What Is the Purpose of a Cut Card in Blackjack?

A cut card is a blackjack term for a plastic card used by the dealer to mark the end of the deck. When the cut card is dealt, it signals to the players that the dealer will be reshuffling the deck soon.

Most cut cards are about an inch wide and two inches long, and they have a distinctive design so that they can be easily recognized. Many casinos use blue cut cards, but some use red or black ones.

Some casinos also have special cut cards that are embossed with the casino’s logo.

The primary purpose of a cut card is to prevent card counting. Card counting is a technique used by some blackjack players to gain an advantage over the casino.

By keeping track of which cards have been dealt, a card counter can estimate the composition of the remaining deck and adjust their betting accordingly.

If there were no cut cards, a skilled card counter could potentially get a very large edge over the casino. But with a cut card in place, the counter has to make a guess about how many decks are left in the shoe and how those decks are distributed between high and low cards.

This makes it much harder to count cards accurately.

Another purpose of the cut card is to speed up the game. If there were no cut card, the dealer would have to deal all the way through the deck before reshuffling. This would take a long time and slow down the game considerably.

With a cut card in place, the dealer can simply remove it when it’s dealt and then start shuffling right away. This cuts down on downtime between hands and keeps the game moving at a brisk pace.

So there you have it: The primary purpose of a cut card is to prevent card counting and speed up the game. But even if you’re not interested in counting cards, it’s still a good idea to familiarize yourself with this important blackjack term.