Last weekend marked the 10 year anniversary of my first Blackjack Ball. I still remember my first blackjack ball, nervously introducing myself to my heroes like Tommy Hyland, Richard Munchkin, Dr. Thorp, and Max Rubin before sheepishly retreating to a corner of the room. Now, I get to enjoy memorable conversations with many of them. Here are some of the top takeaways from this year’s Blackjack Ball.

I’m gonna be honest… I got frustrated by the 21 question quiz. I always get frustrated by it, but that’s because I’ve never made the final table. I’ve been one question away 3 times now (this year being another year of barely missing the cut). But I was extra frustrated because a lot of the questions preceded my blackjack career.

Then it hit me: The Blackjack Ball has been going on since I was a sophomore in High School. More than that, many of the attendees have been crushing blackjack tables since before I was born. That’s so cool, and I feel like the fact that this brilliant, eclectic group of AP’s have been celebrating the craft for 23 years deserves more recognition than I’ve given it. So cheers to Max Rubin, Richard Munchkin, et al who’ve been instrumental to this special party. Which brings me to my next point…

One of the takeaways from my conversations was that quite a few heroes, or OG’s of AP, are still enjoying hitting the tables! Some of the greats, like Richard Munchkin, are enjoying retirement, I had multiple conversations with people telling me about their recent card counting session or backoff. Tommy Hyland showed me and Joe748 his trip report from a recent blackjack trip. Another blackjack author was sharing about where he’s still getting play on the Las Vegas Strip.

In a conversation with one AP, who’s professional gambling winnings make my teams’ successes look like chump change, I asked him if he ever counts cards anymore. He said, “Oh yeah. I came to Vegas to play!” This just blew my mind, but reminded me that we don’t simply count cards for the money. There is a reward simply in implementing this crazy skill and beating the casinos!

A reality that came up in conversation is the deteriorating quality of blackjack games in Las Vegas. The increase in 6:5 tables has led BJ21.com to remove those tables from their list of “blackjack games,” instead considering those tables the same as all the other “carnival games.” But while Vegas is getting worse, Max Rubin said that across the country, Blackjack is having a bit of a revolution.

That really resonated with me. I’m constantly hearing people complaining about the terrible rules in Vegas. And yeah, it sucks. I’ve still been able to generate pretty decent EV in Vegas in the past year, but it’s not the same as it was even a couple years ago. With the increase in resort fees and paid parking, the LV Strip seems to have become obsessed with getting a short-term edge over tourists. While I think that could drive away smarter players, they don’t seem to care. But that doesn’t change the fact that in the rest of the US, there are more casinos and beatable blackjack games than any time in the history of card counting. So before thinking that blackjack is specific to Vegas, consider what other hot spots in the country might be a better EV decision.

Ok, this bullet point is just an excuse to share my favorite quotes of the weekend, which came from Mrs. Hyland’s explanation of how she and Tommy met. This was the first time I had met Tommy’s wife, so I had to ask her what she thought when he told her he was a card counter. As she retold the story, he explained what he did, her reply was, “What the hell is a card counter? Sounds like a crook to me.” Then, the next time she met him, he was getting a professional wig and makeup made so he could avoid detection at casinos. Her response: “What are you planning on doing? Robbing a bank?”

What we do is never going to make sense to most people. I really can’t think of another job where you are obeying the law and playing within the business’s rules, but there is still a benefit to subterfuge. Of course Mrs. Hyland came to understand that Tommy is incredibly honest and has a clear moral compass (Max Rubin stated at the Ball that, in his experience, card counters and AP’s are some of the most honest people you could know). Well, Mrs. Hyland didn’t simply come around to Tommy’s card counting… she even became a card counter herself for a season!

This year’s very well deserved inductee into the Blackjack Hall of Fame was Rob Reitzen. (For those unfamiliar with Rob, he is one of the most, if not the most, successful blackjack players of all time, using card counting, ace-sequencing, shuffle tracking, and more.) Rob gave an emotional acceptance speech, in which he shared about the great relationships he’s made and high moral character of the people he’s been able to play blackjack with.

Then, the next day, Darryl Purpose played a song he had written about life and risk (watch the story behind the song and hear the song here), which I think everyone in the room was able to relate to. Then, later that day, BJA Pros and my friends, Spartan and LeviMich, drove over 4 hours to be able to see me, my wife, Joe748, and “Rachel” while we were in town. That was how much they valued the connection we have with each other as friends and APs.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because cards come and go. Money comes and goes. And EV comes and goes. But these relationships and the impact we have on each others’ lives is something we will keep with us for the rest of our lives. And I’m incredibly thankful for the friends I’ve made both through the Blackjack Ball and Blackjack Apprenticeship.

By David “Loudon Ofton” Drury

When you push your money into the blackjack circle and faced off against a dealer, you are playing the best odds in the house.

You can even turn the advantage to your favor. But not so fast.

If you thought it was merely the cards you were battling, you have another thing coming. The combat measures began before you even sat down. The game behind the game of blackjack involves getting you to the table and keeping you there. What you may not know is that it also involves making sure your chances for winning are minimized, while your commitment to the idea of winning is maximized.

The real tricksters are usually not the dealers themselves. They are the casinos that hire them, train them, and monitor them. The dealers are pawns serving the casino’s bottom line. Dealers mostly just want to get good tips, not get fired, and maybe have some fun along the way.

Enter “Sophie,” a casino dealer turned professional card counter (she requested that her name be changed so casinos cannot identify her). After eight years of dealing table games at a large casino, she became fed up with how casinos were run and decided to put her efforts at taking money out of casinos through card counting at blackjack. She was happy to offer her input into how dealers think and casinos operate.

Straight from a dealer’s first hand experience, here are five ways that casino dealers compound your disadvantage.

Basic strategy (sometimes referred to as “the book”) involves the list of playing decisions a player can make in any given situation which are mathematically most advantageous. This is not a secret. This is math. Sometimes casinos will even make cards with basic strategy available at the table. But they will never insist you follow it. Never be fooled by a dealer’s “sage” advice.

 “Maybe five percent of dealers know basic strategy… MAYBE,” says “Sophie,” a former casino dealer turned card counter. “Even if dealers know it, very few believe in it. They still give really bad advice.” The casino wants you to believe it has your best interests in mind, but in practice we have no interest at all in seeing that you make sound playing decisions. Why is that? Sound decisions decrease their bottom line. Likewise, dealers are encouraged to keep play moving. More rounds played per hour means more money for the casino. Forcing you to make a quick decision is often just as bad as suggesting you make a wrong one.

Dealers are dedicated to the veneer that the casino has created—that this is a happy place where winning is more than possible. It’s a dealer’s job to welcome you, make small talk, and generally instill hope at the expense of the likely-today-certain-over-time outcome. When you are losing, they’ll chalk it up to bad luck. “It will turn around,” they suggest. “It’s got to turn around eventually.” How many times have you heard that one?

“We want a happy player at their game for two reasons,” said Sophie. “That’s the only way we make money off of tips; and it makes for a really long night if people are pissed off and losing. we want to keep spirits up so players keep playing and keep tipping.”

Not only do casinos take money out of your pocket, they expect you to help pay their employees so they don’t have to, in the form of tips. “When you make money I make money,” they say, as if it is a project you are working on together.

When you win big, they want a share of the riches. But when you lose, they often suggest it is because you haven’t been tipping. Either way, it just decreases the chance of a winning night.

After all, when the dealer wins big, he or she doesn’t tip you.

What if business people kept plying you with alcohol while you were in the midst of making financial decisions like buying a home or car? That is the essence of what the casino is doing when they offer you free drinks at the table. They know you will be inclined to make bad decisions. Walk 20 feet to the bar and the drinks are full price. They don’t want you paying full price for drinks at the bar. You are worth more money to them at the table.

“Dealers say, ‘Have a drink! Have a drink!’” says Sophie. “Their declared intention might be for you have a good time, but I’ve seen people lose not just their money, but their entire lives. The way management sees things perpetuates the sickness. That’s what made me want to get out.”

“Come sit down at the table,” the dealers say. They welcome you warmly. They receive your tips graciously. They will chat you up about anything and everything. The front might even disappear as soon as it becomes clear you aren’t tipping. But it certainly evaporates into nothing once you leave the table, never mind when you leave the casino. Dealers don’t wander the floor with players, and you won’t see them in the food court or the parking lot. Their job is to be your friend when and only when the money is on the table. Sure they are all wearing tuxedo shirts, but nobody is asking you to the prom.

“When I was in management,” recounts Sophie, “we would always say to dealers, ‘You are actors and actresses. Put on a show.’ But the minute the players walked out, none of us thought twice about them.”

Surprise surprise, Dealers are just trying to make money. Casinos are just trying to take money. Is it so hard to believe they would work hard to get yours?

“All this panic goes on when someone’s winning,” says Sophie, “but when players are losing, there’s no thought or remorse for the fact that [casinos] still want more from the player—more, more, as much as they can take.”

Play smart. Know what to watch out for and protect your money for the situations and strategies that give you a real chance to win.

If you want to learn more about how to beat casinos and turn the advantage in your favor, you can sign up for our free card counting mini-course below:

Spartan, one of the Pros at BJA, has become a regular at our Blackjack Bootcamps and has become a friend in the past year. He was willing to share a bit about his journey as a card counter, including outlining an epic 8,000 mile road trip with LeviMich. 

Check out his story…

1. What were you doing before becoming a card counter?

I was an automotive wire harness shield design engineer for a year. Basically, I’d be given data on wire routing in a car and figure out ways to hold them in place using brackets and plastic shields to protect them. Make sure the prints were in a standardized format, visit the plant to make sure everything fit well in the prototype, sit in on GoToMeetings while my ideas are scrapped because they changed the routing…

2. How did you get into card counting?

I saw Holy Rollers on Netflix, figured I could do it, and the rest is history

3. What was your training like?

Mix of software training and physically dealing cards to myself. I got a buddy involved so it was easier to train. I played a lot of blackjack at home and kept continuous track of my results to prove to myself that I could do this and it was profitable.

4. Did you quit your job right away, or what did that transition look like?

I started training April 2015. I was ready to play by June, but didn’t professionally start until September 2015. On September 1, 2016, exactly one year later, I quit my job to be a full-time card counter. From Sept 2015 to Dec 2015, I had the good fortune of grinding away at a local casino 30 minutes from home. My average day was waking up at 5am, getting to the casino by 6am, and playing for an hour. Regular work from 8-5. Back to the casino until 8. Sleep by 10pm. I’m looking back at my early records and I did this pretty much everyday…Geez. I don’t know how I had the energy, It’s all kind of a blur now. I clocked 98 hours in November while maintaining a 40-hour workweek.

This chart assumed I slept 8 hours a day (I didn’t) and there are 5 days that month I took off. I generated 12 hours and 15 minutes of EV on Thanksgiving Day. I remember that day clearly, down to what I had for dinner: a turkey sandwich from the deli.

I never took a payout from my bankroll for over a year, choosing to grow my investment. By June 2016, I had grown my bankroll to $30K and chose to team up with Levimich (who had the same amount). We had grown our bankrolls separately, yet stayed in touch. It seemed foolish for us to put off working together and I regret not doing it sooner. Working with him was one of the greatest decisions in my career, although it was a bumpy beginning. We went on a continuous losing streak from June 2016 to Sept 2016. I had run out of my local joints and had to resort to weekends trips anywhere from 5-10 hour one-way drives. It was in August that I decided, when we were down half our bankroll, to quit my job to pursue blackjack full-time. Those were uncertain times, but definitely the most exciting. The day I quit my job, I was on the road with Levimich across the country. I had no idea that trip would have lasted a full month, traversing through 8k miles and resuscitating our bankroll.

“Colin, can I count cards at one of those live dealer online blackjack games?”

I get asked this question nearly every week.

To answer the question, let me first explain the conditions needed to beat blackjack with card counting:

1. Rules that give the casino a small enough house edge that card counting can be effective. If the blackjack rules are too crummy, then card counting won’t be enough to beat the game. Things like “Blackjacks pay 6:5” or “No doubling after splits” tend to be too much for card counting to overcome.
2. Adequate Deck Penetration. The dealer needs to deal enough rounds before the shuffle for card counting to be effective.
3. Adequate Rounds per hour (to make it worth your time). Card counters are like assembly line workers, assembling positive expected value (EV) hands of blackjack. The more hands you can play per hour, the more you can expect to make.

So let’s cover each of these areas with online live dealer blackjack:

1. Rules: Most online casinos offer pretty poor rules. But you can find average rules, making this not great, but not terrible for a card counter.
2. Deck Penetration: If you’re considering counting cards online, this one is the killer. Many online casinos employ continuous shuffle machines. Those make card counting ineffective. But for online live dealer blackjack games that don’t use a “CSM,” they will have the dealer shuffle in the middle of the shoe. The best I have seen is a dealer shuffling after 4 of 8 decks. This is a huge problem for a card counter.
3. Rounds/hr: Because of the combination of full tables and players needing to click buttons to give their playing decision, online blackjack games are incredibly slow. A professional card counter will be playing between 100-300 rounds per hour. The fastest online live dealer blackjack game I was able to find was less than 50 rounds/hr. Many online blackjack games will be closer to 20 rounds/hr.

So what does this mean in terms of money?!?

I ran a computer simulation based on the best online casino live dealer blackjack conditions I could find. Here are the results:

Betting Up to $100 Online Blackjack

Expected Value: $1/hr (if 50 rounds/hr), less than $1/hr if slower table
Bankroll Needed for <1% Risk: $40,000

So with $40,000, you can hope to make upwards of $1/hr online.

Let’s compare that with live casino blackjack with the exact same average rules as online, but with a normal deck penetration and rounds/hr:

Betting Up to $100 at a regular casino

Expected Value: $19/hr (if 100 rounds/hr), more if you play a less crowded table
Bankroll Needed for <1% Risk: $17,000

You can see that live casinos can be beaten for real money, but online casinos are basically worthless based on these conditions.

But let’s say you have a larger bankroll and want to make more money. Here’s what you could expect to make if you bet up to 2 hands of $500

Betting Up to 2 hands of $500 at Online Blackjack

Expected Value: $22.75/hr (if 50 rounds/hr), less if you play a slower table. Even at 100 rounds/hr, you’d expect to only make $45.50/hr
Bankroll Needed for <1% Risk: $250,000

So you would need a quarter-million dollar bankroll to hope to make upwards of $45/hr, but more realistically, you’ll make $10-25/hr (with a quarter million dollar bankroll!!!).

Compared to real casinos:

Betting Up to 2 hands of $500 at real casino blackjack

Expected Value: $101/hr (if 100 rounds/hr), more if you can play less crowded tables.
Bankroll Needed for <1% Risk: $50,000

At a normal casino, a card counter would be making at least $100/hr with 25% the bankroll needed to try to beat an online casino. And this is with mediocre rules. With better rules, it is possible to make $200/hr or more with this bankroll.

Conclusion:

Blackjack can be beaten! But you’re not going to make money playing online casinos from home. The online casino blackjack games are just designed to crush you.

Blackjack at real casinos is viable as ever. My career win rate is $428/hr, at real casinos. And we’ve got hundreds of Members at Blackjack Apprenticeship making side income or full-time income as card counters. But you have to master the skills, then get off your couch and into the casinos to take their money!

To learn more about card counting and how to beat it for real money, we have a FREE card counting Mini-Course. Check it out below:

If you are using a balance count like Hi-Lo, the count we use and teach, then you will have to convert your “Running Count” to the “True Count.” The True Count gives you a “count per deck,” so you know how to bet and when to use playing deviations.

To convert to the True Count, you take your Running Count and divide it by the number of decks remaining.

But how accurate does your Deck Estimation need to be? When you look at the discard tray, is it best to estimate to the nearest full deck, half-deck, or quarter deck?

Before I share my opinion, I’ll just share a bunch of numbers for you. I ran computer simulations of various scenarios to see the impact of using a full deck, half-deck, quarter-deck divisor, or even full-deck for the first half of the shoe and 1/2 deck for the last half of the shoe (I’m calling this full deck, half deck).

Scenario: 6 Deck Game (4.5 of 6 decks dealt): S17, DAS, RSA*

Bet Spread: 1-12 Spread, wong-out at True -2

EV with Full-Deck Divisor: $39.80/hr; N0: 343 hours

EV with Half-Deck Divisor: $42.14/hr; N0: 331 hours (6% more than Full Deck)

EV with Quarter-Deck Divisor: $42.50/hr; N0: 329 (7% more than Full Deck)

EV with Full-Deck, Half Deck Divisor: $41.96/hr; N0: 328 (5% more than Full Deck)

So as you can see, a more accurate divisor is more valuable. However, it’s not as much as you might think. Even the difference between using a full deck divisor or a quarter-deck divisor is less than 10% in this scenario.

Side Note: I ran several other sims, and discovered that deck estimation creates a bit more of an impact on your EV if you are playing through all negative counts. However, playing through negative counts costs you MUCH more than you can gain from a more accurate divisor. So the numbers are a bit deceiving.

So What Divisor Should You Use?

There are both practical considerations and philosophical considerations. I’ll briefly share my opinion on each.

Practical Considerations

More complex isn’t always better.

First off, more complex can mean more room for error. Most of us can, with a little practice, divide our running count by any whole number. But dividing by half-decks is a bit more of mental gymnastics. And dividing by quarter-decks takes even more brain power.

The more mental energy it takes to do your true count conversion, the more room there is for making mistakes. And mistakes will cost you MUCH more than the 5-10% increase in EV you might get for using a more complicated divisor.

Secondly, the more complex you make it, the longer it takes to come to your decision. Time is money at card counting, so you want to use a divisor that you can do perfectly (every time) AND quickly.

Complex, but not natural just looks odd.

I’ve said many times that card counting doesn’t always look “normal.” Normal is gambling, playing poorly, and losing money. So we don’t want to look too normal. But if you’re staring at the discard tray between every hand, you’re just going to bring unwanted attention onto yourself.

The BJA Philosophy

There’s a philosophical decision card counters need to make. You could decide that your goal is to choose theoretical edge over anything else. If that’s the case, you should probably learn the most complex card counting system, memorize every deviation possible, and use the most accurate deck estimation possible (I’ve heard of card counters that kept a side-count of the number of cards dealt so they always have the most accurate divisor possible).

But that’s not the philosophy I’ve used when I played, when I’ve managed teams, or when training people through Blackjack Apprenticeship.

Our philosophy is “biggest bang for your buck” decisions, then getting out there and getting the casinos’ money! I believe Hi-Lo is the biggest bang for your buck. And learning the top 20-ish deviations is going to give you 95% of the EV of learning ALL the deviations, with a fraction of the effort.

So in deciding what deck estimator to use, my philosophy for shoe games is this:

1. Get REALLY accurate (and quick) at using a full-deck divisor.
2. Then, learn to do Full deck, half deck.
3. If you get REALLY bored with that, then learn to use a half-deck divisor for the entire shoe.

My Philosophy for double deck and single deck:

1. Use a half-deck divisor. If you’ve already learned full deck, half deck then you can already divide by 1.5 decks and 0.5 decks.*
2. If you get REALLY bored with that, then learn to divide by quarter decks.

How to Practice

One of the drills we provide with a BJA Membership is the “True Count Drill.” You can choose any number of decks from 1 to 8, then set it to either full-deck or half-deck divisor and have it give you random running counts and decks remaining. This way, you can practice a lot of true count decisions quickly. It also shows you a discount tray so you can visualize what you will be seeing in the casino.

If you don’t want a BJA Membership (what, are you crazy?!?), you can simulate this at home. It will just be a bit more tedious and time consuming.

Conclusion:

Regardless of what you decide and how you decide to train, get accurate, then get fast. Then get the casinos’ money!

Until next time, keep generating EV!

-Colin

*I’m assuming 100 rounds/hr played or observed.

** Dividing by 0.5 decks is as simple as multiplying your running count by 2.

Here at Blackjack Apprenticeship, we are not fond of gambling.

Sound strange?  Well, it is true.

When done right, counting cards is much more of an investment then a gamble because card counting is a repeatable, predictable system based on math and logic.

And I know EVERYONE in a casino believes they have a “system.”

But unless it’s based on math and logic, it’s actually a myth. So to separate fact from fiction I wanted to share 10 of the top gambling myths with you.

1. “The Heater” (aka Playing Streaks)
The problem with this is that, although there are streaks in short-term results when gambling, you can not use the past to determine the future. A “Heater” is only visible in hindsight. A card counter isn’t looking at past wins and losses (independent events), but is keeping a “count” of the types of cards that have been dealt because that information has a direct impact on what cards remain to be dealt (dependent events).

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re a card counter), there’s no source OUTSIDE of math that’s on your side. And playing “streaks” has nothing to do with math.

2. Betting More when you are “Due”
The flip side to betting more when you’re on a “heater” is to bet more when you are “due.” But again, this is using past independent events to try to predict the future. And the dice, cards, slot machine, and roulette table have no memory.

So unfortunately, you’re NOT due… the casino is due. You have to understand that casino executives know exactly what they’re doing. “rolling dice” in their executive meetings when they spend $20k for brand new slot machines and adding frozen crab to the buffets on Friday. They know that the odds are against you, whether you have won the last 10 hands or lost the last 10 hands.

Think about flipping a coin. You get tails twice in a row. Are you due to get heads? Are your chances increased? NO.

The reason card counting is so different is because you are betting more when the odds (aka math) is in your favor. It doesn’t mean you will win those hands, but that if you play long enough, you will win more money during those hands that give you the advantage. It’s like buying low and selling high.

3. Leave when you’re up
This is true only if you decide to never come back!

It’s easy as a gambler to look at sessions individually, but the reality is you should look at your life in a casino as one giant session.

As a gambler, each session is playing without the advantage. You will “get lucky” some percentage of the time, but the more hours you gamble over your lifetime, the more you are guaranteed to lose overall.

SOOO, you might as well just save yourself the gas money and lose it all right now. It would be more efficient.

But then again most of you are not at a casino for efficiency. You’re there for entertainment. Which is ok, but then leave when you’re done being entertained…not “when you’re up” because over a lifetime long session I guarantee that you won’t be.

Did you know card counting is the exact opposite? Card counters will have both wins and losses, but just like the casino is guaranteed to end up with a gamblers money after enough hours, a PERFECT card counter is guaranteed to end up with the casino’s money after enough hours; the more hours a perfect card counter plays, the more he (or she) is guaranteed to be a winner overall.

4. Predicting the “Flow” of the cards
Lots of gamblers (and even dealers) like to think they understand the “flow of the cards”.

I’ve sat next to a guy who was trying to teach me how to think the value of the dealer’s undercard into existence, stating quantum theories and abstract philosophies as proof that such powers do exist. Fellow gamblers don’t want you jumping in and out of shoes or changing the number of hands your playing because you will somehow screw up the cards.

In order to be a successful blackjack player you have to realize that this is all nonsense. The cards are shuffled and everything is completely random.

There is an near infinite sequence of cards that can come out of a six deck shoe and the only thing that you can be sure of is that mathematically the more you play blackjack the more you are going to lose because the casino has the edge.

The only weapon a blackjack player has at his or her disposal is to use a system of counting to know which cards have come out of the shoe, and thus, which cards have a higher probability of coming out next.

If the shoe is saturated with high cards, the advantage shifts to the player. So if you play perfect basic strategy blackjack when there is a disproportionate amount of high cards left then you will win in the end.

Don’t try and pretend like you have a read on the cards, or a system, or an eye for patterns. These are just excuses to justify gambling.

5. Believing the other player “screwed up the hand”
No, they didn’t.

“But he took my card. And because of that I lost.” And he probably did. But there is an exact 50/50 chance of the person next to you helping you as hurting you. It doesn’t matter if they’re a pro, drunk, a kid, a robot, or a kitten.

