Blackjack ...21, Any real Card Counters out there?

Question

Any real Card Counters out there? How did you get into it? How did you learn?

Answer 1

The first casino in Australia opened 10 Feb 1973. That was a VIP night and I'm not a VIP. I played the next day, so very likely I was the first card counter to play in Australia, in a legal casino, that is!

I learnt to count cards in the 12 months before the casino  opened. