Professional card counting - The real deal

The biggest misconception is that counting cards will automatically lead to profits, the reality is that this is a long way from the truth. The ability to count cards is very simple and in fact anyone who can add and subtract in single units rather quickly has the ability to be able to card count.

Most people who read my writing work only know me as a poker theorist/writer/player. However my history prior to poker was blackjack and I played that game full-time for four years or so. There are many misconceptions regarding playing blackjack for a living and I am hopefully going to dispel a few of those in this article.

Card counting and playing professional level blackjack are simply worlds apart and the biggest problem for any would be blackjack pro is in how to get your money on the table repeatedly without it appearing to the casino that you are indeed a card counter. I know numerous people who have counted cards at some stage in their life but all of them have been caught by the casino.

I worked inside casinos for a good few years so I already fully understood their level of knowledge and their psychology with regards blackjack. The actual core knowledge of how to beat the game can be learnt from the numerous good books on the subject in a relatively short space of time. I would estimate that a novice could become a winning player in as little as several weeks if they really put the time and effort in.

Just like in poker, game selection is critical for success and it is advantageous to be able to walk into a casino that has more than one active table. Differences in dealer speed, number of players on the table and penetration (depth of the cutting card) all have a serious impact on your earn rate as a blackjack player.

But these are all things that can be learnt very quickly but knowing all this stuff is really only part of the equation. There are numerous techniques for disguising your true identity as a professional blackjack player and one such technique is to team up with a known casino big hitter who will place the action for you.

This circumvents the problem of relative strangers placing the bets themselves and alerting the casino management. A punter who was well known to the casino as a big roulette and blackjack player would be excellent. They would also be above suspicion to the casino bosses based purely on the fact that this individual had an already established history as a big losing player.

Team play in blackjack is a far more common tactic than individual play when played professionally as single players find the process of getting worthwhile bets on the table to be a very big problem. Ramping is another such technique for increasing your stakes without it looking obvious and the most common method is to appear as if you are using a doubling up system. This appears totally natural to the casino management as they fully expect normal players to behave in this way.

Of course, no amount of disguise will allow for the fact that the casino will be tracking your wins and losses and this will certainly be the case if you allow those wins and losses to become substantial. This is another advantage towards team play and the bigger the team then the more you can play within the same casino without risking exposure.

It is for this very reason why life is so difficult for individual card counters and travelling from casino to casino is the norm for these people. Of course with the introduction of shuffling machines then many of the opportunities to play professional level blackjack or to card count have been eliminated.

But yet this does not diminish from the fact that this form of gambling still intrigues millions upon millions of people worldwide and entire websites are devoted to this subject even now. It is worth repeating though that this isn’t necessarily a road to riches and becoming one of the very few players who not only escape long term detection but who also make meaningful money is very tough indeed.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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