The reason you’re losing is because the game is designed with an edge against you, and it’s not the other players that give the game it’s edge… it’s how the rules of the game are set up.

You can run computer simulations of the other players playing perfectly, horribly, or even playing without other players. You know what? The math works out EXACTLY the same.

What happens though is that gamblers blame the other players when you lose (and take credit when they win). More importantly, gamblers fail to take responsibility for their decisions, instead choosing to blame the other players, the dealer, or not wearing their lucky socks.

Here’s the bottom line with a casino. Everyone is losing. AND everyone is looking for someone else to blame.

6. Thinking someone can always win
When people hear that I’m a professional card counter, it’s not uncommon to hear a response like this: “That’s cool. My uncle/grandma/friend always wins at craps.”

No he doesn’t.

He loses more than he wins (as you cannot beat craps over the long haul).

Besides, no one always wins. The best card counters win about 55 times out of 100.

If you really think your uncle wins, ask to see his bookkeeping. The problem is that gamblers usually talk about their wins and for deep psychological reasons, they tend forget to mention their losses. I don’t say this to be unkind, but it’s the truth.

Watching someone win doesn’t make them a winner. Seeing their (honest) results after 1,000 hours of play in a casino is the best way to determine a “winner” or a “loser.”

There needs to be a mathematical way to create value. If someone can’t explain to you why their system creates value (using math or computer simulations), then it doesn’t exist.

7. Blaming the casino of cheating
The casino doesn’t cheat.

They didn’t have to. The odds are stacked in their favor. They know this.

The house always wins (in the long run). Them winning, it’s not called cheating, it’s called having the “edge.”

When gamblers blame the casino of cheating it is proof that the casinos don’t need to cheat, because those gamblers don’t even understand what a casino is, why you’re losing, or what it would take to win.

8. Believing the dealer was “just lucky”
It’s not called luck when it wins billions of dollars, every month.

“Luck” is simply variance. Which rules out over time (and cannot be predicted). Dealers aren’t lucky or unlucky. And even if they were, that info can’t be used to your advantage.

9. Progressive betting systems
Progressive betting systems don’t work.

Well, it works for small wins most of the time, but you are GUARANTEED to have a session where you lose 8, 9, 10 or even more bets in a row.

The problems are:

To read a more thorough writeup, read this article by the Wizard of Odds on martingale betting.

10. Having ANY system for blackjack (that isn’t card counting)
While it is true that betting systems can change the pattern of wins and losses in the short term, there’s no way any betting system can change the odds of the game.

Again, every single person does has a “system.” The only problem is that any system other than card counting doesn’t work.

“Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results it gets.”

If it works, it’s going to take at least as much work or ingenuity as the casino puts in to take your money.

If you don’t believe me and think you have a system, simulate it using betting software like CVCX. If you cannot prove your system with computer simulations, then it is not a winning system.

I love reading stories about the card counting heroes who came before us.

I feel like it connects me to a greater story than my own.

And honestly, some of the things people like John Chang, Ian Andersen, and Tommy Hyland have accomplished is truly inspiring.

But that was then… Games had better rules, casinos weren’t as “sweaty”, and surveillance wasn’t as good. I’m not into card counting simply because of the past.

Which is why the most inspiring stories I get to read are from those who are currently fleecing casinos.

So I wanted to share (with his permission) an email I received from a BJA member the other day.

To give a little more context to the email, this BJA Member started playing in February with roughly $10k.

This means they have seen a 1,000% return on their money in 8 months!

After getting this email, I felt like I wanted to go out and celebrate! They trained really hard, have worked their butts off, and I couldn’t be happier about their success.

For those doubters out there saying what worked back in the day doesn’t work today, hopefully this helps show that there are still people creating amazing card counting stories out there!

And for those who are currently putting in the training and the hard work, hopefully this will inspire you that you can be the next one writing me an email like this.

Here’s to those creating inspiration for the next generation of card counters!

Until next time, keep generating EV!

Colin

P.S. To clarify, when he says “team”, he means that the two of them have played off a joint bankroll. They were not using “team play” like the MIT Team in “21 The Movie.”

Knowing exactly what to bet is crucial to your success as a card counter. You could have perfect skills, but if you don’t have a bet spread that maximizes EV and minimizes your risk, you threaten your ability to beat the casino.

Over-betting

One common mistake I see with new card counters is over-betting and, unfortunately, I’ve seen it wipe out many bankrolls.

There are two primary reasons I see this happen:

1. Overestimating your edge. Just because you have a high true count doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to win. Even a true 10 is only a 4.5% advantage. Over many hours, that true 10 will make you a lot of money, but it’s no guarantee in the short-term.
2. Chasing your money. Psychological studies have shown that people are incredibly averse to losing. People will make poor financial decisions when they have lost money in an effort to get it back. There is no shortage of this in casinos… you start betting more in hopes of winning back losses. But being an effective card counter means being a disciplined investor. You bet “properly” 100% of the time, whether you’re winning or losing. Losing is part of the game. A perfect card counter still loses 40% of the time. And if you start over-betting in a short-sighted attempt to win back your money, you are going to risk losing more money, or even your entire bankroll.

The bottom line is that if you over-bet, your risk will be sky high and you very well could put your entire bankroll at risk.

Under-betting

The other mistake I see with newer card counters is under-betting, and it comes with risks as well. There are a couple common reasons people tend to under-bet:

1. Fear of Getting Backed Off. No one likes getting backed off from a casino. But the reality is that the casino has the advantage about 70% of the time. So a card counter needs to be betting enough during the remaining 30% of the time to even have a profit. Changing your game because of the fear of a backoff is what Josh Axelrad calls “backing yourself off.” Make the casino back you off. Bet properly, get their money, and deal with the consequences should they choose to deem you a threat to them (“Heck yeah, I’m a threat to the casino!”)
2. Fear of Losing. This can happen when you’re winning and you don’t want to lose back what you’ve already won. Or it can happen when you are losing and you don’t want to lose any more. You know your bet spread said to bet $200, but you decide to just put $100 out there so you won’t lose as much. Well, that’s not being a disciplined investor and it will come at a cost.

The Bottom line is that if you don’t use a large enough bet spread, you will be playing a break-even game (or even a losing game). If you’re like me, you’re not at the casino to break even but to win!

How to Determine your Bet Spread

Hopefully at this point I’ve convinced you the importance of knowing exactly what to bet to maximize your profits (EV) and minimize your risk. There are a few ways to figure out what to bet:

1. BJA Bankroll Management Calculator (included in our Membership). You enter your bankroll size, choose between a 2 deck or 6 deck game and either H17 and S17. From there it will give you a variety of bet spread options and their corresponding EV (expected value/ profit) and Risk of Ruin.  Then you can decide which bet spread best fits your risk tolerance and goals.
2. CVCX (Windows-based Betting and Simulation Software). If you’re a professional card counter or want to have laser-sharp betting and EV decisions, this is the best software out there. You need a windows-based computer and it has a bit of a steep learning curve. But you can run your own simulations or adjust your bet spreads based on deck penetration, various rules, counts, rounds/hr, risk levels, and lots more.
3. Personalized Bankroll Coaching (with me). This isn’t the cheapest option. But if you want me to custom tailor some bet spreads for you, I will do it for $199. After a decade of running teams and training professional card counters, I’ve got plenty of experience massaging bet spreads to give you as much EV as possible, balanced with trying to avoid unnecessary heat and mitigating risk. Again, not the cheapest option, but if you want my assistance, I promise I will take your investment seriously.
4. Simple Practice Bet Spread. If you’re not playing in a casino yet and just want to be practicing at home, I recommend a simple bet spread where you add a chip per true count. You can go up to a true 6 or 8 or even 12. This will get you comfortable calculating the true count and changing your bets. But this likely isn’t what you’ll want to use in a real casino because there are much more “optimized” bet spreads that will make you more money for lower risk (see above 3 options to calculate better bet spreads).

The Best Betting Advice I’ve received (to get the casinos’ money)

My hero, Tommy Hyland, once told me that his team made up for “not being the smartest card counters” by having aggressive bet spreads. By “aggressive”, he means betting very small when the casino has the advantage and betting as large as your bankroll can afford when you have the advantage.

I know some people don’t like hearing this because they’re afraid of the heat it may cause. But Tommy Hyland has made millions as a card counter, and it wasn’t from being timid. This is also the same strategy I’ve used personally and the teams I’ve run have used. By using aggressive/dynamic bet spreads, it keeps risk low and EV high. And if you want the casino’s money, this is the best way to do it.

There are creative ways to bet that cost some EV for the sake of longevity at the casinos, but that is more appropriately discussed in our Member’s Forum (I don’t want to give my secrets away to the casinos).

Conclusion / TL;DR

Don’t guess at your bet spread. If you’ve invested in your skills (perfect basic strategy, perfect counting, and deviations), put the same effort and investment into having an optimized bet spread. Anything less than that is disrespectful to your hard earned money. Treat your bankroll well and I guarantee you… your bankroll will thank you.

5 Things you should know about Card Counting:

1. Card counting is NOT cheating. Card counting is simply using your brain, like a winning chess player. Fortunately, using your brain is still perfectly legal in the US! There are a couple reasons why people think card counting is illegal. First off, TV and movies haven’t done us any favors. In “21: The Movie,” Lawrence Fishburne chases card counters into the bowels of the casino, points a gun at them, and handcuffs them. THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE! Generally, they’re more scared of me than I am of them. The second reason people think card counting is illegal is because…
2. YES, casinos can ask you to stop playing. In the same way that I’d pout and give up playing 1-on-1 basketball against Kobe Bryant, casinos can say that they don’t want you to play against them anymore because you are too good. They may treat you like you’re the bad guy, but the winning card counter is just the rare person who has taken the time, energy, and resolve to master how to beat the game. But that doesn’t make it illegal. (Watch me get backed off from a casino in this undercover video)
3. Card counters play the game exactly how the casino offers it. It’s not like using a dice with all 6’s, but like being better than someone else at scrabble. They may beat you sometimes, but you will win more often over the long-haul. Blackjack just happens to be the only casino game that can be consistently beaten EXACTLY how they offer it.
4. You can make REAL money at card counting! We’ve taken millions from casinos over the years. It’s documented in the movie “Holy Rollers“, there are many professional card counters on our blackjack forum (none of whom break the law), and there are dozens of card counting books that explain how.
5. You can learn to count cards! Many people think you have to be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to learn to beat card counting. But we’ve trained hundreds of people to beat the game. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s a learnable skill.

And if you feel like Casinos are justified in treating card counters like criminals, consider these 3 reasons why Card Counters are more like Casinos than casinos want you to think:

1. We have used statistics to set up a way to have the advantage against our customer (Get it? The Casino is a card counter’s customer)
2. We gladly allow the customer to play the game against us, as long as we know we will win in the long run.
3. We are there for your money! (Casinos say, “Win Big!” and are set up like Disneyland for grownups. But they are there for 1 reason: to empty your bank account. Similarly, I don’t mind if the casino thinks I’m there just to have a good time. If I want a good time, I’ll watch Monday Night Football with my wife and some friends. If you find me in a casino, it’s because I’m there to beat them out of their money, fair and square!). It’s just business.*

Hopefully that sheds some light on what card counting is and isn’t. To learn more about the what, why, and how of card counting, sign up for our FREE Card Counting Mini-Course:

Casinos don’t want to have the tables turned on them. And that’s just what card counting does.

So is learning card counting futile? Aren’t the casinos just going to change the rules? Isn’t the facial recognition software too good to out-smart? Won’t the shuffle machines make card counting obsolete?

I recently got lunch with blackjack Hall of Fame member, Tommy Hyland. Here’s what he had to say on this topic:

Now Tommy is one of the humblest guys you’ll ever meet. So he wanted to make it very clear that his point isn’t that he’s a big shot or has any sort of insider money-making secrets. His point is that there are so many beatable casinos out there and that very little has changed over the past several years.

The funny thing is, I asked this same question before investing my money at card counting, and that was in 2003… and people have been asking this question since the 1960s, and card counting is still here! (A lot of people thought “21: The Movie” was going to usher in the end of card counting… well nothing has changed since that movie came and went).

Yes, casinos have changed things. They used to deal 1 deck with very favorable rules. I would have loved to play those games that people describe from the 60’s and 70’s. BUT, there were only a handful of casinos in the country at that time. And if you got banned from Las Vegas and Atlantic City, your career was effectively over.

Now there are hundreds of casinos across the country (not to mention internationally) offering beatable blackjack games. It changes our approach to needing bigger bet spreads and less cover plays, but I’ve never met a card counter who can’t find a place to play.

Yes, casinos invest in stopping “advantage players”, but I know more independent card counters making over $100,000/year now than I did 10 years ago. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but in my opinion, it’s as viable as it was 10 years ago.

Don’t casinos blacklist high roller card counters who win hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yes, but not all casinos are that smart. And I made the majority of the money I’ve made (over $600,000 in profit) AFTER I had been put in the main casino databases. My good friend, Joe748, has gone from $10,000 to 3/4 of a million in profits, simply by not fearing the casinos.

Read how Joe748 went from amateur blackjack player to professional card counter, winning over $750,000 in the process…

Is card counting easy money? No. It’s a craft that demands perfection. Do you need to be a genius to do it? No. Is it worth learning? Only you can decide if card counting is a good fit for you. Just please don’t use the excuse that there’s no money left to be made in card counting.

Until next time, keep generating EV!

-Colin

I absolutely love hearing back from Bootcamp Grads and BJA Members.

The sense of excitement and pride I feel in seeing an “Apprentice” take our training and apply it successfully can’t be beat.

So I wanted to share with you all this email I received last week from BJA Member “68lincoln” entitled “Thank You”:

1. Starting with a $1k bankroll isn’t easy. That’s roughly what I did, and I know from experience that it takes commitment to get there. But if you work hard, hustle, and grow your bankroll, you’ll be so glad you put in the time. Heck, he won over $30/hr, while starting with $1,000…not too shabby!
2. The next $80,000 is just a matter of time. In less than 600 hours of work, “68lincoln” grew his bankroll 2,000%! His next step is to grow it another 500%. Sure, there will be new challenges, but he has proven he has what it takes to keep it going… I can’t wait to get that email when “68lincoln” has crossed the $100k mark!
3. Learning to think like a card counter should pay dividends away from the table as well. If you read this email, you can see that “68lincoln” is thinking in terms of Expected Value and like a disciplined investor. He knows the cost of his time, tracks dollars spent, invested in his training and skills, and clearly knows the path that led to the results he has had so far (and how to get to the next level of success). I believe this will be an asset to “68lincoln” beyond his time at the tables.

This is one of many BJA Success Stories, and if you’ve taken our training and are counting cards in the casinos, I’d love to hear about your progress!

If you are ready to take your blackjack game to the next level and begin your own card counting success story, become a Member to learn, train, and start bringing down the house!

At our most recent Bootcamp, I was talking with an attendee who was back for his second Bootcamp.

His game has come a long way since the first time I met him, and he mentioned how he had been using one of the must under-rated training tools we offer: our iOS app.

I know the frustration of trying to train yourself at blackjack. Unless you have someone else to deal to you, there’s no way to know if you’re doing things right (and even with a training partner, it can often be the blind leading the blind).

When I trained myself, I used (the free-play version of) online casino software. It never told me if I made a basic strategy mistake. It never told me if my count was wrong, if I missed a playing deviation, or calculated the true count for me. I had to completely guess if I was playing correctly.

And unfortunately, once I convinced another pro card counter to deal to me, I discovered I was making mistakes I was completely unaware of.

This frustration, that I watched with dozens of people that played for the Church Team, and now with hundreds of people at Blackjack Bootcamps, is what led us to create the Card Counting Trainer Pro – on iOS – on Android… a tool for card counters by card counters, that you can use wherever you are to improve your blackjack skills. If you have an iOS device and haven’t used it, you should definitely check it out.

Here are 7 reasons why you should use the BJA iOS app for your training:

1. Master the fundamentals

Practicing card counting should be a systematic process. Start with JUST playing basic strategy. When you can do that, learn how to JUST keep the running count. Then, start doing the two together… you get the point. The iOS app doesn’t have all the training drills that we make available with our membership, but it sure can do a LOT for a $5 app!

2. Get 4x the training (Rounds per hour)

I’ve spent plenty of hours playing on the iOS app, and one of the things that surprised me is how the app is perhaps the most efficient ways to practice card counting and blackjack. In a live casino environment, you’ll play roughly 100 rounds/hr (50 rounds/hr if you play a full table). But by removing the time consuming elements of other players, shuffle time, buy-ins, payouts,  and table fills, you can get in as many as 400 rounds/hr. That means you are getting in 4x (or even 8x) the training time that you would get from a live casino. Even dealing to yourself at home, which I think is essential, is slow. But if you’ve got 15 minutes of down time, you can get in an hour’s worth of practice in on the iOS app.

3. Practice your bet spread before going to the casino

One of the issues I consistently see people struggle with when I train them is implementing their bet spread. It’s one thing to have it on a sheet of paper, it’s another thing to fluidly place the correct bets out for every true count. Don’t make mistakes with your bet spread at the casino when you can dial it in first on a practice environment; spend an hour or two getting comfortable with your bet spread on the app first.

4. Don’t have the distractions of real money and the casino

The last thing you need to be focusing on when you start putting all your training together is the growing or shrinking stack of chips that represent REAL MONEY or the innumerable sights and sounds of a casino. You will have to adjust to the real casino environment eventually, but that should be only when you can consistently play perfectly in a controlled environment.

5. Grow a virtual bankroll before trying it for real

Probably the most common mistake I see new card counters make is playing too soon. Card counting isn’t complicated, but it takes more time to become perfect than people expect. And if you can’t master a card counting app, you won’t be able to do it perfectly in real life. So why not take the time it would take to grow a virtual bankroll before putting your real bankroll at risk?

What do I mean by this? Well, it generally takes at least 100-200 hours to overcome variance (aka
“luck”) and get to the long run. If you can play 4x as many hands on the iOS app as you can in real life, why not put in at least 25 hours of perfect blackjack play, watch your bankroll grow, and enter a casino with the confidence to know you’ve proven that you can consistently play perfectly, hour after hour (at least in a virtual environment).

 6. Experience the swings

I know it’s frustrating, but the reality is that card counters lose almost as often as they win. Card counters have losing hands, losing hours, losing days, and losing weeks. But card counters don’t have losing careers.

Get used to the swings involved in card counting by experiencing it in a virtual world. That way, you won’t be shaken when it happens in real life. Losing streaks suck, but it’s unavoidable. So you might as well learn how to handle them emotionally.

7. It’s fun!

Seriously. If you’re a card counter, it’s fun to play. Nothing beats a real casino, but growing a virtual bankroll from $1,000 to $25,000 has its own level of satisfaction. =)

If you don’t have the Card Counting Trainer Pro app, you can get it here…

We had the opportunity to ask BJA member “levimich” about his blackjack journey. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him in person, and he will be attending our upcoming Blackjack Bootcamp.

But before we get to the interview, I wanted to share with you what levimich’s teammate had to say about him:

My most profitable Advantage Play was teaming up with him and although he is 4 years younger than me, I look up to him in a lot of ways. For the longest time I studied him and wondered how he manages to win so much more frequently than me, even though we play the same way. And I started to see why… Even with advantage play, this game still hinges a lot on variance, but you still have control over creating situations that help you overcome it faster. That’s when I noticed how well [he handled himself in a casino compared to me]. He’s got the dealers on his side, so they could cut it thinner and easily get reserved tables to maximize his rounds/hr. And he plays until he’s hungry, tired, or backed off. It doesn’t matter if he’s up $5K already, he keeps playing. He’s the type that never knows how much he’s up until he’s back in the room to count it…

The kid’s a winner and is going to go far in life and I thank God I was able to find him before a more professional team took him in.

On top of that, he’s just a good person. He’ll always get employees gifts and food with his comps, every time we pass a homeless person he wants to give some money (one time in Vegas he wanted to pick up a homeless hitchhiker). In Phoenix, there was a dog in the road and he stopped the car to grab it and we called the cops to put it in a safe shelter. I am not making this up (photo attached). Needless to say, he’s a great teammate and there are no shortage of stories he could tell to help other BJA members.

I know we’re all likely interested in card counting to beat the game, make money, and do something exciting. But at the end of the day, we’re all people. And when we look back at our lives and card counting careers, being a good person is way more important than being a winning card counter. That’s why I felt the need to share this before getting into the details of levimich’s blackjack career.

Without further ado, check out his story below!

1. How did you get into card counting?

levimich saving a stranded dog

My older brother introduced me to blackjack when he took me to the casino a few months after I had turned 18. My friend and I got hooked and started going to the casino pretty frequently to play. Our goal was always to double our $20-30 or whatever small amount that would last us at the $5 table was. We seemed to do pretty well most of the time and we loved playing the game.

One day she suggested we watch the movie “21“. After watching that movie I googled “is it really possible to count cards”. I read stuff about it on the internet until 6am because I was so interested. I remember calling another friend I would gamble with the next day and saying, “Dude, we’re gonna be rich. We’re gonna learn how to count cards!” And he asked, “Ok, how much money do you think we’ll need to start?”. I said, “I don’t know, probably $100.”

After that, playing blackjack with chips at the casino became playing with pennies on my apartment floor for several months. I pretty much quit gambling and went back to the casino when I was ready.

2. How long have you been counting cards?

I have been counting cards for about two years now. About a year and a half playing full time.

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

I wasn’t going to start playing blackjack without knowing for sure that I was ready and had a perfect game. My friend and I came up with a pretty intense test out and she wasn’t going to let me play in the casino if I made any mistakes. I also spoke with some pros (on BJA) about my game to make sure I knew everything I needed to know.

Thankfully, I started off blackjack losing money. I took out a very small line of credit and played games making $7-10/hr.* After losing about 2/3 of my bankroll, things turned around after about 100 hours or so. As I continued to play, I watched my profit line up with my EV. I trusted my skills before I started my journey, but it’s a whole other thing to see things work out how they should after putting in the time and playing the right way.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

When I was a lower stakes full-time player, finding good conditions at my local casino was hard sometimes. One of the biggest obstacles was table minimums being too high with no midshoe entry rules. When you are limited to certain tables, a lot of times those tables are going to be full or not available. It was a 1:20 drive to the closest casino and there were many days I’d drive out there and have to drive back home. I had to work around that a lot and go at odd times of day to get the hours in that I needed too.

levimich’s Career Progress

Another challenge that everyone will have to overcome is the variance. Even playing with low risk, you have losing sessions you’d never really think we’re possible. It’s hard to lose a huge chunk of your bankroll and have to slowly climb back up again. You get used to the swings the longer you play, but it can still be emotionally challenging when you go through a rough season of bad variance.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

Don’t get ahead of yourself and play before your skills are up to par.

If you can’t afford to lose your bankroll, keep your RoR low. Play aggressively but with caution.

Every now and then, take time to have some fun and relax when you’re out there working hard grinding at the tables.

Lastly, always keep your eye open for other opportunities to beat the casino while you’re playing. Sometimes there’s value hidden in plain sight.

6. Any highlights of your career so far?

Traveling has been pretty cool. Having a job where you can pack up and go pretty much anywhere you want to work is liberating. I’ve seen a lot of cool things, met a lot of great people, and have had amazing times with my friends and teammates along the way.

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

I like the freedom that comes with it. I’m not really cut out for a 9-5. I like the idea of thinking outside the box and doing something so adventurous.

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

I had a day where I was up about 3k or so. I was about to call it quits but I wanted to play a little longer because the conditions were so good at this casino. When I went back to play I lost about 8k back on the lower limit tables. Then went to high stakes and at one point I was down a little over 20k for the day at the lowest point before I made a little bit back. I had started playing at 2pm and they backed me off around 6:30am the next morning. It was really annoying having no chance at winning my money back there. I am planning revenge on that casino though. You have to be prepared for the swings you will have and always be prepared for the worst.

