Omega 2 / Omega II Blackjack Card Counting System

The Omega II count system is another one of the most powerful card counting strategies in blackjack. It is relatively new and was made famous in a book called "Blackjack for Blood" by Bryce Carlson. This book was published in 2001 so it was not too long ago. The basics of the of the Omega 2 system start with a multi-level count style, so it is a little more advanced than other systems. In fact, this is a level 2 advanced variety, so it has a moderate difficulty level and it isn't overly complicated.

Omega II is extremely efficient and accurate. In fact, the efficiency level for betting is close to 99%, which is a nearly perfect system out there and you are getting essentially the largest advantage you can possibly get in any card counting strategy. Surprisingly, Omega II is very similar to the Zen count and virtually identical to the Canfield Master in terms of the indices used and the counting values used for each card. The only difference is now the zeros are neutral and the 9s are assigned values of -1 for the count.

The distribution of assigned point values for each type of card are shown below. The column to the left shows the cards from two through Ace and the column to the right shows what count is assigned to each of these cards. This is known as the indices for the Omega II card counting system.

Note that the level 2 refers to the wide variety of count values assigned to the cards. A level 1 basic system only has the count values (-1,0,+2) but the Omega II has the values ranging from (-2,-1,0,+1,+2). This is what makes this system more complicated than others because you have to remember a wider range of count values for each of the cards.

The Omega II blackjack system is also a balanced system, meaning that you start your count off at 0 when the deck is first dealt and the ending count should also be 0 after the deck or shoe of cards have all be dealt out. If your running count does not start and end at zero when the dealer goes through the entire deck, then you know that you have lost track of the correct count. This is sort of beneficial if you are just learning how to count cards though.

Remember, the aces are counted as 0 points so you can actually optimize this system even further. Generally when the aces are counted as null or zero, a player should be keeping track of the aces in a separate count off to the side. This quickly becomes a complex system by trying to keep track of two separate counts. If you do decide to count the aces and you think you have enough experience, then you should be comparing how many have been dealt to how many are still in the deck in order to make even better decisions.

When using the Omega 2 system, the goal is to wait for a high positive count just like most other card counting methods. When the count is high, this means many low valued cards have been dealt and there are many high cards still left to be dealt. Likewise, when the count is low, there are many low cards still in the deck and the high 10 point cards were already used up. The strategy is to bet high when the count is high and make low wagers when the count is low (especially when negative).