How Accurate Is CountPilot? Our Test Results, Including the Bugs
A counter is only as good as the cards it misses without telling you. These are the numbers from our own recordings of real tables — including the mistakes we found along the way.
What we measured
| Test | Result |
|---|---|
| Hands where the opening cards were caught | about 97% (558 hands, 9 clean shoes) |
| Hands checked card by card against the physical cards | 88 hands, about 271 cards |
| Hand-total digits read correctly (held-out recording) | 122 of 122 |
| Readings per second | about 6 |
| Recorded real-table frames used for regression tests | 39,872 |
These measurements are from Playtech regular seated tables on a 2940×1912 screen, where the digits are about 21 pixels tall. On smaller screens digits get smaller, and the app tells you when they are too small to read reliably.
The errors we found — and why statistics didn't catch them
Every serious mistake we found looked completely normal on screen. The catch rate, the card distribution and the digit accuracy were all fine while these were happening. They were found by checking hands card by card against the physical cards:
- Splits created a phantom card. After a pair of Aces was split, the new hand showed "11" and the counter read the change as a 9. Fixed: a split never adds cards.
- Standing on a soft hand created a phantom 10. 9/19 collapsing to 19 looks exactly like drawing a 10. Fixed by checking whether the player's turn ended at that moment.
- A previous round leaked into the next. A seat's last total was compared with the first card of the next round. Fixed: memory is cleared when the table empties.
- The dealer's last card was sometimes missed. The dealer's final total can stay on screen for under half a second. Fixed by cross-checking with the dealer card overlay; on our recordings the dealer points missed dropped from 168 to 4.
What it still can't see
- Cards dealt before you started — so it shows "—" instead of a true count until you start at a shuffle.
- Hands that appear with both cards already dealt (a dialog covered the table, the stream lagged). Those cards are counted as missed and widen the ± next to the true count.
- Shared-hand tables ("Unlimited"/"Infinite"/"One Blackjack"). On Evolution regular tables two things are never shown: a player's total only appears once both opening cards are dealt, and a busted hand never shows its total — those cards are inferred from the totals and the remaining deck, and the screen says how many were inferred (see Evolution).
How the error range is calculated
Each missed card is random, so it doesn't push the count one way, but it adds uncertainty. With a Hi-Lo standard deviation of about 0.877 per card, missing n cards adds roughly 0.877 × √n to the running count, divided by the decks remaining for the true count. That is the ± you see next to every true count.
Check that counting aids are allowed where you play — many casinos' terms prohibit them.
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