Tomorrow’s a new day and you’ll get the money back soon enough if you keep playing. My biggest session win so far is 11.5k. It’s hard to book large wins without drawing extreme heat or being backed off before you can make more. I have had larger unit wins playing smaller spreads, but usually sessions are shorter now.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?

Oh man. There are so many. Running from security, giving $100’s of food comps to random people, meeting other APs at tables, etc.

Here’s a funny one… I was at a casino on the gulf coast at about 3am. My teammate had been trespassed there the day before and we were flyered all over town so I knew it wasn’t going to last long once I sat down. I parked on the street outside and went in to play. In 2 DD shoes, the heat turned on and I was about to get backed off. I overheard the pit boss say to the manager that he already called security. I just laughed and called out to them, “so do you guys just want me to leave now? Or…” They had the security guard escort me out. He was bothering me for my name but I wouldn’t give it to him. He was trying to suck up to me and be nice so I would tell him.

Once we got to the car he asked me one last time for my name. I told him “Sorry,” I couldn’t make it that easy for ’em. So as I’m making my grand escape, I learned the hard way that someone had parked their Mustang behind me in the street while I was inside. Like an idiot, I BARELY bumped into it while I was pulling out. The security squad got real excited about it and started threatening me that if I left, I’d be “fleeing the scene of an accident”. Keep in mind, there is no damage on the cars at all. No scratches or paint missing or anything.

They called the police who showed up about 20 awkward minutes later. For some reason, they felt the need to send out like 5 cops to handle it, several cars had their lights flashing. It looked like a murder scene or something. Anyway, I had to pull the cops aside and explain to them what was going on. I told them how the casino was trying to use the situation as leverage to get my name and that it is important that my name is protected for the sake of my job. The cops just thought it was awesome that I was a card counter and started asking me a bunch of questions about blackjack. My name was never given to security and the owner of the Mustang (who ended up being a dealer at the casino) saw that there was clearly no damage and didn’t want to file a report. Security tried manipulating the dealer into filing a report just to get my name, but I told her what was happening and during my explanation, security just said, “screw it, just let him go”. That’s right!

I went back to the casino I was staying at (where I had also been backed off) and told the manager I had befriended what had happened down the road and we just laughed about it and talked about how crazy some casinos can act. That’s just one of many stories.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?

When I was pretty young, 10-12 or so, my brother and I would always go to our local YMCA and hang out and then eat at McDonalds with the loose change we scraped up from home. They had a sandwich called the “southern style chicken sandwich” and it was around 4 bucks. It had chicken, pickles, and a special bun. I would order the cheapest 90¢ hamburger with nothing on it but pickles, request the different bun for free, and then buy the chicken separate. I got the same exact sandwich for $2 instead. That’s kind of a silly example but I was always proud of it.

Another thing I did when I was 16- my bank did this promotion where if you open a checking account, deposit $50 and make 10 transactions with your card, they’d put $150 in your checking account. I would bring different friends to the bank with me and have them open an account. I’d deposit $50 and then immediately withdraw it. Then I used the Square app on my phone to pay myself $1 ten times with their debit card. I did that with 4 friends and made $600.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading levimich’s blackjack journey.

*Just a personal note… I don’t recommend taking out lines of credit to become a card counter. Just be patient and save up some money. =)

– Colin

Just this month, author Philip Reed published his latest book, “Wild Cards: A Year Counting Cards With a Professional Blackjack Player, a Priest, and a $30,000 Bankroll.” It chronicles his introduction to card counting by an ex-MIT team member, his struggles with mastering card counting, and the philosophical lessons learned about money, gambling, and fear.

If you’re looking for high-flying adventure with million-dollar bankrolls and high stakes cat-and-mouse action between card counters and surveillance, this isn’t the book for you. But if you’re looking for an authentic story of the ups and downs of low to medium stakes card counting, Wild Cards is worth checking out. It reads well and Philip’s perspective is uniquely relatable for the hobbyist card counter.

I had the opportunity to read the book and interview Philip about his book and dig deeper into some of my favorite quotes, sections, and lessons. Check out our interview below!

For those interested in checking out Phil’s Book, “Wild Cards”, it’s available here on Amazon

What’s the backstory to the book? What compelled you to write it? Who’s the audience you had in mind when you came up with the idea?

Phil: I was writing a novel called The Fraud Triangle, about a CFO investigating a scam in his own company. My idea was that he would be very corporate from Monday to Friday and then go to Vegas and count cards on the weekends. The problem was, I didn’t know anything about card counting. Soon after this, my friend Jaacob (correct spelling Jaacob) Bowden, a professional golfer, who created www.swingmangolf.com, met with Bill in Las Vegas to give him a golf lesson and saw him play blackjack. When he came to visit me he said, “You have to do a book on this guy!” He also gave me a tattered copy of the MIT Blackjack manual. I read it and thought, “Hmmm, I think I could do this.” I called Bill and the rest, as they say, is history.

I always saw this book as appealing to both blackjack players and a mainstream audience. I wrote it as a beginner so readers would relate to my fears and share in the challenge.

One of my favorite parts in the book is when you tell the story of a multimillionaire who’s biography you helped write. “Often, Funt would speculate about much of an advance we might receive for the publication of his biography… Then I realized that it wasn’t the *having* of money that he desired but the *getting* of the money. When the money went from someone else’s possession to his… the flow, if you will, turned him on.”

One of the odd effects of being a card counter is that you’re constantly dealing with large amounts of money flowing back and forth between you and the casinos. How has card counting changed your view on money? Do you see it simply as a tool, or does it hold a stronger power of you?

Phil: On one level the book was an investigation of my relationship with money. In the beginning, when I lost $700 in a short, painful session, I equated that to the cost of a new set of golf irons, something I would keep and use for years. In fact, in the beginning, I brought a $1,500 bankroll in $20 bills. Later, I became comfortable carrying larger amounts of cash on $100 bills. And the money became just a tool to winning at blackjack. You have to put your money on the table — at risk — if you want to win.

I would like to say that money doesn’t hold power over me, but it does. I feel crappy when I lose and I feel elated when I win. I actually believe that people’s ideas about money, including my own, is one of the most flawed perceptions about life.

In the book, you say “[Casinos] intentionally attempt to confuse people in the casino areas by reversing design principles in an attempt to increase time (and therefore, money) spent. However, the principles of good orientation design are applied to shopping areas in order to facilitate more efficient shopping. It’s all about money!”

After your time in casinos, are there any other observations you’ve had about the negative affects or tactics of casinos?

Phil: Casinos exploit a basic human weakness and it has ruined many people’s lives and destroyed marriages and relationships. Casino owners know that their customers will lose, often more than they can afford. And yet, if a card counter uses skill to win what is, to them, a small sum, they are treated like cheats and criminals.

That said, casinos are made of many low-wage workers who are themselves victims of a corrupt system. I met many dealers who seemed like nice people and I always tried to treat them with respect even though they were, in a sense, working for the enemy. And, I’m a little ashamed to say, I grew to like some casinos and prefer them over others. But it is important to know what you are dealing with and always be wary.

One of the things that was interesting to me was the struggle between trying to be an advantage player and gambling tendencies (E.G. You played a 6:5 game, even though you knew it was a bad game; you would leave in the middle of the shoe based on wins sometimes, rather than simply playing according to the count; you seemed more interested in your win/loss after a single shoe rather than just trying to generate EV and letting the math work itself out over time). I’ve found that, in many ways, I end up putting as much energy into helping people stop *gambling *as helping them become card counters. Where are you at now? Do you consider yourself a gambler who keeps the count or a stone cold advantage player?

Phil: I sometimes hear my wife tell people: “Phil likes to go to Las Vegas and gamble.” When she says that I wonder who she is talking about. I’ve never thought of myself as a gambler even though I make many of the same mistakes gamblers make. I wouldn’t even consider playing blackjack unless I had at least a small advantage.

In terms of my skill level, I practice every day and I’m still getting better. I adapted the KO system so I don’t have to deal with negative numbers and I use 18 indexes. I try to play only two-deck games so I can get a positive count more quickly without slogging through four decks before getting an advantage. I’m good at keeping the count but I want to get to the point where it is completely automatic so I can do a better job disguising my plays. Also, when I have an advantage, I’m still reluctant to fully exploit that edge, mainly because I’m playing from a small bankroll.

You detail how difficult your training process was. I have a friend with adult ADD, so I understand what a challenge that can be. But it also seemed that your training process wasn’t very well outlined by Bill (your card counting mentor). You were playing with your bankroll before you had basic strategy memorized or could keep the count. (I died a little bit inside when I read that, because we’ve seen so many people put their bankroll at risk before they have the skills to protect their investment.) What advice do you have for people getting into card counting, based on your training experience?

Phil: Yes, Bill brought me along very quickly, perhaps because he had a higher opinion of my abilities than I did. Also, there is a tendency for people who have mastered a difficult skill to underestimate what is, to them, easy. I suggest that people treat blackjack as a long-term project. I see people playing solitaire on their iPhones so I tell them, why not play blackjack and eventually make some money? Once they feel ready to play in a casino, I recommend that people proceed with extreme caution. Winning easily might be more dangerous that losing. There is also a tendency for people to revert to a gambler’s profile and suddenly go “all in” on a hunch, thinking that is the right way to play.

You quote the book Don’t Forget!, a book on the link between fear and memory loss as saying “You can expect memory lapses when your emotions take over and when the situation does not allow you to sustain attention.” Do you feel like you’ve been able to overcome this? How? We got to a point in our Blackjack Team where we could predict if a recruit had what it took to be a card counter simply by how they handled stress and how emotional they were. Do you think that, similar to air traffic controllers, there’s a type of person who can or can’t handle card counting based on how emotional they are and how they handle stress?

Phil: Figuring out how to deal with stress became a major part of my learning process. The simplest way to handle it is to start small and build up gradually. You use the air traffic controller analogy but I often think of pro golfers standing over a 4-foot putt that is worth $200,000. Most of the pros have been playing tournaments since they were teenagers, so there is an imprinting process which might carry them through. However, others get the yips and leave the game.

Another way of dealing with stress is to understand how you react to it. Once you see how you perform you can look for ways to improve. In most cases – blackjack or golf – the stress is largely mental so sometimes mind tricks which can help you. In fact, if you form a different perception of what stress is, you can overcome it. Playing blackjack you might lose a lot of money. But the air traffic controller is holding peoples’ lives in their hands so that is a whole other level of stress.

One thing that helped me is that I’m very consistent. I knew this from a variety of other sports and activities I’ve performed in my life. This helped me to follow a plan and look for results in the long run, not the short term.

On the “Gambling With an Edge” podcast interview you did, you mentioned that you and Bill adjusted the split of profits based on his higher level of EV. What did that look like?

Phil: In most cases we contributed evenly to the bankroll and had a 60/40 split with Bill getting the larger share. This usually worked out fairly and we didn’t have disagreements about the results. And, as I said in the podcast, there were times when I was a significant contributor.

You talked about bet spreads and deck penetration, but not much about avoiding negative counts. Did you guys play through negative counts?

Phil: In most cases we tried to play two-deck games so the negative counts didn’t last more than a few hands. If we were at a six-deck game, with other people at the table, and the count was very low, I might fake that I had a phone call and step away from the table until the count rose again. Either that or I took a bathroom break, leaving my chips on the table, and came back for the next shoe.

You raise a good point, though. Every successful counter has to learn to minimize negative counts and capitalize on the high counts.

Out of curiosity (and if you’re comfortable sharing), how has card counting gone for you since you finished the book? Hours? Units won?

Phil: Since I finished the book I haven’t played as much. However, I still practice almost every day. I’m also looking for ways to improve my play and gain more of an advantage. Since I’m in Southern California, I usually wind up in Las Vegas once every few months.

I feel more confident at the tables but I can’t say my winnings have increased dramatically. I’ve tried to find a level where I can enjoy the game but still make real money. If I had a bigger bankroll, or more time, I would concentrate more on the game. Perhaps in a few years, when I retire, I will return to it with more energy. By then, I expect that keeping the count will be automatic. I hope there are still good games to play. There is a terrible trend to 6:5 blackjack payoffs which might kill the game for me.

I haven’t been backed off recently but I’m a conservative player and I play short sessions. Bill has gotten very busy with his investment business so we haven’t connected recently. We are always in touch, though, looking for time to meet in Las Vegas or Biloxi.

I think my favorite part of the book is just how card counting was a vehicle to you tackling your fears. Can you speak into this some more? What has been the fruit of those lessons?

Phil: I’m glad you liked that part of the book because, for me, that was the biggest lesson I learned. Almost every year I set a goal of overcoming fear. And I’ve never really done it. But I do know that managing fear has a direct impact on your enjoyment of life and your success. Looking back on this project, there were so many times when I had to face my fears and move forward. That’s the key. You can’t eliminate fear, but you can move forward anyway. And, as I say at the end of the book, when you move toward your fear, there seems to be a force that works with you to overcome obstacles. This sentiment has been expressed in many forms. For example, the expression, “Fortune favors the bold” says it nicely.

Any other stories or things you’d want to share?

Researching Wild Cards, I came to enjoy reading about blackjack and watching any documentaries I could find, such as the “Holy Rollers.” I quickly began to see that it is a small, tightly knit community of smart people.

My favorite book became, “Burning the Tables in Las Vegas” because of the approach that Ian Anderson takes.

That’s awesome. “Burning the Tables in Las Vegas” was required reading for people joining our blackjack team (though I don’t recommend using any of his cover plays because they cost too much EV).

Thanks, Phil, for answering some questions for us and I hope you are able to create many more stories through your card counting endeavors!

For those interested in checking out Phil’s Book, “Wild Cards”, it’s available here on Amazon

We had the opportunity to ask BJA member “The Phoenix” about his blackjack journey. He’s been to a couple bootcamps, played on a larger scale team, and won a good amount of money from card counting. It’s probably the most cryptic interview we have, so the answers are short, but hopefully you still learn from and enjoy his responses!

1. How did you get into card counting?

It started with the martingale system. Then lost some money with that, but got a bit of the gambling bug

2. How long have you been counting cards?

I feel like it has been 3 years now.

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

Well, this is a tricky question. I practiced on my computer for 3 months until I could keep the count and adjust bets skillfully. On the simulation I lost a lot of money, but then won it all back and made some money. That’s when I took my skills to the tables which was a little pre-mature.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

Not making as much as I would like. Expenses and being patient.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

Advice would be to not count for more than 10 hours a session. And be stingy and take the time to find the best games.

6. Any highlights of your career so far?

Being on a team and winning 37,000 in 5 days.

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

You have a skill that can make you money and that opportunity is never going to go away.

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

listed above is the biggest team win in 5 days. The biggest single day team win was 23,000 in a day. The best I have done in a day was 2,800. Winning money always makes you feel good. Winning money can sometimes gives me delusions of granger so I have to watch that.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?

I got handcuffed for 30 minutes outside a tribal casino once.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?

Asking for more pay at my motion graphics work?

If you’d like to hear more of The Phoenix’s story, check out our podcast interview with him.

We had the opportunity to ask BJA member mark_k about his blackjack journey. These are the questions we asked him and his responses. Enjoy!

1. How did you get into card counting?

I listened to a radio program on “This American Life” about blackjack that featured “The church team”. After listening to the program I searched for the Holy Rollers on Netflix and after that I looked up BJA on the internet. I read most everything I could from the site without being a member and decided to join. I figured I had wasted a lot more money than that playing craps.

2. How long have you been counting cards?

I joined BJA February 2014 and attended boot camp the following June and went live July 2014.

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

mark_k’s results graph

It took me about 6 months before I trusted myself. As far as if I’m any good my wife used to tell me good luck when I would go to play, now she tells me not to come home until I win. Seriously though, it was after about 60 hours of live play I looked back at my win/loss record and realized my hourly win rate was within about $5 per hour and each time I hit a new high point I get knocked down but I continually come back to hit a new high point within 2 to 3 weeks.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

I would say the biggest challenge is patience and what I mean is to stick to your plan that fits your ROR and bankroll. In my case I’m seeing my bankroll increase at a rate of about $25 an hour and the thought keeps creeping in my mind, Wow if my betting unit was a black chip I could be up in the low 5 digits, but in reality a few bad sessions could wipe out my entire bankroll.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

The best advice I can give is this, don’t become complacent. Stay on top of your game. I still practice 1 to 2 hours per day. I wish I had known how rough the emotional roller coaster was going to be, what a ride !

6. Any highlights of your career so far?

Meeting Ben and Colin at boot camp. Boot camp was a great experience meeting like minded people.

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

The best thing about being a card counter, knowing I have the advantage over casinos.

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

My biggest win (so far)  59 units and biggest loss 38 units. Like everyone says, the loss is more memorable. After that loss I felt like puking, I drove home the whole time questioning my playing ability, the math, thinking I should quit while I’m still ahead. Later that day I got back on this site and re-read the parts about emotions and losses, that its all part of the game.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?

I was playing heads up $25 double deck. Immediately the dealer is destroying me even with positive counts, no matter what I do I can’t win a hand. I have a 20 he draws to a 21, I have a pair of 8’s he has a 6, I split the 8’s draw another 8 split again draw a 10, another 10 and 7, yep he draws to a 19. It feels like this goes on for an eternity and he’s practically begging me to quit playing, tells me I should go play the $5 table. By now I’ve blown thru $750. He finally gets tapped out to go on break, the tide turns and now I can’t lose. Within 40 minutes I leave with a $250 win. This stands out to me because I’m sure he thought I was the typical ploppy and he was trying to give me sound advice but I knew I was playing correct and I would eventually come out on top although it may have not been that day.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?

My family owns two businesses, one of our companies had a fair amount of excess cash on hand and about 5 years ago we took the opportunity to do some financing for a rent-to-own company. We let the income continue to roll over for 3 years and now we are drawing out the investment. By the time we have completely drawn out all of our money in another year, for every $1 invested we are getting $4 in return.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading mark_k’s blackjack journey. If you enjoyed this you might also check out the forum post that mark_k won the Post of the Month Award for: “Rookie Lessons Learned Along the Way.”

If you’re just starting out learning blackjack it can get a little overwhelming knowing what you’re going to need to hone your skill at home.

We want to take the guesswork out of it for you, so before you go unload a bunch of coin decking out a slick home practice setup, read this list of training tools and their importance.

We’ve broken everything into 3 categories. Things you absolutely must have in order to practice beating this game, things you could survive without for a while, and things you just don’t need.

Pro Tip: before you fork out a small fortune to Amazon, we have Blackjack Training Kits in our store.

Bare Necessities:

1. A Six-Deck Discard Tray. This is probably the single most important piece of equipment you will own as a card counter. You will need it to practice deck estimation. Most of card counting is a mathematical or mental skill, but in this case you will be practicing a visual skill as well. All the games you will be playing will have a discard tray so you will need to practicing looking at one and estimating the number of decks left so you can calculate the true count. You’ll need at least a six-deck tray but an eight-deck tray will give you more versatility.
2. Six Decks of Cards. “Why not 1 deck? Or two decks?” Glad you asked. Single and double deck games are not as common as 6 deck games and in a lot of ways they are a little more challenging to beat than six-deck, and far less forgiving on mistakes. That’s why we teach you how to beat six-deck games first. Once you’ve mastered the six-deck you can learn the other variants. Since you’re going to need to practice six-deck you’ll need the cards (all 312 of them). Many casinos (not all) will give out their used decks for free or they will sell them in their gift shop.
3. Printed Strategy Charts. You will need to have your charts handy as you’re dealing cards to yourself and practicing. basic strategy cannot become second nature overnight. Keep a chart in your desk at work. Keep one in your car. It will take some time to master it. Even if you can commit it to memory overnight it will take a significant amount of practice to make it fluid. If you are not checking your accuracy on your charts you may be reinforcing bad habits.

Significant Training Improvements:

1. Blackjack Felt. There is a reason casinos deal games on a felt. If you haven’t already discovered this, you will quickly learn that cards don’t like to be picked up off of perfectly flat surfaces. If you deal the cards on a felt, it serves as a spacer between the cards and the table. The tiny fibers slightly elevate each card above the table, just enough to allow another card to slip under or to allow your fingers to grasp the cards and sweep them up easily. This mitigates endless frustration. You can simulate the same effect with a bath towel, blanket, or table cloth. The other advantage of a real felt is that it has betting circles and the full blackjack layout printed already so you can more accurately simulate a real game.
2. Deck Ruler. When you’re practicing deck estimation it can help to have a ruler you can use to check and see if you are estimating the correct number of decks remaining. You can get one in our store or you can easily make one with a pen and an index card. The important thing is that you don’t want to write marks directly on the tray itself. If you write on the tray itself you’re not really training your brain to estimate decks, you’re just training your brain to read a ruler. This is why having a separate ruler to check your answer comes in handy and is much better for your learning process.
3. Chips. Many people will use chips to keep score on how well they are doing in home practice. We don’t recommend using chips for that. Chips are good for practicing placing correct bets and getting familiar with what odd blackjack payouts should look like in chips. Chips aren’t absolutely essential to a home setup but can add another layer of practice. If you plan to practice with a friend, chips can come in handy to test each other on correct payout knowledge and proper betting deviations.

Not essential:

1. Cut Card. That little plastic card the casinos use to cut decks off the back of the shoe can be used in practice but is not really that necessary. It’s more of a novelty for a practice scenario. The dealer will decide where the card goes in a real game and there is no skill to cutting the shoe before the start of a game, so a cut card is really just there to make you look cool for having casino stuff in your house. Not essential.
2. Dealing Shoe. We thought about adding a 4^th category for this item because we recommend intentionally avoiding this purchase. Just trust us. It’s a waste of money. Even dealers in casinos hate them. They constantly get clogged and they are totally unnecessary for a home training setup.
   

   [a much better use for a dealing shoe]

    Casinos use them because dealers cannot physically hold six decks in their hands while they are dealing. The shoe provides an organized way to keep the cards in order, on the table, and in view of the cameras. None of those things apply at home. At home you just grab a stack and start dealing the cards from your hand. Trust us; if you buy a dealing shoe you will quickly abandon it. That’s why they don’t come in any of our training kits.

That’s all you need to know about home training tools. If you haven’t already picked up the essentials, we recommend checking out our Kits in the BJA Store when you’re ready. The casino’s money is waiting!

If you have a cool home training setup you’d like to show the community send it to info@blackjackapprenticeship.com with subject line “Check out my kit.”

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing BJA member “Bubba” on his blackjack journey. Here are the questions we asked him and his responses.

1. How did you get into card counting?
I came across the documentary one night before going to bed, at first it sounded too good to be true. The scene came on where Ben explains how simple the concept is, and then he proceeds to say you have to memorize like 2 or 3 charts, do some calculations, etc. At that point I was thinking, forget about it. A few weeks later I was on a trip in Vegas when I recalled the documentary. I was in my room bored so I decided to look up how to count cards. What do you know, right there on top of the search was the guys from the documentary. Something felt right about it so I went ahead and bought the subscription, loved the videos, signed up for a year membership, and never looked back.

2. How long have you been counting cards?
My first day to the casino as an AP was just about 4 months ago. At this point I didn’t know any deviations. I shouldn’t have gone out there that early but I thought I would be moving away from where I am now so I might not have the opportunity to visit some of my home casinos with this much ease. It wasn’t until the deviation drill came out on the site that I really got them down, which was around my 3rd or 4th outing. 5 months ago I didn’t even know what a double down was. I guess I’ve made my way pretty quickly. Wow, I didn’t even realize this until just now.

