the cards.

## The frequencies

Before each round the [Hi-Lo](https://21trainer.app/articles/hi-lo-card-counting/) running count is divided by the exact decks remaining and floored to a whole number. The 0 row holds every raw count from 0 up to just under 1, +1 holds 1 up to just under 2, and -1 holds -1 up to just under 0, the same convention our piece on [rounding the true count](https://21trainer.app/articles/true-count-rounding-conventions/) explains. Grouping all 413,958,591 rounds by that floored count gives this table:

| True count at start of round | Share of rounds |
| --- | --- |
| -6 or lower | 2.68% |
| -5 | 2.12% |
| -4 | 3.90% |
| -3 | 6.74% |
| -2 | 12.42% |
| -1 | 18.95% |
| 0 | 26.62% |
| +1 | 11.78% |
| +2 | 6.47% |
| +3 | 3.67% |
| +4 | 2.09% |
| +5 | 1.18% |
| +6 or higher | 1.37% |

Read cumulatively, the tails are thin. Rounds starting at +1 or higher are 26.56 percent of the total; +2 or higher, 14.79 percent; +3 or higher, 8.31 percent; +4 or higher, 4.64 percent; +5 or higher, 2.56 percent; and +6 or higher, 1.37 percent. On the other side, -1 or lower covers 46.82 percent of rounds, -2 or lower 27.86 percent, and -3 or lower 15.44 percent.

## Most rounds sit near zero

The first honest summary of the table is how concentrated it is. With flooring, the -1, 0 and +1 rows together hold 57.35 percent of all rounds (18.95 plus 26.62 plus 11.78). Add -2 and +2 and you are past three quarters of all rounds (76.24 percent). A true count of +3 or higher starts under one round in twelve.

This is worth internalizing before anything else about counting, because it sets expectations for what the activity actually feels like: a long stretch of near-neutral rounds, punctuated occasionally by a shoe that drifts, and even then usually only late.

## Why the floored table looks so lopsided

The negative side of the table looks much heavier than the positive side, 46.82 percent at -1 or lower against 26.56 at +1 or higher, and the first instinct is to blame the deck. The real culprit is mostly the yardstick. Flooring assigns every raw count from 0 up to just under 1 to the 0 row, and everything from -1 up to just under 0 to the -1 row. The 8.75 percent of rounds that start at a running count of exactly zero, and every shoe's first round is one of them, all land in the 0 row, while the small negative fractions pile into -1 and the small positive fractions are hidden inside 0.

To show this, we ran a second simulation of 51.7 million rounds with the same rules and bucketed it differently. By the sign of the running count alone, 46.84 percent of rounds start below zero, 8.75 percent at exactly zero, and 44.42 percent above zero. And when the true count is rounded to the nearest whole number instead of floored, the distribution comes out close to symmetric: 17.07 percent of rounds at -1 against 16.13 at +1, and 9.15 at -2 against 8.70 at +2. Here is that rounded table from -5 through +5, the rows that hold about 96 percent of rounds:

| True count, rounded to nearest | Share of rounds |
| --- | --- |
| -5 | 1.63% |
| -4 | 2.91% |
| -3 | 5.13% |
| -2 | 9.15% |
| -1 | 17.07% |
| 0 | 26.24% |
| +1 | 16.13% |
| +2 | 8.70% |
| +3 | 4.87% |
| +4 | 2.77% |
| +5 | 1.55% |

The same simulated world, measured with a different convention, tells a nearly balanced story: before concluding that negative counts dominate, check the rounding rule.

## The small tilt that is real

There is still a genuine asymmetry left over, and it is small: 46.84 percent of rounds begin below a running count of zero against 44.42 percent above. One mechanism behind it is the cut card effect that our piece on [whether penetration matters without counting](https://21trainer.app/articles/does-penetration-matter-without-counting/) describes from the Wizard of Odds analysis. When the early rounds of a shoe run rich in large cards, players and dealer alike hit less, so those rounds use fewer cards, so the shoe produces more rounds before the cut card arrives. Those extra rounds are dealt from a shoe that has already given up extra large cards, so they tend to start at negative counts. Shoes that run poor in large cards early do the opposite and fit in fewer rounds.

