Revere 14 Count

Lawrence Revere was one of the first blackjack experts to put his strategies out there in a way where people could easily understand and comprehend what it took to win at blackjack, and he was able to communicate how to go about implementing a system for maximum effectiveness. He was a man who worked on both sides of the table, as a player who, according to his own account, was playing successfully long before Edward O. Thorp published "Beat the Dealer." In the early 1970's, he set about compiling a book that would put some of his techniques for teaching students into print.

Revere's landmark book was called "Playing Blackjack as a Business," and it was significant for a number of reasons, namely because it presented a number of different blackjack systems, for the beginner all the way up to the aspiring professional, and also because it included a number of color-coded charts that facilitated learning.

Revere was one of the first true blackjack "entrepreneurs." One of the betting systems that was not in Revere's book was called the "Revere 14 Count," which goes back as far as 1971, and was sold separately by Revere and continues to be sold years after his death by his family. The 14 Count may have been one of the more effective blackjack strategies of its time, but it was also one of the more complicated. It is, in fact, a level-four count, which these days would be considered somewhat obsolete because of the balance between the ease of learning and implementation and its effective power.

As you can see, the card tags for the Revere 14 Count have you doing a lot of mental gymnastics. Here, the 2, 3 and 6 are counted as +2, while the 4 as counted as +3 and the 5 is +4. Also, the seven is counted as +1. All ten-value cards (10, Jack, Queen, King) are counted as -3, with 9's at -2. The eight is neutral and is not counted. Revere also has the Ace neutral in this count, and you would have to keep a side count of Aces here.

The 14 Count was one of the favored counts on the part of blackjack professionals back in the "early days." It is very strong when it comes to playing efficiency, identifying 65% of situations where a variation in the Basic Strategy is necessary, and has an "insurance correlation: of .82, which probably ranks it among the best systems available in that regard. It is in the betting correlation that the Revere 14 Count comes up rather weak; it is only .92, meaning that it plugs you into 92% of betting situations.

Certainly, given advances in technology (and the earlier systems were developed with the help of computer researchers like Julian Braun), other counts have been created that can bring better efficiency in betting with better ease of use. That being the case, the usefulness of the Revere 14 Count is rather limited, but it is of a great deal of historical interest to the game of blackjack nonetheless.