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?
It took me about 3 1/2 months before I built up some confidence in my game. I made a few mistakes almost every session, I’m very fortunate that I was aware and quickly learned from them. When you strive to be perfect the mistakes burn deep and you make sure you tell yourself it’s not going to happen again. I test myself all the time with different drills, I recently got tested out by Ben which was a great feeling, Because I knew he shows no mercy in his test outs and I did way better than I expected.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?
The biggest challenges for me was learning deviations and deck estimation. The deviation drill on the site was like my savior. I was struggling a lot with that, I made some flashcards but I wasn’t adapting very well. The drill on the site is nice because it tells you the mistakes quickly and your % rate and how many you’ve played. My deviations skyrocketed from 40% to 68% to 90’s to 100% the only time I make mistakes is when I’m going too fast and miss the surrender sign. The deck estimation was solved when BJA came out with those rulers, if you don’t have one I strongly recommend you get one, there cheap and save you a ton of time. Another thing I do is get bunch of decks and stack them up 1 deck, 2 decks, 3 decks, or 1/2 deck. One deck if you’re playing DD and put them in front of your computer desk or somewhere you spend a lot of time, and just look at them. Glance, until it becomes muscle memory you won’t second guess your deck estimations.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?
Variance STINGS, be prepared and when it comes, don’t use that to measure your skills, don’t lose confidence in yourself it happens to everyone. Always if you have any questions don’t be afraid to message someone or post about it on the forum, we are a community and were here to help each other out.

6. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?
I actually enjoy being in a casino most of the time. I like talking to people around the tables, making friends. I like trying to blend in with the normal people and rallying against the casino to increase our “luck”. As long as I’ve got my hours in, at the end of the day, I’ve always won.

7. Any highlights of your career so far?
The highlight of my career was the test out by Ben, I was worried before going in there. I’m not that aggressive at watching for payout errors or dealer hand totals, so I thought I wouldn’t do that well, I was also second guessing my deck estimation. I did pretty well at all of these things. I did mess up the running count because it was difficult for me to keep a constructive conversation going and remember the RC after the conversation’s over. That is something I will work on.

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?
The most I’ve won in a day was 132 units, It was a good day it seemed like any table I went to I sat down and the count went positive and I was up after every shoe, I don’t even think I played that long that day. I had a bad month this past month. In one session I was up 80 units, went to have lunch with my family, came back and went down 240 units in one hour. It was horrible having to keep buying in watching your money deplete before you can even register what’s going on. I came back that session to only lose 23 units but It was still terrible at just how fast it all went, My next losing session I actually lost all the money I came with and that was about 20% of my bankroll. I went to go hang out with friends after that session and honestly forgot all about it. It was still in the back of my head but having been prepared for negative variance days it didn’t shock me as much because I was expecting it. Every ploppie in the casino is optimistic, they all think they’re going to win. But they’re playing a losing game where the odds are not in their favor. In regards to my AP outlook I’m always pessimistic. I expect negative variance every day, and when I break even I’m happy. When I win I’m ecstatic and when I lose I’m not that bummed because that’s what I was expecting.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?
All the best memories I have from blackjack all come with splitting 10’s. It’s just the stupidest move to ploppies because it doesn’t make sense to them. Usually every time you split you have a big bet out there and every time you make the signal, the looks and comments never cease to amaze me. I love the expressions on their faces when the dealers bust and they proceed to tell me how crazy I am. Thankfully every time I’ve split 10’s I’ve never lost. Knock on wood 😉

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?
AP plays I can think of off the top of my head. I was in 3rd grade the class was supposed to do a book report 3 times a year on 3 different books we were required to read at home. I didn’t finish the first book and I wrote the report and made up the ending. I got an A-, the next 2 book reports I wrote on the same book but changed the name of the book, author, and character names. I got an A on one and a B on the other. Sorry Mrs. Rogers.

Thanks, Bubba, for sharing your story with us!

And whether you’re a fellow card counter or a counter-in-training, Keep Generating EV!

By David Drury

The Blackjack Hall of Fame at Barona Casino in San Diego, California stands as a curious testament to the giants who mastered the game of 21 and/or paved the way for its continued mastery.

The shrine is more than curious; it is paradoxical. Unlike the “Winners Wall” you can find down one hallway or another in every casino, filled with old bats smiling at having lucked their way into a big slot payout—this is different. Casinos are happy to celebrate luck. They are loathe to celebrate mastery. Luck represents a mere tax on their mathematically guaranteed profits. Mastery represents where profit got away from them. More often than not, Casinos boot people from the premises for mastery at Blackjack. Yes, even Barona Casino where, after being booted for mastery, you can walk a few feet and see them celebrating it with great gusto. It all is very strange if you allow yourself to stop and take it in, which I did one day on the way to the gaming floor at Barona Casino. Or I tried to do. I had no idea it was there to begin with.

Glass cases lined a moving walkway between the parking garage and the casino floor. I saw the names and faces and books that I knew from learning to beat the game. I did a double take as they glided by. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen and I had to double back. Founded in 2002, The Hall of Fame honors the greatest blackjack experts, authors, and professional players in history. These aren’t the luckiest players. These are the smartest. And while issues of secrecy, security and fear have kept these pioneers of the game under wraps, here they get the respect they are long overdue.

Max Rubin seems to be one of the men at the center of the operation. A former blackjack professional , Rubin now works with Barona Casino consulting them on gaming and advantage play, it is likely no coincidence that Barona offers blackjack games which are the most statistically advantageous(to the player) in the country. Likewise, they have a reputation for taking the time to thoroughly evaluate a player on their skill before making a decision about whether they will be allowed to continue (as opposed to acting based on hunches or treating players rudely).

Rubin also hosts the secretive Blackjack Ball once a year, which is sponsored by Barona Casino and in which new inductees are voted into the Hall of Fame by the blackjack professionals in attendance. Voting for the Blackjack Hall of Fame is carried out by the modest gathering of pro players at the Ball. It goes without saying that blackjack careerists are the ones who know well the accomplishments of their peers, both publicly and at the tables, and that pros are the best judges of how a nominee’s work has translated to success at the tables for them and their fellow blackjack pros. Anyone who has derived his/her primary income from the game for at least five years is eligible to vote. The public gets a single vote, as determined by online voting, plus select casino honchos (who aren’t allowed to attend the Blackjack Ball) get to vote via absentee ballot. The first seven members of the Hall of Fame were chosen after a nomination process in 2002. After the public was allowed to weigh in, Final voting took place at the January 2003 Blackjack Ball. Al Francesco was a founder of the blackjack team concept. Peter Griffin authored of The Theory of Blackjack and pioneered mathematical theory in relation to the game of blackjack.   “Blackjack Hall of Fame” by Visitor7 – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

– David Drury aka “Loudon Often”

The following is a story from running “The Church Team,” the blackjack team I ran that beat casinos for over $3Million. It’s a funny story, but it also teaches a valuable lesson…

Mike was one of the biggest members on our team, both in stature and personality. You always knew when he was in the room.

Like many other people, he tried to use sheer intimidation to “test out” for our blackjack team. But the cards will not fear you… you must fear the cards.

Fortunately for Mike (and our team), he put in the time and eventually reached the skill level to pass our test. Eager to start making some money and kicking some casino tail, he planned his first trip. But Mike needed a trip worthy of his personality, so he planned a 4 day assault on the Mecca of card counters: Las Vegas. And he wasn’t going alone, but with one of the most infamous card counters on our team, Ford.

One of their first stops was the Wynn Casino. Their approach was to play separate tables, spread their bets aggressively (2 spots of $100 to 2 spots of $2,000 in those days), and play until Wynn would no longer let them play.

Mike found a 6-deck game that was empty, so he sat down and bought in for a couple thousand. After a few minutes, the count started to climb. +5, +9, +17. As the count rose, so did Mike’s bets. And he was killing it. But something seemed odd. He’d been playing for a while, but was still in the first deck of the shoe. Oh well… The count was still high!

Then Ford gave the team signal to meet in the bathroom.

Ford: “Mike, what the hell are you doing?!?”

Mike: “What do you mean? It’s going great!”

Ford: “That’s a CSM table.”

Mike: “CSM?”

Ford: “Continuous Shuffle Machine. The cards are re-shuffled into the shoe every few rounds. You can’t count at that table!”

Mike: “Uhhhh. Ok. I’m up $20,000. Please don’t tell Colin or Ben.”

Mike finally fessed up. It was as much our fault for not training him to look out for CSM tables. Other players’ mistakes, like accidentally playing a 6:5 table for several minutes, didn’t work out as fortuitously.

Here’s the lesson:

basic strategy, counting, true count conversion, and deviations are the basics. Don’t run out and start risking your money at the casino without taking the time to get fully trained.

Imagine if you wanted to become a pilot. Would you watch some YouTube videos, read a book, then “try” flying a plane? NO!!! You’d make sure you absolutely know everything you need to know before getting into the cockpit in real life. You’d spend time in flight simulators, get training from experienced pilots.  Then, and only then, would you start flying in real life.

If you want to beat the casino at blackjack, here are 3 things you can do to make sure your game is well rounded:

1. Watched our entire video course, that’s a great start. Every bootcamp, people ask us questions that we’ve already answered in the video course. Every card counter should have watched the video course at least once, if not twice.
2. Keep up to date on our Forum. There is SO MUCH knowledge on our forum, it’s ridiculous. Check the most recent conversations at least once a week, as well as looking at some of the older discussions. I guarantee you’ll learn a ton.
3. If you REALLY want to know if you have holes in your game, invest in your craft by attending a Bootcamp. You will leave knowing every flaw in your game that YOU DIDN’T EVEN KNOW EXISTED, as well as how to fix it. You’ll learn more about EV and beating casinos than you even knew existed. And you’ll leave with contacts that could serve invaluable for your card counting career.

And if you’re not ready to invest money into your training, you can still start learning now from our FREE Card Counting Mini-Course…

Until next time, keep generating EV!

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing BJA member Skywayman on his blackjack journey. Here are the questions we asked him and his responses.

1. How did you get into card counting?
I got into card counting when I first watched Holy Rollers on Netflix. That led me to BJA.

2. How long have you been counting cards?
I’ve been counting for a little over a year.

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?
It took me about a month and half of training for me to trust my skills. I knew I had it down when I could deal multiple hands to myself while carrying a conversation and watching TV. Also, playing CVBJ was a great tool that I used when I was practicing every day. If you can play flawlessly on their live game mode, you aren’t too far away from moving your training into the casino.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?
Not letting ploppies take away from my EV has been the biggest challenge for me. What I mean by that is playing the most positive EV hands as possible. It’s not easy. Back counting isn’t easy and neither is wonging in or out. Most of the time it’s not very popular at the table-usually resulting in snarky remarks and blame from other players. I don’t like being the bad guy and that’s usually what ends up happening. The easy way out of that is to just play every hand and make everyone happy. That’s more comfortable. But in doing that, I end up playing when I have no advantage and am in turn just another gambler. I’m getting better at it every time I play-It’s a process!

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?
The best advice I can give to others is to never get complacent with your game. Always be learning and sharpening your skills. You never want to think you’re playing a winning game when you’re really not. You can always improve or add to your game.

6. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?
If I had to pick one, my favorite thing about being a card counter is the freedom that it gives me-financially and with my life style. I work (play) when I want. I don’t have to answer to anyone else and I love that. I’m in control of what I’m doing. I have plenty of time to do other things I’m passionate about and that’s really important to me.

7. Any highlights of your career so far?
Getting a chance to meet a lot of really cool interesting people-mainly through BJA.

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?
The most memorable win I had was when I won $1500 in a 2 hr span-which was my first 4 digit win. That was a HUGE amount for me at the time (still is). I was happy to see my hard work pay off. I always try to stay even-keeled so I didn’t soak in my glory for too long. Black jack isn’t something you can get too emotional about. If you want to last as a an advantage BJ player, I think staying humble and hungry with your wins and losses is really important. Focus on your skills and how you can improve them, instead of how much your winning or losing at the time.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?
My friend once had someone bet him $100, at the table, that a S17 game was better for the casino than the player. My friend clearly won that bet. Talk about a nice EV play.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?
I would have to say getting a full scholarship to play baseball. That saved me from having any college debt or spending 6 digits on an education. I guess that could be considered an advantage play?

-Keep Generating EV!

For this edition of “Profile of a Card Counter”, we interviewed our friend, “HitA7” about his training, exploits, successes, and failures. If you’re new to card counting, don’t overlook the value of learning from others. If you’re a seasoned counter, you should be able to relate to the highs and lows of fleecing the casinos!

1. How did you get into card counting?

I’m part of the wave of counters that developed a serious interest in blackjack AP after watching the infamous movie “21“.

2. How long have you been counting cards?

2.5 years

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

After two months practicing, I thought I had counting down. I went to the closest casino just to do some back counting (without playing). I was mediocre at it. So there was much more work to do. After about 6 months I was ready to roll.

I validated my skills by having others deal to me (and even dealing to myself), then counting the discard tray to ensure my count was accurate. Of course, after getting counting done, that’s the easy part. Next comes actually surviving in the “real world”. That is difficult.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

1. Initially getting my wife to support me on this adventure was tricky. It took a while to gain her full support.

2. My real job gets in the way! (I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s true, nevertheless, I need my real job LOL!)

3. Making noticeable money as side income (which is the category I fit in) takes a lot of patience and hard work, counting is easy, but having the time, learning the in’s/out’s of advantage play, cover, longevity, etc., that is an art, not everyone is called to be a successful card counter once all is considered.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

1. If you are single, put in your hard work and go destroy the tables.

2. If you are married, don’t embark on this trip if your spouse does not support you. Try to come to an agreement, and if you can’t, your spouse and family is more important than blackjack.

3. Always remember this is not a “get rich quick” scheme. Chances are, this is harder than your day job.

4. I can’t emphasize this enough: be mentally (and physically) ready for your first major down swing, it will happen.

5. Be passionate and diligent about the AP life, but remember, there are other things more important than blackjack.

One thing I wish I would have known (or understood better) is how the rules of the game can have such a significant impact (e.g. H17 vs. S17, DOA, Sur, deep vs poor pen., etc)

6. Any highlights of your career so far?

Other than actually seeing this whole AP thing generate some decent side income, the major highlight of my short AP career has been to meet and chat with Max Rubin at Barona after being backed off by one of his main guys.

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

Mainly two things: One, there’s no set schedule, when i’m ready to play, there’s a game ready to go. And two, I just love, and I mean LOVE “sticking it to the man!” 🙂

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

Major loss in one sitting was $5K about two months ago in Vegas. I was mentally ready for it, but it still felt like an elephant kicked me in the gut!…Major win in one sitting $4500 last year also in Vegas. How’d that feel? “I’m the king of the world!” haha JK…,like I said earlier, love the feeling of punching “the man” in the face. Other than those, it has been a sequence of many, many smaller wins/losses anywhere from the single digits to four digits.

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?

I’ve already shared the Max Rubin story, but another cool little story came not too long ago after reading the BJA blogpost about being aggressive with dealer errors. I’m sitting at first base on a 6D table, the dealer deals super fast. She’s showing a 3, flips a 10, then a 4…and due to her speed she couldn’t count her total fast enough to realize she had to stay so she pulls another card, an Ace! Then quickly puts it back face down under the lip of the show, and get this, DID NOT call the floor. I stood quiet as if nothing had happened and very calmly get half of my chip stack and put it on my bet circle (remember i’m at first base!)…so I get my “dirty” Ace and play the hand without the dealer saying anything. Bad news, I didn’t get a BJ, but did win. Loved it! As an AP, I have learned to be very vigilant for when opportunities like this emerge.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?

Involves a fast food chain restaurant that was offering a unique coupon for people to sign up for their fan club and receive a free meal. Lets just say there was a glitch in the system and I was able to get about 13 free meals (note, not scamming them, but following their rules).

We asked HitA7 for a picture and he sent us this collage. =)

And here’s a graph of his bankroll progress over 2 years…

Every month or so, we like to take the opportunity to profile a different card counter on our Forum.

It gives us all an opportunity to learn from each others’ experiences, to get inspired by some good stories, and for those who are still training to hear from those who have gone before them.

We recently had the privilege of interviewing “iambowman”. He shares some of the ups and downs of getting started, the biggest challenges he’s had to overcome  (hint… they had nothing to do with playing blackjack properly), and shares a few of his most impressive non-casino related advantage plays…

 Profile of a Counter: “iambowman”

1. How did you get into card counting?

You know, when I think about it now I can’t remember what flipped the switch in my head to research counting cards, I just remember that’s exactly what happened, one day I just thought “hey I wonder if counting cards is really that hard?” At first I went about it all wrong, found a $2.99 eBook that taught a castrated version of a much more complicated counting system (Omega II) but taught nothing about the most important aspects of card counting: bankroll management and bet spreads. I’m glad I never tried to hit the tables with that system though I will say it got me excited about trying it though and excited to learn that it didn’t require an MIT level of genius or anything, just practice. I found the documentary “Holy Rollers” suggested for me on Netflix completely coincidentally and watched it; I remember thinking “huh, that was cool. There’s even good guys doing this and not just degenerate gamblers.” I went on a google binge later and discovered a few blackjack forums but had no idea that Ben and Colin had started BJA a while back after disbanding the church team. As soon as I found the site and recognized them, I signed up that day.

2. How long have you been counting cards?

I’ve been training since April 2012, I waited 8 months to perfect my game and save a fixed bankroll before I actually did any casino play. So I guess I have a year and a half of casino experience.

3. How long did it take to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

As I mentioned, I trained 8 months before casino play. I’ll be honest though, I’m not sure I’ll ever 100% trust my skills and I see that as a good thing because it keeps me training and practicing and focusing and improving. That’s a huge part of my personality though and it’s a holdover from my days of performing music; I stick with practice until I see progress, even if I’m already playing perfect. I also have a wife and kid that I’m accountable to so I made sure I could prove to myself and to them that this wasn’t going to be some out of control gambling addiction but an actual worthwhile investment. I track my practice very, very fastidiously, even now, and make very detailed notes and records of every session in and out of the casino, so I know I’m playing a winning game. CVBJ was a total godsend when I got it too because it catches errors that I might not with a physical deck, so that was just an awesome dimension to add to my data. Without those numbers to comfort me I honestly would not rest easy and would probably practice myself to insanity. :p

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

Ironically my biggest challenges as a counter didn’t come from the casino or even from practicing/learning but from my other business ventures. I made a snafu on my taxes a few years back as a new business owner that surfaced about 3 months after I was starting to make some decent money at the tables. The mistake, along with the bills from my son being born, wiped out my entire bankroll and most of my other savings and was a hard lesson learned. I tried to just keep practicing and saving for a while but got so bored with practicing without playing. That was when I read about replenishable bankrolls in Snyder’s “Blackbelt in Blackjack”. I still had a day job and my side business and decided to funnel money from those into my bankroll each month so I could still play with a smaller bankroll and effectively reduce my risk at higher betting amounts.

It’s been a real struggle not to spend bankroll money on providing for my family too, I know my wife sees the account with that money sitting in it and I feel bad making her share our 20 year old car with me knowing there’s more than enough to get something better but she assures me that she understands it’s a tool of my trade. Self-control with your bankroll and good handle on your personal finances are two very key skills in blackjack that aren’t on most counter’s minds as often as EV and RoR… but are, in many ways, so much more important.

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything else you wish you would’ve known?

My main advice is, before pursuing blackjack as a career, set your expectations properly. Blackjack is not a get rich quick scheme and it’s not even a get rich fun scheme. The game just like most gambling games is easy to learn but is hard to perfect, gets very old by the time you’ve perfected it, and doesn’t give you any sense of accomplishment in and of itself. Managing a bankroll is difficult and if you’re desperate for money right now because you didn’t manage it well, blackjack isn’t going to be your lifeline. It’s a business and should be treated as such. I think the majority of people who quit during their first phases of practice are those who don’t fully grasp the above concepts beforehand.

Also my other piece of advice is don’t limit your advantage play to the casino. There are TONS of opportunities out there to make money or obtain things you need for free and you should be exploiting every single one of them if they’re a worthwhile effort (really, this should happen whether you stick with blackjack or not). Since counting cards my wife and I also hustle coupons, take advantage of credit card rewards, we even bought some show tickets for our next Vegas trip using a Facebook app that gives out comps. Actually between all of our “schemes” our entire next Vegas trip including food and entertainment will be completely paid for and without a single comp from playing blackjack and without any debts on our cards, that takes the pressure off me at the tables bigtime!

Lastly, guys and gals alike hit this hard while you’re single because it’s exponentially harder to count at smaller stakes while responsible for even the smallest of families!

6. Any highlights of your career so far?

I haven’t pulled down massive numbers like some of the vets on BJA but I’ve had some good wins that made me feel pretty swell, getting back to even after dipping into my bankroll was a huge achievement. One of the most entertaining things about blackjack for me though is doing circles around ploppies’ silly little brains. One of my favorite stories has to be the first time I got a ploppy to pay me to play a certain way. I usually use an idiot act since to casinos I look exactly like the stereotypical card counter, but if I’m fumbling and don’t seem to know how the game works then they write me off as an amateur and move on. A high roller sitting to my right betting about 20x my minimum kept telling me to play my hand differently for a variety of completely unfounded reasons. He finally got fed up and slid chips over to me equal to my bet and said “stand on that 12 please”. “Oh is that the right move against a 2?” “Yeah you want the dealer to bust, don’t take his bust card or we all lose!” I kept at it, playing his way as long as he paid me for the hands, thanking him for the “help” and you know what? He later told me he felt GOOD doing it! Like he was giving me some kind of gambling education and I was going to go on and win a million dollars because he was good enough to guide me in the ways of incorrect strategy and superstition. Since then my attitude towards ploppies has been a lot more positive and so has my EV from them.

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

The absolute best thing about it is knowing that once my bankroll is big enough I can obtain a level of financial independence that few people have, to the point where if I lost my job then I wouldn’t need to worry about where the next one would come from. Right now that hasn’t happened yet but I’ve seen the progress, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from the school of hard knocks, and I’ll have plans and backup plans to mitigate all those risks in the future and come out of it wiser and stronger. In the short term my favorite thing is being able to essentially get paid to play a game, and the best part is my “bosses” think I’m actually paying them 😉

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

(Keep in mind as you read this I’m still playing at red/green chip level). The most I ever won in a single day was $2115 and I felt exhausted but fulfilled, that was the end of an 8-hour rollercoaster on a road trip betting $15 units. I started the day way down and it took a very long while to turn around. At one point I remember having $600 total out on a high TC, split/double situation and thinking “I will never tell my wife about this hand win or lose” (which is probably comical for those of you betting close to that much as a base unit). The most I lost in any session was $500 because that’s how I manage my replenishable bankroll. If I lose more than $500 in any given month then I stop playing until the next month when I can put aside at least $200 into the bankroll. This assures that both bad variance or, god forbid, sloppy play, will never run amok for too long. It feels bad to lose that all but I usually just consider that a wakeup call and hit the practice that much harder!

9. Any memorable stories you’re willing to share?

I think I’ve shared most of my best casino stories. There is the story of when I told my grandad I count cards. He’s a former gambling addict but hasn’t placed a bet in over 20 years so I was nervous about telling him about it; when I told the rest of the family they actually kept warning me “make sure you don’t turn into your grandpa!”. Well when I finally did tell Grandpa, his response was: “Well, I put plenty of retirement money away for you in Vegas… about time you learned to f&#$ing withdraw it! And make sure you get ALL the interest on it too!” I remember that now every time I walk into a casino.

10. What’s your favorite advantaged play have you done in your life that didn’t involve blackjack or casinos?

Two plays come to mind:

1. When my tax debt came in I found out that you could pay off a balance using credit cards. I found 2 credit cards with 0% APR for 12 months and with a fantastic rewards structure, charged the taxes to the cards, and paid off the cards before that 12 months was up. After all that I ended up paying what I owed in full, completely avoiding the exorbitant interest rates from the IRS, had no interest charged from the credit card company, and thanks to hitting some bonus spending points earned roughly $1500 in free travel rewards which I’ll use for casino trips!
2. I wouldn’t recommend this play anymore but I bought bitcoins last year and got to ride the wave up before the Mt. Gox crash and transferred back to $ when they were trading at a little under $1000. That was a bit of research but mostly luck; nowadays that currency is a lot less predictable so I don’t bother with it anymore.