The tilt is modest, roughly two and a half points between the two sides here. It is a fact about where rounds begin and how many a shoe holds, not a sign that low counts are likelier in the cards themselves.

## Snapshots are not shares

One more distinction, because these numbers get confused constantly. Our table counts rounds across entire shoes, from the first to the cut card. Our earlier piece on [how the count moves through a shoe](https://21trainer.app/articles/how-the-count-moves-through-a-shoe/) measured something different: snapshots of 200,000 shoes at fixed depths. It found that at one fixed moment, 4.5 decks dealt, the true count is +2 or higher 35.4 percent of the time, against only 5.0 percent after one deck, 15.2 after two, 23.9 after three and 31.5 after four.

Both sets of numbers are correct and they disagree only in appearance. Over all rounds of the shoe the share starting at +2 or higher is just 14.79 percent, because every round starts at or before that depth, and the rounds from the first two decks, where +2 or higher is still uncommon, pull the average down. The 4.5 deck snapshot is the high point of the shoe, not its typical round.

## What this means for a learner

High counts are uncommon and they arrive late. Most of counting is waiting, and the waiting is structural, not a run of bad luck. That fact is behind two pieces of standard advice. It is part of why [penetration](https://21trainer.app/articles/deck-penetration-explained/) is described in terms of frequency rather than size: a shallow cut card shuffles away exactly the late rounds where the count has spread, so those rounds never happen at all. And it is why patience belongs in any honest account of the skill, including our pieces on [when counting is not worth the effort](https://21trainer.app/articles/when-counting-is-not-worth-it/) and [how long counting takes to learn](https://21trainer.app/articles/how-long-learn-card-counting/).

Keep the conditions in mind when quoting any of this. These shares are for six decks, 75 percent penetration, one player and Hi-Lo. A game dealt deeper, a fuller table, or a different counting system moves these shares.

The standing cautions apply as always. Counting with your head is legal in the United States, but casinos are private businesses that may refuse service to suspected counters, and no technique removes risk from the game. If you want to train the conversion itself, the Pro upgrade in 21 Trainer includes a true count drill, with virtual chips and nothing at stake.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the most common true count in blackjack?

Zero. In our simulation of about 414 million six deck rounds, 26.62 percent of rounds started at a floored Hi-Lo true count of 0, more than any other row. The next most common rows were -1 at 18.95 percent and -2 at 12.42 percent. Most rounds sit close to a neutral shoe, which is why counting is often described as mostly waiting.

### How often is the true count +2 or higher?

In our simulation, 14.79 percent of all rounds started at a floored true count of +2 or higher, and only 1.37 percent at +6 or higher. The share is higher late in a shoe because the count spreads as decks are dealt, so a deep snapshot sees high counts far more often than the whole-shoe average does.

### Why do negative true counts happen more often than positive ones?

Two reasons. The bigger one is the measurement convention: flooring puts every raw count from 0 up to just under 1 into the 0 row while -1 collects everything from -1 up to just under 0, which skews the table. There is also a small real tilt, 46.84 percent of rounds below a running count of zero against 44.42 above, and the cut card effect is one cause of it.

### Do these true count frequencies apply to any blackjack game?

No. The numbers come from one setup: six decks, 75 percent penetration, one player against the dealer, and Hi-Lo. Deeper penetration deals more late-shoe rounds where counts have spread, more players change how many rounds each shoe produces, and other counting systems assign different tags, so their distributions differ. Treat the table as an illustration of the shape, not a universal set of numbers.

### Can you practice true count conversion without going to a casino?

Yes. The Pro upgrade in 21 Trainer includes a true count drill that trains the conversion from running count and decks remaining, alongside single card and multi-card counting drills in four systems, all with virtual chips and nothing at stake. A drill isolates the division, so it can be practiced on its own until it is automatic.

## Keep reading

- [How the Count Moves Through a Shoe](https://21trainer.app/articles/how-the-count-moves-through-a-shoe/)
- [Rounding the True Count: Floor, Truncate or Round](https://21trainer.app/articles/true-count-rounding-conventions/)
- [Running Count vs True Count](https://21trainer.app/articles/running-count-vs-true-count/)