If you learned anything or were left inspired by anything from iambowman’s story, make sure you share it in the forum…

Author: Colin Jones

The count rises to a true 4.

I grab a stack of $100 black chips and place them in the my betting square.

I get a 9,3 and the dealer has a 7 up. I hit my 12 and get a 2, hit again and get a 4 so I stand. 

The dealer turns the hole card over and reveals a 4. She hits several more times, standing when she has 4, 7, Ace, 3, 2. She then calls out, “push” and moves on to the next round. 

What’s wrong with this picture?

One thing that is consistently revealed at our Blackjack Bootcamps is that players trust the dealer too much to add up their hands correctly. We understand; we did the same thing early in our blackjack careers, but then we got it trained out of us by more experienced card counters. It doesn’t matter how good of a card counter I am, if I don’t protect my money, I’m not going to be a winning player.

If you were paying attention to the story above, I hit to 18 while the dealer ended up with 17. Calling it a “push” is a $500 mistake!

It’s happened to me hundreds of times, and if I would have trusted the blackjack dealer’s math, even one dealer mis-pay would have cost me several hours of EV. Did the dealer do it on purpose? No. Dealers are human, too, so they’re just as susceptible to making mistakes as anyone. Unfortunately for us, if they make a mistake in the house’s favor, that can easily kill any chance of actually having an edge over the casino.

Now Repeat after me:

I AM ALWAYS RESPONSIBLE TO ADD UP MY HAND TOTAL AND THE DEALER’S HAND TOTAL FOR MYSELF.

It can feel overwhelming to have to add up your hand total while you’re keeping the running count, playing basic strategy, converting to true count, keeping an eye on the pit, and everything else that’s running through your brain. But there are a few tricks that will help:

by David Drury

Every celebrity plays poker.

Poker is good for celebrity.

You get to show your face around town; you have something to keep you busy in Vegas while the wife is keeping up with the Kardashians; you boost public perception for throwing your snazzy fedora in the ring at charity tournaments.

You restore blood flow to the parts of your body that forgot how piles of money can make you feel something. Just for showing up you get all kinds of comps, cred, and curtain calls. If you study up and play smart you might even fashion yourself into a winning player. The full arsenal of your brainpower and competitive wiles are welcome here—but cross the casino floor to the blackjack tables with that kind of know-how, and all bets are off.

In recent days, award-winning writer, actor and director Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Argo) made waves in the press for his card-playing prowess. But oops! This was not the World Series of Poker he was besting. This was blackjack. Granted, it sounds like he was doing fairly well for himself. But while he was beating the game itself, the bigger game stepped in his path and said, “Get lost.” Unlike playing against a table full of dudes in hoodies, Affleck was playing against “the house.” The house banks the game, the house sets the rules, but ultimately the house all too often fixes the game by playing you for a fool, only to run you off when you call the bluff.

What we know is this: Affleck was playing blackjack (or “21”) in the high limits room at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. After a time was told he was “too good” at the game, and while he was advised that he was welcome to play any other games in the house, he was not no longer welcome to play blackjack. Now, lest you think this is code for, “You’ve won too much money,” it is not. The Vegas casinos can handle celebrity action. They, in fact, crave it. “Too good” is code for, “You are using common sense to turn the tables on our sweet, sweet cruel advantage over you, and we don’t like it one bit.” How do I know? The same thing has happened to me in the same high limits room at the same casino, not to mention time and again at blackjack tables across the country. I am a professional card counter.

As suspect as that may be, please be clear. Nothing Affleck did was illegal. So-called news outlets suggested that Affleck was “under investigation,” implying that some kind of less-than-admirable legal entanglement had followed him out the door. Not even the Hard Rock wants you to believe that. They quickly released a statement that Affleck remains welcome, and that it is the policy of the hotel to “not comment on any casino customer’s gaming play.” They do truly mean that he is welcome. I am certain that as we speak they are seeing to it that he has free suites and Ed Hardy shirts for life. Of course, that part of it has to do more with the PR nightmare they brought on themselves than anything else. But still, they are always happy to have him or anybody else with money to burn out there on the gaming floor… so long as the casino can keep their statistical edge intact while they do it. All the verbal bans I ever receive at the blackjack tables end with a cordial invitation to play the slot machines. There’s probably something to that.

In blackjack, you are dealt two cards. Based on seeing the dealer’s up-card you have the option of taking more cards or not. The goal is drawing as near to 21 as possible without going over.  The dealer plays his hand according to a set of house rules. The highest hand wins and the money moves accordingly. The guesswork and risk and passion of the game revolve around that next card coming out of the shoe. What will it be? Will it make your hand and double your money? Will it bust you? Will it make the dealer’s hand, or will the dealer bust and have to pay the whole table? Your instincts will start to bend your mind in one direction or another in that moment, searching for a justification to hit or stay.

If a raft of low cards have just come out, it seems reasonable to assume a big card is due, and vice versa. A guy named Ed Thorp had those same fragile instincts. Using early computers, Thorp examined whether keeping track of the cards could lend itself to gaining an advantage over the game. Thorp was a numbers man, and he arrived at a startling discovery. With some basic mental gymnastics, you can gain a clear advantage over the game. His conclusions were published in the book Beat the Dealer in 1962, marking the birth of card counting.

Let’s break it off, by which I mean down. Essentially, when more small cards have come out and there are more face cards and aces still in the shoe, the advantage starts to slip out of the casino’s hands and into yours. There are different tracking methods, but odds are that Affleck was using the most prevalent counting method, called Hi-Lo. As the cards come out, the player gives the low cards (2,3,4,5,6) a value of +1, and the high cards (10, jack, queen, king, ace) a value of -1, while the middle cards (7,8,9) are assigned no value. So you do a lot of adding and subtracting ones, and when and if that number starts climbing into higher positive territory, you start to gain an advantage over the casino.

If you bet the same amount every hand, it’s all a wash, BUT if you decide to keep the bets low when the cards are not in your favor and then raise your bets high when the advantage is yours—bingo. Over time you win—not more hands, just more money. Why aces and faces? Aces favor the player because when you get a blackjack, you win three dollars from the casino for every two that you bet, but when the dealer gets blackjack, she only gets to take your original two dollars. More faces mean that the dealer is more likely to bust. Remember that while you can stop drawing cards at any time, the dealer is compelled to keep taking cards until she has reached at least 17.

Ed Thorp published his guide to beating blackjack. The book went gangbusters. Only then did the game become wildly popular. The casinos must have been torn. Curtain opens on a windowless room full of heavyset men in suits thick with Jersey accents and hair grease standing over a boardroom table, wringing their hands over this changing of the tide. “So let me get this straight,” a man says above the din while lighting a cigar, “The upside is we got all these suckers crowding our casino now, laying out their money on a game they hastily think they can beat? But the downside is that if the bastards actually know what they are doing, they will beat it? What to do, what to do? Let’s eat meatball subs.”

The casino has engaged in a push-and-pull tug of war with patrons of the game ever since. They want the customers to come in, but they don’t want the money to go out. They want to keep the game technically beatable without actually taking a beating. They are forever playing cat and mouse with themselves by adjusting rules to attract patrons away from other casinos or alternately to limit the advantage of skilled players at the table. This is how the game has evolved to having all kinds of rules and variations. After a half century of this tomfoolery, the game is still offered, and it is still beatable. The casinos make money hand over fist by keeping it beatable. And by god, Ben Affleck wants to beat it. He is Batman, after all, and Batman deserves respect, if only because he doesn’t always play by the rules of the Gotham city police force.  

A manager at the Wynn and Encore casinos in Las Vegas had circulated an internal email days prior to Affleck’s Hard Rock abrupt dismissal. It said, “Ben Affleck (the actor) …was informed that he was being way too obvious moving his money with the count. He was spreading $100 -10K on the double decks and $0-20K (2@10K) on the shoe games. As of now, he is still being allowed to play per casino management.”¹ Notice that he was being obvious and was still being allowed to play. This is the one instance where notoriety might play to the favor of a card counter. Good on you, Ben.

Other terms have been used by the security professionals to describe Affleck’s manner of play. “Perfect basic” means that Affleck was employing perfect basic strategy. Basic strategy is not only statistically proven, and not only is it welcome at casinos, it is provided as a courtesy on a little plastic card at most casinos and openly discussed among players and staff at the tables. Dealers will tell you the correct play if you ask. Nobody who isn’t a counter sticks to it much, because hey, who needs reliable information when you have hunches.

“Moving money with the count,” was another term used, which means that Affleck was betting low when the count was to the advantage of the casino and betting high when it was in his favor. He was betting from a hand of $100 up to two hands of $10,000 each. That is a fairly aggressive 1 to 200 spread. Translation: he was Going For It.

He either didn’t know or didn’t care about traditional “cover,” meaning that he really wasn’t doing anything to smokescreen his actions or throw the casino off the trail. I imagine they might have tolerated a very respectable 1 to 20 spread from him for a much longer time, but then again, maybe Ben has a day job that keeps him from the time commitment. Card counting is about mitigating risk to make for a successful career. It’s fun to play fast and loose, and until you get that first backoff, it’s hard to know what casinos will tolerate. “Takes insurance according to the count,” was another observation, which again separates Affleck from the typical player in terms of skill.² Surveillance also noted that he was using $100 chips to keep track of the count while playing. That’s more of a rookie move, but not so uncommon for someone who doesn’t count cards with regularity because, ahem—day job.

What could Ben have done differently? Maybe something.  Maybe nothing. A little concessionary cover play might have gone a long way. Especially considering that he had the whole rich celebrity thing going for him. I have gotten banned from playing blackjack in 22% of my 1,300 playing sessions. I know!  I was surprised too, because honestly it felt like half. Believe me, I was no Houdini.

Several years back, a gaming protection agency identified me as the “Most Notorious” active card counter in America (a heartfelt thank you to Ben for now assuming those duties, by the way!). How is that for flying under the radar? All the casinos knew me by name. I saw my face coming out of a fax machine in the pit more times than I can remember. Still, I found ways to get plenty of play, and never had my thumbs broken. Card counting’s protections under the law have been upheld in every court case I have ever read. Remember—You are using your brain to compete at a game which casinos have invited you to use your brain at to try and beat.

I learned that even when card counters get kicked out, in time they often go back anyway, more often than not finding ways to play successful sessions where they were once told they would not be welcome. Until the casino reads you the trespass act, you have the right to try and find a playable game in a public setting like anyone else. Sometimes the casinos forget they are supposed to not like you.

I’m sure that there are plenty of casinos prepared to forget they are not supposed to like the idea of Ben Affleck in their casino. I mean, look at that face. And therein lies the answer. The first casino that publicly decides to let Affleck play will surely attract enough attention, in the form of foolhardy blackjack wannabes to cover their lifetime losses to the Affleck family fortune. How long will it take? Maybe a day. And for the rest of you, don’t be a foolhardy blackjack wannabe. Take a lesson from Batman.

For those interested in joining the ranks of successful card counters, the money is there for the taking! Blackjack Apprenticeship exists to provide the best training, community, and resources on the web for card counters. We can teach you how to turn the tables on the casinos and use effective cover to extend your playing career in the process. Click here to find out more about Blackjack Apprenticeship!

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David Drury lives in Seattle, Washington where he writes under the pseudonym Loudon Ofton for Blackjackapprenticeship.com. For six years he was the winningest player on the Church Team – the blackjack team that was the subject of the 2011 documentary Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians. He is currently shopping his collection of blackjack stories to publishers, as well as supporting a festival run of the independent feature film Big in Japan, in which he plays a card counter who ditches the game for a chance at musical stardom in Japan. . .

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HNGN Article Radar Online Article

I met Vex in Vegas at one of our Blackjack Bootcamps a couple years ago, though he’d been training hard and involved in the forum for a while. One of the most exciting things for us is seeing someone make the progression from Newbie to winning Card Counter. He’s put the work in and I’m proud to have him a part of the card counting Army at BJA! So without further ado, here’s our interview with him…

Profile of a Counter: “Vexbasquae”

1. How did you get into card counting?
When I was younger, I loved playing Blackjack and somehow the math section of my brain was telling me it was beatable, but I never invested the time to learn how. In the following few years, I had heard of card counting and that it could beat the casino at Blackjack, but it wasn’t until a few years ago where my wife and I fell on hard times. My wife’s father passed away and became the administratrix of his estate, so we started carrying the burden of two houses. Then I sought out a way to make some extra money to offset the bills between the two. The rest was history.      

2. How long have you been counting cards?
I have been counting for the last two years, the first year I don’t count because it was my training time. I needed the year to ease into the art and get to a point that I could perform like a robot, but still put on a show for the dealers and pit so that they would think I was another floppy or ploppy.      

3. How long did it take you to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?
It took me about a year to iron out all my questions and understand when, why, and how I gain the advantage, and why some deviations look stupid on paper, but are the best play. This is a tough one. I could say that the money I’ve made over many hours and that I know BS by heart and 40+ deviations, but to me that’s just scratching the surface. To be “good” at this, in my opinion, means you don’t just know that it works, but WHY it works and how each action gives you as a positive/negative expectation. Knowing the intricate details of what your advantage is, why bet spreads are so important, and why emotions, charms, dances, and paper ducks are not going to change your long term results only the math will; makes beating blackjack complex. Delving into the process and constantly improving yourself to keep that edge doesn’t just mean you’re dedicated, it means you are willing to transcend into something more; something like being called “good” at your craft. Or you can go to bootcamp and have [Ben or] Colin tell you, “You don’t suck…much.” Either one fits. =)      

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?
My biggest challenge was finding a way to not have the losses get to me. I am an emotional person and some losses are so bad that it affects you mentally and emotionally. I felt like hanging my head in shame some days and acting like the cock of the walk the next. Slowly I had come to grips with that part of the game because there is no way to avoid it. Coming to peace with it was the best tool I ever learned to this date. However I am human and in the moment, I still get shades of the lows. I can’t say that any player doesn’t have this, and even Ben made it clear in Holy Rollers (PLUG!) when after a long session they were down about $100K and questioning what’s the point of playing. Understand that if you can’t scrape yourself off the floor and keep going, you’ll never accomplish anything in blackjack…or in life.      

5. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?
Don’t let blackjack absorb your life! I fell so far into it that I became the guy with blinders on and didn’t make the right personal choices at first. You are doing this to accomplish something, whether it be money, more time with family, for fun, etc. it all comes down to your goal, but to accomplish it doesn’t mean sacrificing things that are already in your life. There will be compromises somewhere, but they should be few and far between. Also, if you are not single, involve your spouse. Not to the extent that you want them to play, but enough where they understand how it works and that it’s a good thing. Set ground rules, times you play, what your limits are, what your partner expects from you in their life, and be HONEST! Lastly, keep them involved in your records, don’t cheat the records and let them know where you stand after a set number of hours. Once the chart goes north (assuming you play right) they start to believe in it a little more, but don’t ever force it. Just like you believe in it, doesn’t mean they will the same. Take it one session at a time and make the decisions together.      

6. Any highlights of your career so far?
Other than attending a bootcamp? Highlights include having my wife involved now (not playing), beating a 6:5 SD blackjack game by Ace Sequencing, get paid 5:2 on a blackjack, and learning AP slots. I’m sure there will be many more to come, but that’s all I can think of now.      

7. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?
That as I continue to do this I will have a second source of income that can pay for my retirement, loose bills, kids college and other things. The best thing by far would be if I went full time with a stable bankroll, I would have more time to spend with my family, which still is the best AP play you can ever make.      

8. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?
Probably around $5,000 both ways. For the win, I felt like I was the best in the world. I couldn’t have been happier that I have proof that I was successful. I brought it home, showed my wife and we went out to dinner (on the casino of course). It was beyond euphoric as in that moment the joys of being successful and bring that to my family was the best feeling in the world. For the loss, I cried in my car for a few minutes…a few long, agonizing minutes before I had to stop to make long trip home. I was destroyed, and questioning my faith in the math. It took a few days to overcome that moment, and I still remember it to this day. It’s when we are at our weakest moments that we show our true strength, and crying isn’t a sign of weakness…it’s a sign of healing.      

9. Any memorable story(stories) you’re willing to share?
Wow, I have to pick one that isn’t already on the boards. Hmmm…… I was playing at one of my local places and was up a few dozen units. The dealing was fast and the Pen was deep, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a new Floor Person who was talking to what appeared to be a Pit Boss. The pit was somewhat dead, so I was able to overhear some of the conversation. “Blah Blah, I worked for casinos in Washington State for over 10 years. Blah Blah, I know how to spot a card counter by their big bets. Blah Blah, I met the guys from that all Christian team.” My first thought was the FP had backed off Ben, Colin, and the rest of the team, but before I finish my thought, the FP and PB finished their conversation and the FP walked over to my table. By this time I had already pushed by Max bet (2x$$$) and she watched the cards go. I won all the rounds and got two naturals in the process. I paid for insurance on the very last hand, even did a little Hollywooding to make it look like I was a dunce. The shoe ended and the FP was still standing there. Not to arouse suspicion, I pushed two bets above the minimum into the two circles and the FP chimed up, “You should go back to the Minimum bet.” I looked at the FP confused, almost asking, “WHY?” FP replied, “You want to get a feel for the shoe before betting the big money. Why bet it if you’re not going to win it in the long run?” I did as she said, going to two spots of the minimum. “That’s better,” the FP said, “And one more thing. The dealers and I really appreciate when a winning player tips. It keeps us happy.” The FP walked away and I flipped the dealer a quarter. The dealer yells, “Dealers!” and the FP turned around and just me a quick nod. Every 4-5 shoes after that the FP checked in and asked if I was winning and if I toked. I made sure every 4-5 shoes, if I had a won a stack of chips, I threw one quarter the dealers’ way. I still see that FP from time to time and still get the nod. Whether the FP knows or not doesn’t seem to affect my play there, but I have a hard time going to that FP’s pit as it eats into my EV, but silence is golden and definitely worth the quarter paid.

One final question we forgot to ask in our interview: What the heck does “Vexbasquae” mean?!? So, Vex, maybe you can fill us in on the forum!

Until next time, keep Generating EV!

Author: Colin Jones

This is the second interview we’ve done for our monthly “Profile of a Card Counter”. Hopefully you can learn from, enjoy and find inspiration in Moses’ story.

1. How did you get into card counting?

I first heard about card counting about 25 years ago.  A friend mentioned he had bought some videos that taught you how to do it.  I was always a bit of a numbers and statistics geek so the idea was intriguing.  Over the next 24 years that conversation kept me from sitting down and playing BJ more than five or six times because I knew the game could be beat, and I wasn’t really interested in handing over my hard earned dollars to the casinos with the odds stacked in their favor.   I didn’t live in an area of the country that had casinos nearby so I was never really motivated to learn.  That changed however about a year ago, when a new casino opened close to me.  I decided it would be a good time to learn to count and after some quick research, started with the KO system.  I then discovered BJA while doing research on the web, met Colin last summer for some one-on-one training, and switched to Hi-Lo.  It was really the November 2013 BJA Bootcamp however that got me much more serious about my training.  It’s now a serious hobby for me.  I usually play weekends only, and am trying to build a bankroll that would give me the option of doing this professionally.

2. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

Distractions!  Training at home, on the computer, or on a phone app is one thing, but dealing with the distractions inside the casino is quite another.   I’m getting much better at blocking it out and keeping the count, playing accurately, etc.  I’ve also had to overcome simply playing too fast.  I’ve learned very recently to slow the game down in my head, and in actual play.

3. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

Trust the numbers, learn basic strategy and deviations, and play the system.   I’ve heard both Ben and Colin talk about playing perfectly.   There’s no room for error – one misplay can blow a whole night.  Also, work on bankroll management.  I’ve worked with Colin, and have used CVCX extensively so I know when I sit down at the table exactly how many units I’m going to bet at what count.

4. Any highlights of your career so far?

I actually feel best when I’m finished playing for a night, and I can look back and know I played perfectly.  For me, counting takes a lot of concentration.  There are nights when I know I’m on, and nights when I feel off a bit.  I think it’s like a lot of professions (although I’m not yet a professional), there are times when everything is clicking, and other nights when things feel a bit off.  When I’m on, all the distractions around me seem to disappear, and it’s just me and the game.   That’s a great feeling.

5. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

Knowing that when I sit down, I can flip the advantage, take it away from the casino, and win some money.   I’ve been fortunate to have never had to dip beyond my initial, and very small bankroll.

6. Any memorable story you’re willing to share?

Most of my memorable stories have to do with ploppies or basic strategy players getting really really hacked off when I play deviations.  I had a guy come around the table and get in my face for doubling a soft 19 against a 5.  He complained to the dealer that he couldn’t beat her AND me, and stormed off.  I’ve taken some advice from a comment I read on the BJA forum and have asked some complainers what the next card coming out of the shoe is going to be, if they think my play is causing them to lose.

7. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

I’m playing with a small bankroll, and playing at H17, 6-deck, $25.00 tables 90% of the time, with a maximum spread of 1-5, sometimes 1-6, so my big days are not huge compared to professionals.  My biggest day actually came at a $10.00 table on a slow Sunday afternoon/evening, and at an 8-deck table.  I took home $1,765.00.  I responded by thinking I should have been pushing more money out when the counts got high!  My biggest loss was $1225.00.  That was a couple nights before I headed to Vegas for the November Bootcamp.  I was a bit discouraged, especially with a small bankroll, so the timing was actually perfect.  I learned so much at that session.

8. How long have you been card counting?

Technically since last spring, but I didn’t really get serious about it until this past November right around the BJA Bootcamp.  I started learning Hi-Lo last July.  The two days of training in Vegas pushed me toward being more serious about it, and it has really paid off.

9. How long did it take to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

Good question!  I own a business and am a single dad, so I train when time allows.  I practice counting drills every day though on a cool little phone app, or by studying the BJA deviation charts, or using CVBJ.  I also have a felt, card tray, 6-decks and a discard tray permanently in place on my coffee table. Helps being single in that regard. I got tested out this last month at the advanced Bootcamp, which clarified for me what I know my main weaknesses are – distractions at the casino, and rushing into plays.  I’ve been working hard on that, and have seen improvement just over the past couple weeks.  I’ve just slowed the game down in my mind, and in actual play.  I track each and every session…how long I play, where, and how much I win or lose.  And I track to the penny so I know exactly what my results have been.  Since the November Bootcamp, I’ve had 40 sessions with 33 wins and 7 losses.  And my total bankroll is now up by just under 120%.  Positive variance?  Sure!  But I’ll take it.

I met “Moses” when he called me up to do some private training. He took the game seriously, and it’s been really awesome to watch his bankroll grow and his skills continue to improve! He’s a great example of someone who didn’t start with a 6-figure bankroll, but has put in the time and is putting the hurt on casinos in his area. Thanks for sharing your story with us!

And to the rest of you, keep up the great conversations on the forum!

Until next time, keep Generating EV!

Author: Colin Jones

We’ve started a new monthly series for members of our Forum, where we’re highlighting a different BJA Member to hear their story. As a special treat, I wanted to share our interview with “Joe” because I enjoyed it so much. If you take the time to read it, I guarantee you will learn from his experience and be inspired by it!

Profile of a Card Counter: “joe748”

1. How did you get into card counting?

Before I knew card counting even existed I’d always like playing low stakes blackjack. During college we’d take trips to Atlantic City and the first time I ever played blackjack my roommate and I played for 15 hours straight. I never bet much more than table min so I wasn’t a big time gambler, but I’ve always liked playing the game. After I saw the movie 21 I was skeptical of the story and wanted to do more research. I eventually found my way to Ben & Colin’s video on youtube “Top 10 Mistakes in 21 The Movie“. I kept browsing through their videos and wasn’t sure what to think of these guys, I mean they looked like two regular dudes who weren’t MIT math nerds, filming these videos in their house, I just wasn’t sure if they were legit. The youtube videos got me to watch the Holy Rollers documentary and all my questions were answered. It seemed like yes these guys did know what they were doing they have a lot of experience and best of all they offer training through their website. I didn’t have any work lined up the month I stumbled upon BlackjackApprentiship.com so I enrolled and all I did was practice for the next several weeks.

2. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced/had to overcome?

Starting off my career losing my bankroll within the first 5 sessions due to over betting and poor bankroll management was challenging. I had dug myself in a hole and made ZERO dollars for the next 320 hours of play. Not only was my game not 100% but I had started off way negative. I was unprofitable for months trying to dig myself out of those beginning mistakes. I started to use the BlackjackApprentiship mobile app to practice more and was finding I was making a lot more mistakes than I thought. I kept practicing, improved my game, and noticed a steady increase in profit (with occasional down spikes of course). The next biggest challenge was facing my first real long losing streak after I knew my game was improved. I lost 34% of my bankroll in the first 4 days of my trip and day after day after day I lost again. I kept playing and 80 hours into the trip still no sign of getting better. During this time I questioned everything and disregarded all my previous months wins. I thought it would never end but on the last two days of my trip I got 90% of everything I lost during those 80 hours.

3. Any advice you would give to others? Anything you wish you would have known?

At the beginning I wish I would have known better bankroll management and how often you will lose during high counts. When I first started I thought, “Oh the higher the count the more likely it is you’ll win more hands.” I over-bet because the true count was an unheard of +8 and lost all my first bankroll that one shoe. Just because the count is in the stratosphere does not mean you can disregard your bet spread & bankroll management. However I’m actually grateful I had those terrible losses in the beginning because if I had started off winning them all, I may have never questioned whether or not my game had flaws.

4. Any highlights of your career so far?

1.) Meeting Ben & Colin was a highlight for me. I spent so many hours training and using their resources it was cool to see the actual guys who built the methods I learned and implemented their system.
2.) Getting into this I had watched all the interviews, read a bunch of articles, and listened to any podcast about the infamous Tommy Hyland so he was defenitely a blackjack hero to me and to be able to see him in person & listen to him speak at the bootcamp was awesome.
3.) After I had lost my very first bankroll in one terrible shoe, the next morning my full time job had us filming at a multi-million dollar home. It seemed like fate because we found out the owner of this beautiful home (with a Bentley collection in the garage) happened to be of all things a professional Blackjack player for 30 years. It was incredible to see everything this guy earned all from counting cards. He gave me some much needed tips on bankroll management & gave me a really good piece of advice: “If your wife or girlfriend ever asks you how much you won or lost that night, always respond…….you broke even.”

5. What’s your favorite thing about being a card counter?

It’s a toss up between free steak dinners, comped massages, stuffing wads of benjamins in my pockets, & splitting 10’s. I’ll probably go with splitting 10’s.

6. Any memorable story you’re willing to share?

I played a long trip recently and was ready for it to be over. In order to get it cut short I was self sabotaging & joking with the dealers and pit boss when they asked me what I did for a living I kept saying I was a professional blackjack player. So the PB kept referring back to that joke. Anytime a supervisor would come to relieve him he would give them the run down of what all the players bought in for and when he came to me he’d tell them in a joking tone, “And theres Joe he’s a professional card counter.” Ironically this gave me more playing time than any other casino on my trip. The first time I spread my bet by 32 units I’d yell out to the pitt boss, “Better call surveillance on this one!” And at the beginning of the shoe when I’d drop down to table min and I’d yell out, “Uh-oh! I’m dropping my bet back down to table minimum, call upstairs!” Everyone was laughing, it was fun, and sounds crazy but I think it actually worked. It extended my trip by a few days and I was able to win a lot.

7. What’s the most you’ve ever won/lost in a day? How did that feel? How did you respond?

Biggest win in a day was $24,000. Biggest loss was the very next day for $15,000. The table had amazing rules with only a .13 house edge so the win felt expected it felt deserved. The loss I’ll never forget, it was graveyard shift and this juicy table with an almost break even house edge seemed to be betraying me. I was so stressed out at the table after I finally gave up that night and went to my comped suite I got a fever and didn’t play for another 3 days until I got better. I was devastated, but I learned that even a game with such a small house edge can still possess insane variance.

8. How long have you been card counting?

I started training Jan 2013 and went full time October 2013. As of Jan 2014 I’ve logged 765 hours. So still very young in the game!

9. How long did it take to trust your skills? How do you know you’re any good?

It took about 300-350 hours before I knew it was really working and I was playing correctly. It was also encouraging during a back-off in Vegas the shift manager said he was impressed by my play & that he’d hire me to be a counter catcher. I told him, “Thanks, but I like it much better on this side 😉 ”

Joe748 totally exceeded our expectations for the interview. I hope it’s valuable, entertaining, and inspiring for you!

We didn’t ask him for it, but joe748 offered us the chart of his career progress (and the blurred out photo of him in action). This chart looks about right to me… a random, upward trend is what we math guys like to call it. (=

Until Next Time, Keep Generating Positive EV!

It took the strangest job in the world to help me understand every job in the world.

At least every job I’ve ever done; editor, reporter, chart filer, information enterer, warehouse broom pusher, newspaper delivery boy.

Blackjack forced me to rethink the way I go about work.

While I never got every newspaper on every porch, my blackjack team had a higher bar—perfect play and maximum EV. If I threw a paper in a puddle at the casino, so to speak, it was a huge deal (playing errors, betting mistakes; I once played a 6-5 table for 30 minutes without realizing it!). For starters, I had the support network to help me believe in myself and believe that I could approach game perfection. Let that be a lesson to those going it solo out there. You NEED other people, be it a friend or online community, to keep your standards high, motivate you, and catch the things you aren’t capable of seeing on your own.

The nature of the beast for me was 2-4 day intensive work trips. One weekend represented two weeks of work and pay for me, so if I wanted to make my financial goals, I had to hit the ground running and never let up. If I stopped to rest­ – and it can be easy to do when you are on these luxury resort properties – I would get lazy. Instead I set goals…good goals and endeavored to beat them. I planned ahead, I packed light, I moved efficiently. In my old jobs I avoided people, kept my workspace a mess and procrastinated at every turn. Meanwhile, my boss was in charge of setting my goals. With blackjack, I took ownership of my own goals.

Blackjack taught me to be a team player, and gave me a community to support me in becoming the best player I could be.

—Loudon Ofton

Once and only once did someone put their hands on me in an aggressive manner in an attempt to backroom me.

Who could have guessed as I slipped into the casino that night I would soon be in the strong black arms of a woman named Tanya?

Within minutes of sitting down at the large riverboat casino, they knew who I was. My reputation had found a way to precede me: phone calls, whispering to the dealer, half-shoeing. It was heat city. Of course there is always a way to duck the heat for a while. Don’t jump into the shoe until the cut card has gone in; ask the dealer a thousand personal questions as he/she is about to put in the cut card, and on and on and on. Many a successful session has unfolded AFTER the pit makes moves to thwart me.

Finally they have had enough of me and give me the standard back off. At the cage I was asked for ID. Since I was cashing out for just $7,000, I politely declined.

“I can’t pay you out until I see ID,” said the cage manager.

“I’d like to talk to the Gaming Commission please,” I replied.

“He’s on his way up.”

“Great!”

Bob the Gaming Official flashed his badge and asked for my ID, which I gave him. “I’m glad you are here,” I said. “Glad to have you on my side. They don’t seem to know the law about when they can legally demand my ID.”

Bob handed my ID to the cashier for a vigorous and stern xeroxing. Zing! “You are required to show ID for tax purposes,” he said. “And I am NOT on your side. I am on the side of the law.”

“YES, that’s my side! and..What?!” I said, further shocked at his ballsy BS. “You know the law better than that don’t you? Tax purposes? Really? You are sticking with tax purposes?”

“Oh, and you are not welcome back here,” added Mike from over Bob’s shoulder, some sort of trainee pit-security go-between person in a suit wielding a walkie talkie.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Card counting is not welcome here,” said Bob.

“Did you happen to know that 99% of card counters lose money to casinos?” I said. “Wow, right? What’s so threatening about that?”

After lengthy thought Mike said very seriously, “If the player has an advantage over the casino, it’s not fair to the casino,” I laughed and laughed and laughed. “Nice one, Mike.” I said.

After cashing my chips, Mike followed me as I headed for the exits. I heard him say that we were going to make a stop at the security kiosk so that he could take my picture and I could sign some papers. I didn’t say anything, just kept walking.

At this point a slender black woman in professional cream slacks and tan sweater caught up to Mike and asked what was going on. She was wearing a key on a stretchy keychain bracelet like bank tellers do. Her name was Tanya. Her eyebrows were drawn on. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Mike is catching her up to speed on the events. We approached the security kiosk, where Mike tried to steer me. Without stopping, I politely told him that I was not interested in having my picture taken, and that I was leaving. I headed for the row of clear doors.

At this point Tanya jumped in front of me, put her hands on my chest and leaned into me, pushing me backwards.

“I want to leave! I am leaving!” I say. I press my arms stiffly to my side. I try to walk around her, but again she puts herself between me and the door, leaning on me with her full weight, pushing me back.

“No! We are not done with you!” she yells back. Immediately the storm clouds gather. A thousand security guards rush the scene, their radios crackling in their hands like a rolling wave of thunder as they swirl towards us…

…So there I was, being held against my will by a pit bull of a woman named Tanya. I was trying to leave the casino, and she was trying to keep me inside of it. We were encircled by dozens of security guards.

“I’m being held against my will!” I announced loudly. “I want to leave!” again I leaned for the door, again Tanya pushed back like she was trying to move a piano or a small elephant.

“You told me I am not welcome here and I don’t want to be here. I am leaving.” Tanya didn’t budge. Thankfully, the security guards knew better than to intervene physically at this point with someone who hadn’t made any threatening moves.

Who was Tanya, anyway? She wasn’t from the pit. She wasn’t from the cage. My best guess is that she wa some sort of administrator of the security team. But if so, shouldn’t she know better than to put her hands on me? Especially considering the fact that the rest of the meat-head security detail, all 50 of them, knew better than to put their hands on me? And she wasn’t even holding me for something SHE wanted or had asked for. She was holding me on behalf of someone else’s stake in garnering a photo of me.

“I’m being held against my will!” I repeated. “I’m calling the police!” I hesitate to reach into my pocket for my phone, worried that it will be considered a hostile action. I lean for the door. Tanya leans back. The Gaming official was here too now.

I lean again for the door, which was just three feet away. Tanya pushes back. But this time she suddenly threw her hands in the air and took a step back. “Don’t assault me!” she screams. “That’s assault! I will call the police and have you arrested!”

“Exactly what I was thinking!” I squealed. I was getting shaky with trembling rage and disbelief. “Don’t put YOUR hands on me! YOU are assaulting ME. LOOK, MY HANDS ARE AT MY SIDE! I AM JUST TRYING TO LEAVE!” I was looking for anyone who would hear me out.

“I AM BEING HELD AGAINST MY WILL! I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE! I AM EXERCISING MY RIGHT TO LEAVE!” I took a step and Tanya pressed back against me.

“What do we need from him?” the gaming official asked Mike.

“We need to take his picture,” said Mike.

“I don’t want my picture taken! I want to leave!” The Gaming official hemmed and hawed. The security details shifted uneasily. “We already have a few pictures,” the Gaming official said. He hemmed and hawed some more.

Tanya still had her body against me. I was a couch she was trying to push up a flight of stairs.

“Alright,” the Gaming official whined in cowardly surrender. “You’re done. Bye bye.”

Poor Tanya had to stand down and let me pass, and I felt the stares of several hundred pairs of eyes as I stormed out and crossed to the parking garage. They didn’t even follow me.

—Loudon Ofton

The Casinos are big.

But they are built on the power of people, who can be much more flexible, personable, and even fragile.

I found a small casino that offered a good double deck game.

 I hit it time and again for months. The rules started to change in an attempt to limit my play. I always managed to find a way to continue making the game beatable. In the meantime, because it was a small casino, I generally always saw the same female pit boss. I probably came off as standoffish to her at first, but over time we began to talk about all kinds of things—weather, kids, life. We even talked about my advantaged play, in not so many words. When my backoff came from the casino owner one night, the pit boss who had become my friend began to cry. She thought that they had treated me unfairly with all the rule changes and finally the backoff.

For as cold as casino employees can be, remember that there is a real person in there somewhere. Connecting with people on a human level where possible might positively impact your play, but it has potential to positively impact the universe at large, much more valuable than whatever gains you scrape together from being rude and callous….a casino unto yourself. All of us card counters have the predatory instinct, but my favorite blackjack memories are not directly proportional to my biggest wins, but my encounters with people that impacted me positively, just as the measure of my life is not found in my work. I won’t soon forget the crying pit boss.

—Loudon Ofton

Deviations are simply times where you will alter your play. They are always mathematically driven, meaning they are never based off of a hunch or a pattern of wins or losses. There are 2 kinds of deviations: Playing Deviations and Betting Deviations.

Betting Deviations are times when you will change your bet. As the true count changes, the edge changes. When the casino has the edge, you will bet less, but as the edge moves to the player,  the player will bet more. This will always follow the strategy of your bet spread. And your bet spread should be mathematically calculated from a betting software or through Bankroll Coaching (which is included for Elite Members).

Playing Deviations are times where you will deviate from basic strategy because the composition of the cards has changed due to the true count changing. For example, normally you will hit a 12 against a 2. However, when the true count is above 3, it is statistically better to stand a 12 against a 2. So anytime before a true 3, you will hit 12 v 2; anytime above true 3, you will stand 12 v 2.

Yes. Roughly 60-80% of a card counter’s edge comes from PERFECT basic strategy, PERFECT counting, and PERFECTLY betting according to the true count. Then, Deviations account for the remaining 20-40%. I strongly recommend that people focus ALL their attention on basic strategy, counting, and true count conversion until they are always 100% accurate and getting bored. The reason for this is that you cannot beat blackjack without perfect basic strategy, counting, and betting. Those are the foundations. When your foundation is solid, you can work on adding playing deviations. But you cannot put the cart before the horse.

There are a few ways that playing deviations are valuable. The main way is that they increase EV. Rather than thinking of deviations as “steering away from basic strategy”, you can think of deviations as the proper basic strategy for each true count. Take the 12 vs 2 decision for example. With a true count below 3, you will make more money in the long run if you always hit, but you will make more money above a true 3 if you always stand. It’s just that simple. But another way that playing deviations are valuable is because they lower risk and variance. By always making the correct decision, your bankroll will take fewer swings. For example, by always buying insurance at a true 3, you are protecting your bankroll and will have a lower risk game than if you avoid using that playing deviation.

Betting Deviations: You will need to calculate the true count between every round to perform betting deviations. Since your bet spread will likely change with every true count (at least up to a true 4 or 5), you will need to know the true count every round to calculate the true count and bet accordingly. This is why practicing calculating the true count is so important!

Playing Deviations: Whenever you are dealt a hand with a deviation index number. Even if you just calculated the true count for your betting decision, you will need to calculate it again when it’s your playing decision because the running count has likely changed. So before you make a signal, you will need to convert from running to true count and see if it justifies deviating from basic strategy. This might sound tricky, but if you follow the training and get faster and faster at basic strategy, counting, and true count conversions, adding this step will become more natural.

Hopefully this brings some clarity to blackjack deviations.

We will send you the deviations charts for FREE if you sign up for our newsletter below:

Thomas Hyland is a professional blackjack player and card counter. He is well known for his expertise innovative card counting techniques and also is one of the seven inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

Hyland began his career in the late 70’s upon reading Lawrence Revere’s book Playing Blackjack as a Business. While in college, in 1979, Hyland began contemplating what he was going to do for a profession when he got thrown into the world of blackjack. After becoming very enthusiastic about the game and the idea of making it a full time job, he began recruiting his friends and put together his original team of four players with a bankroll of four-thousand dollars each. The team began their career inAtlantic City and because of their sharp counting tactics, easily built their team of to a back roll of fifty-thousand dollars. After conditions worsened for many blackjack players inAtlantic City, Hyland’s original teammates headed toAsia to continue their blackjack play; however, Hyland continued his team by recruiting other friends that he knew from golfing.

Throughout the 80’s, Hyland and his team utilize very successful blackjack counting techniques such as shuffle tracking and ace sequencing. Among these, the latter got Hyland and his team into a difficult situation at the mid of the next decade. In 1994, some of his teammates were arrested inCanadafor ace sequencing play at Casino Windsor inOntario,Canada. Although the trial was supposed to be groundbreaking precedent as far as prosecuting ace sequencing and other advantage blackjack players, the judge ruled in favor of Hyland’s team and ruled that what his members were doing was not cheating, but rather, intelligent strategy.

Colin and Tommy Hyland hanging out at a country club.

Hyland’s strategy as far as counting and making money at various casinos is an aggressive strategy where he advocates standing firm and leaving as fast as possible. Moreover, Hyland’s success as a team leader, and also his success at operating the longest standing blackjack team, goes back to his loyalty, integrity, and ability to engage and encourage his teammates through faithfulness and devotion. “In a crisis, the money wasn’t the most important thing,” stated Hyland, “the most important thing was somebody’s liberty.” Although many members came and went throughout Hyland’s successful decades of advantage blackjack play, the team’s philosophy always stayed tight knit and dedicated to each other no matter what the cost.

Although Hyland doesn’t play nearly as many hours as he used to, he still plays frequently and also has branched out into other modes of advantage betting such as advantage sports betting. Hyland is well respected as one of the most famous blackjack players of all time, as he is currently in the blackjack hall of fame, and has made a successful career at being a loyal, hard-working, and responsible advantage blackjack player. “I love the fact that I’ve played blackjack for this long,” stated Hyland, “it’s very satisfying to take the money from the casinos –to me [this] is way better.”

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Richard Munchkin is a prolific writer, director, producer, radio host, and professional gambler. He is known for his book Gambling Wizards, which narrates the history of some of the most well-known blackjack players of all time.

Growing up in the town of Des Plaines, Illinois, Munchkin took a liking to strategy games at a very young age. By the age of three, he was proficient in the games of chess and gin rummy. It was by the age of twelve that Munchkin fancied the idea of playing games in order to when money. It was at this time that he began backgammon and poker seriously. His talent and skills were able to provide him with enough income to put himself through Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts. Upon completing his undergrad in the late 70’s –and not wanting to be a starving actor in the Hollywood strip –he moved to Las Vegas and began work as a card dealer, and occasionally a pit boss, at the Castaways Casino.

It was at this time, in 1977, Munchkin learned how to count cards. He recalls playing backgammon in a bar in Chicago with a dentist when he told Munchkin about a way to beat blackjack mathematically. Intrigued by the idea, Munchkin ordered the book Playing Blackjack as a Business, and moved full time to Las Vegas. After completing dealer school, he was hired on as a dealer, as he recalls, “I would practice counting while dealing,” and began to sharpen his card counting skills full time in Vegas. Nevertheless, Munchkin eventually found it more profitable to be a blackjack player than a blackjack dealer, and began playing with a team in the later 70’s. Munchkin’s first experiences playing on a team wasn’t as profitable as he had expected, and after a failed hand, Munchkin quit the team and went back to dealing. Nevertheless, he was soon drawn back into playing. Although their original bankroll funder moved back to Australia, Munchkin and his friends began playing very seriously and soon the tides began to change as much success and profits were reaped by Munchkin and his team the next decade.

As a theatre major, Munchkin’s idea was to make a large amount of profit in Las Vegas, and eventually sojourn to Los Angeles to get involved in the film industry. Although he endured many unforeseen circumstances, this is precisely what Munchkin did. Munchkin launched his film career in the 80’s, and between ’87 and ’99, Munchkin produced and directed over twenty movies such as Evil Obsession, Fists of Iron, Ring of Fire, L.A. Heat, Out for Blood, and Deadly Bet.

In 2002, Munchkin authored his famous book entitled Gambling Wizards, and also frequently contributes op-ed pieces to Blackjack Magazine, All in Magazine, and Blackjack Forum. In 2004, Munchkin participated season one of the World Series of Blackjack. In 2009 Munchkin was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

Munchkin currently hosts a weekly radio show called Gambling with an Edge, which is syndicated on KLAV in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Kevin Blackwood is a professional blackjack player, card counter and author who is famous for his best-selling book Play Blackjack Like the Pros. He has played in the World Series of Blackjack and the Ultimate Blackjack Tour.

Born in the state of Maine, Kevin Blackwood had humble beginnings as he was brought up in a very conservative devout-Baptist background for nearly two decades. Upon traveling off to college, and transferring a few times to different universities, Kevin was able to successfully complete his undergraduate and masters degree by the year of 1981. Kevin then enrolled in a Ph.D program to continue to work towards his doctorate degree, as he was planning on either teaching Church History as a professor or venturing off into the ministry field. It was at this time that he began reading about card counting wherein his life was changed drastically.

While reading an article in Sports Illustrated about a “new breed of gamblers”, Kevin became fascinated with the idea of a new and innovative generation of gamblers who played by the science of gambling using mathematics, thereby breaking the old stereotype of the “good ‘ol boy” blackjack player. As someone who had a mathematical background, Kevin knew that this was something that he could seriously pursue successfully with the right amount of time and training. “They weren’t gambling in a true sense,” stated Blackwood, “They were using their aptitude in a way to turn the tables on Las Vegas.”

In the early ‘80’s –right after marriage –Blackwood began training in Oregon and Washington in local taverns for many months insofar it was a sterile environment away from more serious places in Nevada. It was here that Kevin began to track meticulous records of his fiscal earnings and losses, and built up his bankroll before he took his newfound skills to big-time casinos in Vegas. Nevertheless, after decades of black jack as a professional card counter, Kevin decided to shift into semi-retirement and begin to convey to others some of his legacy and creativity through the power of the pen.

Kevin’s first book, a novel, entitled The Counter was written with many autobiographical themes throughout the book including his religious upbringing. Published in 2002, it tracks the story of Raven Townsend and his desire to become a millionaire blackjack player. His second book, Play Blackjack like the Pros, was published by Harper Collins in 2005, and is a basic guide and instructional book on how to become a successful blackjack player. Kevin’s third book, Casino Gambling for Dummies, steps away from the blackjack themes and covers the basic ins and outs of the casino life and how to become victorious at various games therefrom. Kevin’s most recent book, The Legends of Blackjack, was published as an e-book, and is replete with numerous stories of many of the blackjack giants.

Blackwood now currently resides in Oregon with his wife, two sons, and cat.

Footnotes

[1] Sports Illustrated, “Youth Can Age You,” May 14, 1979 https://www.si.com/vault/issue/70830/57

[2] Kevin Blackwood, (On Blackjack), interview by Colin Jones, Blackjack Apprenticeship.com, Podcast Audio, , May 7, 2013,

I have developed an unhealthy fear of every middle-aged white guy in a suit.

Stocky, slicks his hair back—you know the type.

I assume he wants to stare daggers at me and whisper into a phone. I assume he is about to cross his arms and stand off to the side while watching every hand I play and every card that comes out of the shoe. I assume he feels like mopping his brow and flipping through a binder of surveillance photos; that he yearns to invite me to pick up my chips and step back from the table; that he has a hankering to inform me that I am more than welcome to play slots.

I assume too much.

This has started happening at the bank and the airport. I felt a back off coming recently before I realized I was at church.

I have developed an unhealthy fear of phones ringing; of taps on the shoulder; of people walking up on me from behind; of security guards milling about talking into shoulder radios; of anyone running through a casino.

Has this happened to you? Stay strong and play on. When you get that feeling, more often than not you you need to play on. Mutter to yourself, “Bring on the backoff, fools, I dare you,” if it helps steady your resolve. Bolting at every hint of possible ouster would only serve to deprive you of massive amounts of EV. Sometime heat comes and then goes away altogether.  It’s never an exact science.

I was leaving a casino recently with an extra five grand in my pocket, congratulating myself for having gotten no heat at all, and a comped room for the night to boot. Suddenly a floor manager burst through the doors behind me yelling “Stop! Stop!” after me and running at me like he was going to tackle me.

Oh Crap.

“The cashier forgot to pay you this,” he said In his hand he had two quarters.

—Loudon Ofton

I received an email recently with a fairly common question, so I thought I’d share it, along with my opinion and the opinion of a few other famous card counters…

First, let’s define a few terms:

1. The Shoe:

Any blackjack game with more than 2 decks will be dealt from a shoe. Shoe games are completely beatable by card counting. The increased number of decks DOES decrease the advantage of the game, but that is often counterbalanced by other factors like better rules and more tolerance. The card counting system we teach works for any number of decks dealt… and the majority of the nearly $4M our teams have won was at 6 and 8 deck games.

2. Random/Automatic Shuffle Machines:

A random shuffle machine that takes all the cards (i.e. all 6 decks or 8 decks) and shuffles them together. Then the dealer takes the full stack of cards, has a player cut, and puts it into a shoe and deals. Since the game includes all of the cards, these shuffle machines are great. They speed up the game and having nothing that a player should fear.

3. Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSM’s)

If a dealer deals out a few rounds, then takes the used cards and puts them into a machine that he is continually taking cards out of, then he is using a CSM. These machines continually shuffle together 3-5 decks, making it impossible to predict what types of cards are left in the shoe. Thus, it’s impossible to count a CSM game.

No! Here’s why: players don’t like them and they are expensive for casinos to maintain. But rather than just sharing my opinion, I thought I’d ask a few other pros (and Blackjack Hall of Fame members).
Here’s what Tommy Hyland and Richard Munchkin had to say:

I’ve been a card counter for 15 years, and I side with Tommy and Richard.

Every year things change. A great game disappears, but a new opportunity arises. CSMs come and go, but there are so many opportunities for EV in this great country (and around the globe)!

I have more friends making upper 5-figures or 6-figures from card counting than I did 10 years ago, in large part because there are more opportunities for card counting than there were 10 years ago.

Make sure you know everything it takes to beat the game, how every rule and option affects your edge, then start beating blackjack for yourself!

If you’re interested in learning the skills necessary to beat casinos for profit, start our Card Counting mini-course now…

Two years ago, I received an eerie email from a Las Vegas surveillance professional by the name of “T.Dane.” He said he knew who Ben and I were (this was long before the any Documentary or major press). He said that although his day job was to protect casinos and catch card counters and other advantage players, he had a great deal of respect for what we do, having even spent some of his free time counting cards for money.

To date, I’ve only gotten emails from a couple people who work in surveillance. Usually it’s along the lines of “I know who you are and I’ve watched you play,” but they aren’t willing to take the risk of actually meeting. Well, it turns out T. Dane was different. A few months back, he put his career on the line to write and published “Behind the Black Dome”, a book that dives into what surveillance is looking for, what the common tells of a card counter are, and how an advantage player can avoid detection. A book like this only comes around every decade or so, and it’s absolute GOLD to a professional player! T. Dane has also been kind enough to give some guest lectures at our more recent bootcamps, which is always a highlight of the day for myself and everyone else!

If you are serious about card counting, you should absolutely check out his book here (we don’t get anything out of promoting it, just think it’s a great resource).

We were fortunate enough to interview T. Dane about his book and experience on the other side of the black dome.

You can read our interview below…

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Colin: On pg. 11  You explain the different specialties each shift has to deal with (day, swing, & graveyard). Which shift is the best for the AP to play?

T. Dane: It all depends on the player, the type of approach and what time of day suits best for that approach. Some opportunities are also dealer dependent. But in general, I would think team play would be more efficient and the players would blend in more if table games action is at peak time, which is swing. On the other hand, crowded conditions can mean less hands per hour for the solo counter and he would prefer a different shift.  It’s also a good habit to be observant each time you step in a casino. Just by scanning the casino floor, it can give the player a good idea whether or not security, table games or surveillance are involved in an incident. To give an example, if you see a high action player, he is most likely being ‘hawked’ closely by the pit and surveillance. Another example would be if you see security tending to a patron with a medical emergency or if you see law enforcement vehicles present. If you notice an incident, simply ask yourself which department are most likely involved. the more workload for the casino, the more manpower is used and less of their areas being watched.

Colin: How does one figure out what time each shift is working?  Is it fairly standard across properties?

T. Dane: Surveillance dayshift is usually pretty close to banker hours. Table games are the ones who work the weird hours, i.e. 3a-11a for days or 8p-4a for swing and so on. It is common for surveillance and table games to have different start times. This means that if you catch heat from one shift in table games and you think there was a turnover in personnel, this isn’t necessarily true for surveillance. You can still be playing the same shift personnel in surveillance. Overall, there really is no standard shift. Each property or company will have their own, so just be aware.

Colin: In order to practice basic strategy it is mentioned that they use software programs and deal to each other. How skilled on average are most surveillance operators at basic strategy?

T. Dane: Operators are pretty good when it comes to basic strategy. There are tests given to operators before hire, each quarter or annually depending on the director. They are expected to know basic strategy so they can understand a play. deviations from basic is what gives the play away, so the operator must first know basic to understand a deviation.

Colin: How would you rate your own card counting skills?

T. Dane: LOL. I never rated my own skills but speed-wise I can keep up. I remember back when I first started in surveillance, I would hold the deck face down, take one card out, and stare at the date and time stamp on the surveillance monitor. As soon as the seconds reset to :00, I flipped the cards one by one, trying to finish within a minute. Now I can do it 20 seconds face down and 15 seconds face up. I’ve heard of others who can do it in less time.

Colin: Do you know any surveillance operators that go and play against the house as AP’s?

T. Dane: I’m sure there are plenty who play and count but nothing serious. I only met two other operators who attempted AP. I haven’t met anyone who did it or is doing it on a professional level. And If they are, they wouldn’t share that information anyway.

Colin: Facial recognition software:  In the movie 21 it is said that facial recognition software will be so powerful it will lead to the end of card counting.  You briefly mention it in the book, but say that when casino tested it was not very accurate and that the technology was still young for the industry. How is the technology currently used?  Has it been improving?

T. Dane: Much of what is depicted in surveillance when it comes to movies and tv shows are more for entertainment. As far as my experience in FRS, they are still young and could use some adjustments to satisfy the need of a surveillance room. I know of one that was recently tested and it did not perform as promised. But who knows what’s currently being developed or has been developed. If there is FRS that does perform, it is most likely being used in law enforcement or the military. But an operators memory will always be the best FRS.

 – (pg. 36-38) SIN and Griffin, and now OSN, strike fear in card counters.

Colin:   When a player is identified as an AP how proactive are casinos in notifying other casinos and submitting their information to Biometrica or Griffin?

T. Dane: Back in the day, I would say there were a lot of networking and sharing information within the surveillance community from different companies. Mostly because properties did not maintain or did not have the capability to maintain their own subject database. But times has changed. Most casinos now have their own database and if a flier is sent, information is mostly passed on to sister properties. Also, surveillance rooms should always make their own determination. They should never rely solely and take action based on any outside information.

Colin: How detailed are player profiles within these databases?  Are they kept up to date?

T. Dane: Any information you gave for your players card or information from your drivers license will most likely be available. Subject profiles are kept up to date each time a new entry for the player is inputted.

–     (Pg. 48) “Pattern/Tell”: “The Fishing Hole – Be careful of double deck and six deck shoes combined in one pit.  Surveillance is most likely hawking these pits since they know AP’s will eventually land and play.  They don’t really give much attention to pits full of continuous shuffling machines and carnival games” (p. 48, para. 3).

Colin: Most of the book is focused around blackjack advantage play, but do casinos have similar systems or work as proactively to combat AP’s at carnival games?  If you can make an advantage play against a carnival game will you face less heat?

T. Dane: Some casinos do take a proactive approach when it comes to combating AP for other games. Any AP approach that is out of the ordinary will definitely buy the player more time than straight counting. Other opportunities are out there, just be observant.

–        “Splitting 20’s is a bold move that attracts unwanted attention.”

Colin: When it comes to this play what do you think is the mindset/approach AP’s should have?  Do you split 20’s and be ready to get out of there, or do you think minimizing the use of this play will pay off in adding longevity of play?

T. Dane: The first thing surveillance will look at is the bet. If the bet is low, it is not much of a red flag. However if the bet is high with the player splitting 20’s against a stiff, then the next question that comes to mind is “What’s the count?” Surveillance can then run back the footage to see what the count was or just start to watch you – now you attracted surveillance heat. If you create a pattern of splitting them only on high plus with a high bet, it’s a dead giveaway and you are most likely to get backed off quicker than the other player who mixes it up by splitting them with a low bet. But deviations like this will also depend on the player. An AP who plays their local store everyday should minimize this type of play to achieve longevity. But the player who plays for a team and wants to be aggressive in getting the money out can get away with this play as long as they are willing to leave soon after.

–        “Playing as a refusal is considered the number one tell for an AP” (p. 56, para. 3).

Colin: When it comes to players cards it seems like there is no winning.  You don’t use them and you attract unwanted attention.  You use them and you they track and flag you. What would you do if you were counting cards for income?

T. Dane: This will all depend on the player. If comps and promotions are a big part of your game then yes, you should always use a card. But if it’s not, then using your real name and getting backed off will only affect your longevity. But a player who doesn’t want to use a card doesn’t have to play as a refusal. Just be creative and remember to stay on the legal side.

Colin: What would your advice to A.P.s be?

T. Dane: My advice to players would be to stay informed. If you get backed off or limited your play due to paranoia, it’s minus ev. I’ll quote RWM when he said “Learning to count cards is easy. Learning to get away with it is tough.” True, but it doesn’t have to be that way as long as you know the “enemy”. Part of the reason I became an asset in surveillance was because I took the time to understand who I dealt with by learning more than the information provided to me by the casinos. Anyone who goes into battle without first learning who they are dealing with will fail.

Colin:  Since surveillance doesn’t have any audio how important is the correct language?  What types of gestures/acts should players avoid? Which should they use?

T. Dane: Since there is no audio on the casino floor, a player’s body language is very important and should always be passive when dealing with casino personnel. If you find yourself being 86’d by overzealous casino personnel, you should back down keeping your hands close to your chest while maintaining an open palm or walk away while pointing towards the exit. These are things that will matter when it comes to “he said, she said.” Let the footage do the talking. Do not act aggressive at any time. Avoid moving towards personnel or having closed fists. Avoid shouting or raising your arms. Just understand that the casinos have a job to do and just take them on another day.

Many card counting trainees and lower limit card counters have yet to experience the “dreaded” backoff.

I remember how proud and excited I was when I finally got backed off for the first time. I still asked for a comp and remember bragging to the bartender making my (free) milkshake that “I got asked to stop playing because I’m too good at blackjack.”

I never check bags, but I do like to pack enough in my carry-on to achieve multiple “looks” on trips. The goal is to not necessarily to hide my identity, but to present a character whom the casinos will not associate with my identity.

The next day (or shift), I head out as a totally different character whom they would not associate either with me, OR the previous character, OR any flyer that might be sporting my picture by now. Alternating looks is key.

These are very basic and simple to put together, but the small details matter (accessories, etc.) If you can change your facial hair to suit each look, even better. If the parts you bring are interchangeable, or can be used for more than one look, better still.

A few of my favorites from the past:

• “Republican guy”: Yellow button-down oxford shirt tucked into pleated khakis (braided belt), white running shoes, fleece vest, reading glasses on the end of the nose and white cap emblazoned with a republican elephant. Being a proud Republican is good for establishing why you have big money and, likewise, why you are so stingy on tipping.

• “Cowboy”: American flag button-down, tight jeans, big belt buckle, boots, Cowboy hat. Old ladies will love you, and pit bosses will for a short time be fooled into believing you have strong moral fiber.

• “K-Fed.”: FuBu jersey, oversized coat (fur-lined hood, gold embellishments), saggy jeans with swaths of graffiti, flat-billed cap cocked at an angle. Watch out. The ladies like a bad boy. Well, I wouldn’t call them ladies, but still.

• “Golfer”: Golf shirt, fleece vest, khaki shorts, visor, white socks and athletic shoes. Research the local links and know your “handicap.” The pit bosses will ask.

• “Gamer nerd”: Japanime t-shirt, giant headphones, hat with strange symbols.

• “Jock”: (aka douche). Backwards hat, jeans, team jersey (day), Ed Hardy button-down (night). Bottle of Bud in one hand. Good for blending into the crowd in a town like Vegas.

• “Badass Biker”: torn jeans, wallet chain, ACDC shirt, leather jacket, boots. Graveyard shift only, when anything goes, like a badass biker playing big money.

Hope this gives you some ideas of how to change things up on a trip to a place like Vegas or AC.

—Loudon Ofton

PS. We’re announcing the dates for the next BJA Bootcamp. If you’re interested in getting trained by a few of us Pros, find out more here…

I thought this was a perfect example of expecting the unexpected.

I arrived at a smaller casino resort destination in the west with a handful of casinos. Almost immediately, I ran into another card counter I knew and trusted. We arranged to meet off-property. He had been in town for several days. “This place is really bad,” he said. “I’ve only gotten in five hours all week. I get backed off now before I even sit down.” According to him big action was suspect, backoffs came quickly and flyering was unavoidable. This was his first trip to the state, and it was my 12th, so concerns were amplified. In spite of this, I managed to get 19 hours of play in a day and a half, reaping $800/hour of EV along the way. How did I do it?

1. I found and played decent single and double deck games, whereas he was sticking to shoe games. The betting pattern is way more fluid and believable (at times using only black and purple chips).

2. I assumed the persona that this town accepted as a big player (It’s a resort town). I dressed like I just got off the golf course, and made sure I knew the names of a few local courses to throw around. They ate it up. (Later I learned I had been pronouncing one of them wrong. Oh well, I am an out-of-towner).

3. My friend had a bearded emo-looking friend in a flannel shirt that he brought along standing behind him. Not playing, not saying anything, just watching without expression. It looked weird to me. I bet it looked weird to the casino. Friends of people throwing money around don’t look or act like they live out of a rusty Subaru and just ate lunch off a trash can lid.

4. Rather than avoid the places that blackjack sites suggest to avoid, I chose to dive in at one. Sometimes this pays off, as other card counters are likely consistently following the advice, and in the void, the casinos have gotten lax on their approach when a big money player comes through.

5. Graveyard, graveyard, graveyard.

6. Based on Ownership groups, reported conditions, games offered, most likely to flyer, and everything else under the sun I could find out beforehand, I had created a document that contained all info, and from which I had created a list of the casinos I wanted to hit IN THE ORDER THAT I WANTED TO HIT THEM. My friend was walking in blind. ORDER is key, because if the first casino you hit flyers you, you are toast. Save the ones with a reputation for flyering for last.

7. Strike hard, strike first, no mercy sir. I do short trips with lots of hours, as opposed to longer trips with less hours per day. I think my way is better. Call me on it if you think differently.

—Loudon Ofton

Pt 2 of Colin’s interview with Richard Munchkin. He welcomed me into his home to discuss card counting, advantage play, blackjack shoe computers, running a team, and his unique story of how he became such a successful advantage player. It was a lot of fun getting to hear his own story, share some of the ways my story as a card counter parallels his, and discuss the real life of a professional card player. Here’s part two…

If you’d like to listen to this podcast, sign in or consider becoming a member of Blackjack Apprenticeship.

If you would like to learn more about Richard, check out our Blackjack Hero biography.

I had the distinct honor of interviewing one of the greatest advantage players in history, Richard Munchkin.

He welcomed me into his home to discuss card counting, advantage play, blackjack shoe computers, running a team, and his unique story of how he became such a successful advantage player. It was a lot of fun getting to hear his own story, share some of the ways my story as a card counter parallels his, and discuss the real life of a professional card player. Here’s part one…

If you’d like to listen to this podcast, sign in or consider becoming a member of Blackjack Apprenticeship.

If you would like to learn more about Richard, check out our Blackjack Hero biography.

I was playing a casino with very good conditions, but one I had been backed off of before.

So when I returned it was with a different look and a different spread. I lasted ten hours over three sessions before the backoff came. I was approached by someone flanked by security who stuck out his hand with a smile and introduced himself as the CEO of the casino.

• CEO: I don’t usually do this, but…. all my managers are out right now, so, before you take more money from us… [insert standard backoff here]….
• Me: Okay.
• CEO (big smile): The variance on 12 versus a 4 gave you away.
• Me: Huh? (I don’t usually use the word “variance” in reference to playing decisions, so it threw me for a second).
• CEO: You hit 12 against a four when the count was negative.
• Me: Lots of people hit 12s against fours.
• CEO: Well, it’s not worth it. Haven’t you read “Burning the Tables in Vegas?” by Ian Anderson? It’s not worth the tradeoff. For the money you make, you lose it tenfold by giving yourself away.
• Me: So you were cozy with me hitting my soft 18s? It seems like Anderson was more worried about that one. But hey, every place is different, right? I’ve decided that assuming what the trade-offs will be in the eyes of a casino evaluating my play…
• CEO: Yes?
• Me: …isn’t a good trade-off.

The lesson, I suppose, is that there is no perfect cover play, or at least you can’t predict it from one place to the next or from one shift to the next. Whether it is under-betting, over-betting, avoiding certain deviations, or always insuring against a dealer’s ace, every cover play you employ throws a little bit of dirt over your EV. Make sure it doesn’t get buried alive in the process.

—Loudon Ofton

I’d been long awaiting a chance to try card counting at a particular casino in the midwest.

$2000 limits on a 6d game had been advertised. When I arrived they only had the typical $500 6d game, and suggested they rarely raise limits, and only for known players. Also–they closed at 2 AM. The first lesson was that the reports weren’t entirely accurate.

I got a comped room for the night. In the morning, I had been playing two hours when I was backed off.

“We’re going to need you to come to a back room and sign some papers,” said beefy security guard #1. “…and take a picture,” added beefy security guard #2.

“Back room? Can’t we just take care of business over by that planter and not in a back room?”

“Hmm… okay,” said #1. “Cash out those chips first.”

I cashed out. As I walked away from the cage, one of the sides of beef splits off to go get all the paperwork and the camera. Still walking, I turned to #2 and said, “Yeah, I don’t want to be here right now. I’m going to leave.”

“You Can’t!”

I just kept on a walking, out the door fast into my car and off, even as walkie talkies crackled behind me with cries of, “Subject is fleeing!”

The casinos can play all the spy games they want, but knowing your rights can offer you an easy exit in most circumstances. In this case I was not obligated to do anything, so I made my intentions very clear and without any signs of aggression. They don’t need paperwork or a photo to make a trespass order, and they can’t deny cashing you out unless they suspect you of committing a crime. When in doubt, and push comes to shove, you have the gaming commission and the local police available to protect your rights, but most of the time casinos know when their bluff has been called.

—Loudon Ofton

Once they suspect you of having an advantage, casinos sometimes take odd measures  in trying to defeat you. In two instances that I can remember, they tried to dissuade me by slowing the game down in infuriating and equally hilarious ways.

I was at a small casino where I had played several long sessions over the course of weeks. A new dealer checked in and dealt extremely slowly. No worries, I thought. I saw my favorite dealer on deck, and she was one of the fastest dealers I had ever seen. As long as your game isn’t thrown off, fast dealers drive your EV up by virtue of raising your hands per hour. The slow dealer checked out and the new dealer came in, but she too, was dealing extremely slowly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I could see it was bothering her. She made it clear in not so many words that she had been told to slow the game down. She loved dealing at her own speedy rhythm, and this was killing her. As we continued, she slowly sped up until she was back to her normal speed. The casino owner himself appeared from a back room, pulled a pit boss aside, and I couldn’t help but notice he was yelling about my dealer’s speed. The pit boss tapped her out for another dealer and the tyranny of tree sap dealing began anew.

Another time, I was destroying a medium-sized tribal casino in one of my biggest sessions ever. I had just emptied a rack in the middle of a shoe, and an emergency fill was ordered. We waited and waited, and when the fill finally came, it was in the form of all green and red chips ($25 and $5 respectively). Of course it was only a few hands later that I emptied the rack again. Another emergency fill was ordered. We waited and waited and waited. I complained to the pit boss about the wait, and about the fact that if they had brought larger denomination chips the first time, this wouldn’t have happened. He assured me it was being taken care of. We waited and waited. I couldn’t leave. The shoe was hot, I was owed money, and the other tables were too crowded to realistically bide my time spotting. When, after three epochs and an ice age the fill finally came, it was all reds and greens AGAIN. The casino was trying to defeat me by paying me out as slowly and awkwardly as possible.

I played out the shoe that way, winning the whole time. Our table had become a circus side show with massive piles of red chips moving back and forth. Betting a three foot stack of reds got me a quicker payout by virtue of the dealer being able to “size in” than did betting black chips. When the show ended, I had to stack rack upon rack of green and red chips in my arms and teeter off to the cage, whereas a small pile of purples would have sufficed. I was laughing the whole way.

—Loudon Ofton

This article will explain four of the most common blackjack math terms used by card counters and advantage players, as well as  how they affect advantage play and card counting.

(New to card counting? Start with our comprehensive “How to Count Cards” page!)

Variance

Variance a term we all hear a lot but may not fully understand what it is. In a gambler’s world, if they hear this they will just say “hey that’s just a fancy word for luck”. By definition it is simply the difference in the expected advantage and the actual results produced. For example, let’s say you are playing a decent counting game and your hourly EV is $25 an hour. You play for a total of 100 hours and your expectation for those 100 hours is $2,500. You take a look at your logs and realized you are only $2000 ahead. This shows you are $500 below expectation which is the VARIANCE of what you would expect to win, on the flip side you could always be $500 ahead of your EV.

*You were using a bet spread worth $25/hr, but after 4 hours, you were up or down $1500. You just experienced Variance, my friend. The good news (if you’re a winning player) is that the more hours you play, the closer you get to variance balancing out, and all you are left with is the “long run”. 

Standard Deviation (SD)

By Definition a standard deviation refers to how far or how often an outcome will deviate from the average. Standard deviation and variance go hand in hand (SD is actually the square root of variance). At this point you are probably asking yourself “how do these things affect me as a player?” There is not one answer for this, but a multiple set of answers. Figuring what variance you have in a game and what the SD is for any particular game at any stakes can help you assess if you are playing a winning game or how much bankroll you need to bring to a session.

*Standard Deviation helps prepare you for what to expect, in terms of variance. If you are consistently experiencing results beyond 2 SD, you’re either one lucky/unlucky SOB, or something doesn’t add up!

N-Zero (N0)

N0 is something not looked at very often especially among new players. N Zero is the number of hands theoretically required before hitting a goal of being ahead by one standard deviation (4*N0 gives you the hours to overcome 2 SD). To get the most accurate evaluation of N0 one must play by the same set of rules and the same betting/playing strategies. Going back to our original example of $25 EV per hour, we would find our N0 by the following equation N0= Variance/EV^2.

*Want to overcome variance (i.e. luck) and get to the “long run” quicker? Play games and use bet spreads that have a lower N0. 

Certainty Equivalence (CE)

This is also known as risk-adjusted return. This is the product of taking the expected win rate and adjusting it based on the level of risk in proportion to the current bankroll and level of risk tolerance. This will show you if the game is “worth playing” compared to your bank size. So you may have a $100 in EV but you CE may only indicate that the game is only worth $50 since your bankroll is so small. You can even go so far as CE going into negative territory which indicates you are severely over betting your bankroll.

The basic equation of figuring CE. EV-( (bet size*Standard Deviation)^2)/(2*Kelly factor*BR)

*Any easy way to think about the concept behind CE: “I could pay you $100 cash, or you could take a 50/50 chance at $200. Is it worth it? What about a 50/50 chance at $101? 1/10 chance at $20,000? At some points, you will take the risk. At other times, the risk involved isn’t justified.

Fortunately all areas of blackjack math are pretty much done for you in a program called CVCX by QFIT. All you have to do is plug in your bet size, bankroll and game conditions and it will spit out your EV, VAR, SD, N0, CE and even the optimal bet spread.

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Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians, documents several years of the blackjack team I co-managed.

Upon it’s release, it was one of the top 5 documentaries and independent films on iTunes and resulted in media attention and interviews from CNN, New York Times, and even the Christian Broadcasting Network.

It’s been interesting to see this whole project come to fruition, some has been good and some has been… less good. So I thought I would share a few of my (Colin’s) thoughts.

There are tons of things I’m proud of when I think about this film. In general, I am glad to be a part of this whole experience, and my desire is that the card counting community and general population really enjoy the story. Here are some of the things I love about the movie:

• Stylistically, it’s way more impressive than I could have ever imagined. The film maker did a great job filming, editing, and doing the graphics for the movie. The music fits well and everything is super slick.
• It tells a compelling story. I think the film stands on its own as a documentary about a large scale blackjack team OR as a documentary about something taboo in the Christian world. The overwhelming response is that it’s a compelling movie.
• It accurately portrays the life of a professional Blackjack player. This has been the coolest part for me. Having spent a decade of my life making money from card counting, and now teaching and supporting other card counters, there are still very few people close to me who actually get what I do or what it’s like. I remember watching “The Hot Shoe” with a few friends early on, and it was so awesome to see real card counters talking about the job. I think anyone who has played blackjack professionally or just wants to know more about what it’s really like will really enjoy watching those parts of the film.
• It creates conversation. Our main goal with letting people create a film about our Blackjack team was that it would cause people to question and discuss things that are taboo in society, whether it’s card counting or what it means to be a Christian.
• Someone was able to document an exciting chapter of my life.  Many of my best friends were a part of the team and I seriously doubt I’ll ever be a part of something as interesting as our Blackjack team. Yeah, there are a few scenes in it that make me cringe, wishing I could explain better, or even because I’ve changed as a person over the past 5 years. But I’m okay with that. And it really is an honor to have this piece of history to show my friends, kids and grandkids for years to come.

If you’re interested in seeing the film, you can buy it on DVD through our website here. It’s also available through Video on Demand, iTunes, and a million other streaming sources.

Until next time, keep generating EV!

-Colin

I don’t blame people for knowing very little about card counting, or the life of a card counter.

Most people assume that if you say you’re a card counter then what that really means is you’re some sort of super-genius who can turn $100 into a million dollars in a few minutes. But unfortunately, you’re breaking the law to and likely to end up getting pistol-whipped by Lawrence Fishburne in the bowels of the casino

Or something like that.

Happiest of holidays to you from my card counting bunker to yours. I have been hunkered down at the grand opening of a new casino. As it turns out, no heat and a big comeback win were two of my Christmas miracles this year.

I am always surprised when that happens. Particularly when the owner himself recently backed me off at a sister casino down the road.

When it comes to plundering casinos, the holiday season can be the most plunderful time of the year. Holidays, celebrations, and special events always represent special opportunities to card counters. Distractions abound.

Your counterparts in the pit are human, and are forced to deal with the same sort of disruptions that the holidays bring you. They are busy with gift shopping, sluggish with holiday ham, and tired from spending time with (and/or avoiding) family. The kids are out of school. Seasonal church events, work parties, and festivities of all kinds always put mental energy for work duties on the back burner. Everyone is slacking off a bit from the floor to the surveillance room, thinking of vacation days and just surviving to the new year. Owners are on holiday. Second stringers and temporaries are holding down the fort. Pit bosses are watching bowl games and pro games with playoff implications.

Add to that the sliver of good will toward humanity and general seasonal merriment everyone feels inclined to participate in and it often adds up to letting things slide with regards to catching and ousting card counters.

May your Christmas stocking be stuffed with cash, and may your New Year’s Resolution involve a bigger and brighter sacking of the casinos in 2012.

—Loudon Ofton

If you’re interested in learning how to beat the casinos for profit from Pros like Loudon Ofton, our next Blackjack Bootcamp is OFFICIALLY Open. Our live Bootcamps are a proven way to learn the skills and receive the hands-on training to become a successful card counter. Find out more or Register here…

If you want to beat casinos at blackjack for profit, I’ve got good news and bad news…

The good news is that card counting works.

For nearly a decade, I have provided for my family through beating casinos at a card game. I put my wife through school, we bought a half-million dollar house, rental property, and I haven’t had a job ever since I became a professional blackjack player at 23.The bad news is that it’s not a “get rich quick” opportunity.

And anyone hoping for a get rich quick scheme is thinking like a gambler.

You see, gamblers are looking to defy the odds. They want an easy out, a get rich quick scheme, and will often bankrupt themselves in that pursuit.

It’s why people play the lottery. Did you know that your mathematical expected return (what we call “Expected Value”, or EV) of a $1 lottery ticket is 8 cents? But whenever the lottery gets large enough, people get eyes as big as saucers and start gambling at the lottery.

The first step to thinking like a card counter is to stop thinking like a gambler and to start thinking like an investor.

“But wait, I thought you said card counting works!””

Yeah, it does. I’ve made over $300/hr as a card counter, and some of the Blackjack Apprenticeship Pros have made even more than me! But the first step to thinking like a card counter is to stop thinking like a gambler and to start thinking like an investor.

I’m not a gambler. The first time I ever went into a casino was for my best friend’s bachelor party. I gambled $1 on a nickel slot machine and thought, “Damn. I’ll never see that dollar again.”

That’s why I’ve never played the lottery. It’s a losing bet. And I’m interested in smart money decisions based on positive Expected Value.

When I got into card counting, I believed a lot of the common misconceptions about it.  But as I continued to study, I realized it was a smart investment based on math and hard work that I could do! So I didn’t even enter a casino until I had spent nearly a hundred hours practicing counting cards and memorizing tables. I went into casinos with a calculated bankroll, calculated advantage, and a laser sharp focus on beating the house.

Our culture has become obsessed with the get-rich-quick mentality, and have met hundreds of people (inside casinos and out) who are looking for that angle to become a millionaire without using their brain or hard work. Gambling perfectly plays into this mentality; gamblers know the odds are literally stacked against them, but they still think they will be the one to beat the odds. In both gambling and life, the odds will catch up with you over time. And the longer you try to defy the odds, the sooner you can wave goodbye to your hard earned money.

What does this mean for you? Smart investing at the blackjack tables, or as we call it, advantage play, isn’t limited to the game of blackjack, or even casinos. It’s a philosophy. Advantage players (aka card counters) look for maximum Expected Value at the gas pump, the fast food restaurant, everywhere we go. Our goal at Blackjack Apprenticeship isn’t to just teach people to beat a card game, but to teach people to think like an investor. So don’t get caught up in large numbers of what could happen, but start thinking through the value of decisions and base your decisions off the expected value.

If you came to our website in an effort to turn $10 into $1,000,000 without much effort, LEAVE! Better yet, stop wasting your energy on a shortcut and start working smarter. If you think card counting is your solution to being lazy and financially irresponsible, you’re wrong. If you’re lazy and irresponsible with money, you’ll lose it at the tables. Successful people don’t get lucky. They make their own luck.

Card counting works. But it only works for people looking to work smarter, for people who are willing to put in the time and energy to do something exceptionally, and you have the patience to invest your time and money at the tables.

Until next time, keep generating EV!

The money moves fast. When I lose count of the chips stuffed in my pockets or the cash I have extracted from them, or just when I need to dodge a little heat, compose myself, or strategize, I retire to my office—the casino bathroom.

In addition to its traditional offerings, the bathroom stall is every counter’s respite—often  the only place in the casino without those pesky eyes in the sky following your every move. I don’t know how many millions of collective dollars I have unpacked, counted, recounted, rubber-banded and tried not to pee on inside these stained walls. Don’t drop that thousand dollar chip, because it has a mind for rolling into the next stall and then the scramble is on.

If you have never poured out a Budweiser into the toilet and refilled the bottle with water, you haven’t lived. Well you have lived, maybe quite well, but you have never lived as a shrewd card counter. Just don’t spill your water-filled Budweiser at the table like Ben once did. Oops!

A few stalls—the Wynn and Venetian in Las Vegas come to mind—have doors that go all the way to the floor. Privacy is nice when you are pulling 40 grand out of your socks. A ledge is nice, but more often than not, the top of the toilet paper dispenser is your only hope if you are looking for something resembling a flat surface to stack chips on. I hate automatic-flush toilets. God help me if I ever drop a chip into that bowl and am forced into a quick-draw duel with the hair-trigger sensor. It’s bad enough that while I am counting chips the toilet is flushing the whole time. Other patrons must think I ate at the buffet. Which brings to mind what I hear most while I am in there—buffet cursing, sports cursing, and casino-took-my-money cursing. I once heard a cellphone ringing one stall over. “This is the wolfman,” the man answered with a grunt. That explains the smell, I thought.

Here’s a fun fact—I have never been backed off in a bathroom. But I have been followed into a few, so keep your wits about you.

Tonight I had a handicapped stall to myself. The bigger office is always preferred. I had plenty of space to count, rubber-band, and re-pocket. Ten minutes later I sauntered out, and was met with the scowl and crossed arms of a man waiting in a wheelchair.

—Loudon Ofton

I was driving to a Tribal casino recently. When the GPS beeped with the announcement that I had arrived at my destination I pulled over and looked around. I was on a dusty road with empty desert in all directions. GPS is great, but never let it be the substitute for advance planning.

More than once I have been led to a casino’s administrative building, tribal gaming office, or an outdated address. One time I was led to a KFC. They had no table games, but they did have a Double Down sandwich, which I DID NOT eat. I am a card counter, not a gambler.

Prepare for a trip in such a way that you can find your way without GPS. You never know when your phone will decide it can’t get a signal, or conk out altogether because you dropped it in the airport garage. Use casino websites. Map everything out in advance. Know drive times and where the casinos are in relation to one another so you can make the most efficient travel decisions.

When I get into town, I tend to start at either the casino with the best game, or the casino closest to the airport. From there I have my options mapped out on one sheet of paper. Nothing is clumsier or more time consuming than fumbling with a map on the side of the road. Hands-free driving is best. Be sure you know what texting or cell phone usage laws exist in the state or city to which you are traveling.

Many factors inform my choices in how I launch a regional blackjack assault, from reported conditions to drive times to available lodging nearby (I don’t get those sweet comps so much anymore). As I play, new factors continue to inform my choices, from new information I have received about local games to traffic conditions to whether I suspect I have been flyered.

Remember, the longer you play, the more assured you are that you will be victorious for your career. Trip efficiency is crucial to getting maximum hours each time out and working towards that long run victory.

—Loudon Ofton

I was at a casino recently that didn’t offer surrender—not in the reports, not in the posted rules, not in the signage. Nevertheless, at my first 16 against a dealer’s face card I asked if I could surrender it and get half of my bet back. The dealer shrugged. The pit boss shrugged. Then he said, “Okay.” I like to think they added the rule BECAUSE I asked for it, but in any case the asking made all the difference.

Do your research on blackjack table conditions, and always confirm the information before you play a hand. It hurts the soul of a card counter to find out at the END of a session that what you thought was a six-deck game was actually a five-deck game (they do exist!). It also hurts to make a long drive only to find the place so crowded you can’t get a seat. Call ahead to ask about table limits, rules, and times of day that tables are closed or crowded.

Likewise don’t rule out a casino just because of reported conditions. Casino games are organically changing. If money isn’t coming in the doors, or if the casino down the road made its rules better, the casino is often forced to compete for patrons.

If card counters are storming a place because of great reports, the game often deteriorates. Stay ahead of the curve by combining good online research with your own research. A report that discourages counters means that foot traffic has decreased and conditions may have changed. I popped my head into a casino recently where they supposedly offered only bad games to find an amazing double-anything single deck game that wasn’t on any of the reports. I played it all night, and the pit was happy to have me as I took them for a healthy chunk of change. Punchline—this dream scenario happened in Las Vegas. No don’t go looking for it. It’s not there anymore. I’d like to think I was the reason they put that table out to pasture, but who knows. I will bet that when the casino is under the gun to boost its numbers, that game may well come back.

In the time it took to read this dispatch, the conditions at a blackjack table near you just got better. Go find it and have a roll in the EV on my behalf.

—Loudon Ofton

I was playing blackjack at a large casino last night I had never been to before. They had multiple pits separated by whole minefields of slot machines. I did some wandering back and forth, back-counting and bombing into tables as I saw fit, and playing carefully. I was getting heat from the various pit personnel. I figured I wouldn’t last much longer. That is, until I came across Ramon.

I was playing a table with a feisty dealer. Ramon was an employee approaching the pit. He started stepping over the chain barricade between two tables. One foot was over when the dealer chirped, “Hey! You can’t go that way. You have to go around!”

“You’re right,” Ramon conceded. “I’m sorry,” he pulled his foot back.

“I’m totally kidding,” the dealer said raising his arms in surrender.

“No, you are right,” said a flustered Ramon, and he walked around. The dealer felt a little bad for his verbal assault, and my mouth dropped as I watched Ramon clock in as the pit manager for the next shift.

At that moment I knew that I didn’t want to leave this pit for the whole night. In an industry of bruisers and bulldogs, I had found a beagle. Ramon was a pushover.

In not so many words, I made it clear to Ramon that I belonged here, that my big money was welcome, that I was not the droid he was looking for and that he was doing a great job. I played the rest of the night without any heat, making sure I never ventured beyond Ramon’s pit.

It’s difficult enough to play perfect blackjack, let alone size up, distract, or charm a pit boss in an attempt to throw them off your scent. I know a handful of card counters who are bulldogs in their own right in this way. I have never been much of a bulldog. But if you learn to keep your ears perked, once in a while a pit boss will give away their weakness. When they do, strike.

—Loudon Ofton

“Who here can tell me how to win this game?” I asked as I bellied up to a crowded blackjack table. Everyone started talking at once. “Wait,” I held up my hand. “First off—who has won more than they’ve lost in the last year?” Dead silence.

Blackjack: everyone’s got an angle on winning, but very rarely do they seem to do it with any regularity. You’d think a long losing streak in the same direction would shut the peanut gallery up a little. You’d think.

I was playing a table in Arizona this week with, who some might describe as, a big ol’ redneck. He was playing one hand of $100. I was varying back and forth indiscriminately between one hand of $25, and two or three hands of $500. He was getting two things—no love from the cards, and right pissed off. His red neck spread upward and steam started leaking out of his ears.

“Go ahead and clean HIM out!” Mr. Redneck said to the dealer, jerking a thumb in my direction. “Then we can go on back to playing reg-uh-ler.”

Mr. Redneck turned to me. “I hope you get cleaned out bub. Cleaned OUT!”

“This should about do it, yes?” I said, moving  from one hand of $25 to two hands of $500. The vein in his neck throbbed.

“A FOOL and his money are soon parted!” he decreed.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “I don’t read the Koran.” The dealer flipped a blackjack. I moved to three hands of $500. Mr. Redneck burst into flames.

“It’s not a guessing game, BUB!”

“What kind of game is it?”

“It’s about statistical averages. I should know. I come here every day, week in and week out. I’m trying to get back over two grand back I lost just this week.”

“So how are those statistical averages working out for you?”

His cowboy hat hit the roof riding on a  geyser of steam.

“It’s not about how big you bet, motherf***er!”

“No. You’re right. I’m sorry to hear you and your money were parted. It was too soon.”

“Come on guys,” the dealer begged.

“The difference between you and me,” the man said, spittle sizzling behind his clenched teeth, “is what you got parked out in the lot and what I got parked out in the lot!”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

Mr. Redneck grabbed his chips in a huff and stormed off.

“I drive a Ford Festiva,” I said after him.

Every loudmouth with his or her oddball blackjack strategy will have a unique reaction to the way you play. Roll with the punches. Don’t let people get under your skin, and don’t let them intimidate your EV play. Playfulness is better than defensiveness. You are not on trial.
—Loudon Ofton

Several months back, I was playing in one of my favorite Las Vegas strip properties, and who do I see playing at the table next to me? It’s none other than Steve M, a BJA Bootcamp graduate! We ended up getting together to talk for a few minutes, and I asked if I could interview him to hear how life has been going in for the year or so since he attended our Vegas Bootcamp. Here’s what Steve had to say:

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1. How did you get interested in card counting? BlackjackApprenticeship.com?

Several years ago, I saw something on the MIT team on cable. I started to search the internet for additional info on card counting and found your videos and site. I’ve watched every video on your site and have read all posts, both by you and Ben as well as the questions and answers on the forum.

2. When/why did you start gambling?

I traveled to Vegas for a business convention several years ago with my wife. I didn’t play blackjack at that time, in fact, we were in awe of playing at a table. But a few years later, we started playing the $5 tables, and back in 2008, I started my search to become a card counter.

3. How did you do before the Bootcamp?

I had a nice little run in the beginning of 2009 and thought the additional training would help. Unfortunately, prior to the camp, I hit a major loosing streak which wiped out my 6 months winnings in about 2 weeks.

4. Was the Bootcamp useful/worthwhile?

The training camp was awesome and well worth the time and money. When I attending the camp, I thought I was playing an “A” level game. I came to a quick realization that I was closer to a “C+” and needed a lot of work to increase my blackjack skill level. The camp was very valuable in regards to increasing my knowledge regarding card counting as well as showing me the mistakes I made during some of my play.

5. How have you done since the Bootcamp?

Since the camp, I’ve had a lot of ups, and a few big downs, overall I’m up. I’m continuously working on my betting strategy to maximize my game based on my risk criterion.

Note: Steve is being modest. He told me he was up 5-figures when we met in person.

6. Do you recommend becoming a card counter to other people?

You don’t need to be an MIT graduate to be a card counter, but you do need to have some intelligence. For someone who likes to play blackjack, and is interested in maximizing his or her game, I strongly recommend card counting as well as this site.

7. Anything else you’d like to share with people on our site?

Last, but not least, there is a lot of potential to make money counting cards but don’t think you aren’t going to lose or hit losing streaks. Practice with a simulation program before you play at a casino. Have an adequate bankroll. Start with a conservative betting strategy. Try to wong in, if possible. Don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose. You will most likely be down before you’re up. Never play at Southpoint Casino, they are by far the biggest assholes in the world! Never argue with the pit boss if you’re backed off. Try to be as inconspicuous as possible, ie ignore assholes at your table. And, last but not least, have fun, and always ask for comps!

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So take it from Steve: There’s money to be made, comps to be given, fun to be had. But you gotta put in your work. Kudos to Steve for taking our advice and perfecting his game! I’m glad to hear that, even though it isn’t his fulltime gig, he’s raking in some money!

Check out our free training if you want to learn how to take money from casinos.

The player next to me—as is often the case—was tipping the dealer tonight. I—as is always the case—was not. The dealer thanked Mr. Tips more noticeably each time for the table scraps coming his way, and Mr. Tips responded by ever more loudly espousing the eternal virtues of tipping. They were addressing each other, but they were talking at me.

This happens on a regular basis. I have become accustomed to being the lone big bettor at a table, raking it in hand over fist, and nevertheless wearing the label Ungrateful McCheapy-Pants for not tipping a dime.

Finally Mr. Tips got up the nerve and asked me to my face why I don’t tip. I remembered that this player had been talking earlier about signing up for a blackjack tournament.

“Do you ever tip the dealer in a blackjack tournament?”

“NO WAY!” He chortled. “Why would I do that?”

“You tip the dealer here, why not in a tournament?”

“Every dollar counts in a tournament. It might make the difference between winning and losing.”

“That’s why I don’t tip,” I said.  A long silence followed.

“Well,” the player finally said, “What goes around, comes around, you know? It’s about Karma.”

“The same Karma that is suspended for blackjack tournaments everywhere?”

Over the long haul, the casino takes a few cents every round from the average player. The advantaged player turns that on its head to take a few cents every round from the casino. Don’t let your moments of high positive variance fool you. Your margins are a lot smaller than your chip stack. In the long run, he who gives away his cents makes neither cents nor sense.
–Loudon Ofton

In search of a cheap last-minute flight to a casino destination west of the Rockies, I stumbled upon something wonderful this week. The cheapest flight available—shockingly cheaper than all of the others—involved a nine-hour layover in Las Vegas.

In the minds of the airline this was the worst way to travel. And it might well have been if the layover were anywhere else. But for me, an advantaged player too well-known to stay under the radar for very long in any major casino destination, nine hours in Vegas was just what the doctor ordered.

I rented a car for 17 dollars. I cashed in a fist full of comp offers for chips, cash, and rooms all over town (They keep rolling in despite my illustrious and oft-flyered track record. When will the various marketing departments get the memo that I have been deemed “Not Welcome?”)

I swung through a handful of casinos, prairie-dogging in and out of shoes. These were all of the same haunts I had been backed off from multiple times before, but on this visit I never stayed long enough to get caught.

With an hour left before my flight, I went back to my palatial “layover” suite where I caught a 20-minute nap and a shower, before heading back to the airport with an extra 12 grand in my pocket, ready to parachute into the next enemy territory.

Since the comp offers are always rolling in, and since Vegas can be a risky trip by oneself, not worth a lengthy stay or the diminishing comp offers alone, now I have the means to hit it hard and often—layovers!

–Loudon Ofton

Here we go again. A brash young pit boss with an itchy trigger finger just backed me off. It’s déjà vu all over again. Listen—no one can know you are a good card counter in the first hour. It’s impossible. Maybe after 500 hours of play YOU still aren’t sure. That is par for the course when you are playing a game with wild variance. It just takes time to assess.

No doubt my tosser-outer du jour is patting himself on the back for “pegging me.” I feel an open letter coming on.

Dear Casino Owners, Managers, and Pit Personnel:

If you like your money, you have reason to fear me. But fear is the beginning of love—see—and if you like your money, you have reason to clear out the smallest corner of your bleak black heart for me. After all, I keep you in business.

See, it is because of people like me that you are able to prey upon the people who are 99% like me. I play perfect blackjack. They play almost perfect blackjack. I win money. They lose money. It is because blackjack is a “beatable” game that so many millions of under-informed, under-prepared patrons try their hand at the tables. They eagerly spread their wallets for the glimmer of a chance of a hope that they will win big.
“It’s a beatable game,” the large man told me at the tables last night. He proceeded to double down on a hard thirteen. “Not anymore,” I replied.

For every dollar you lose to me, you get hundred back from the bleating sheep crowding the sea of blackjack tables day in and day out, when I am here and when I am not.

You should celebrate me. You should hang my picture on the wall and say, “Win big like this guy!” Pat me on the back. Buy me a drink. I am doing more for you than your billboard on the interstate. More than your sad promotional mailers. More than your drink specials. I am what every player wants to become. I am the Real Deal.

Now, be assured, It will be our little secret. Nobody needs to know that perfect blackjack takes time, dedication, hard work and plenty of risk to actually make it pay off. This is America. By god they Want It Now, and you’ve always been ready to give it to them—at 98 cents on the dollar. So why would you squash those quick-fix dreams by denying them a hero to emulate? Put me on a pedestal and the dollar bills the people throw will land at your feet.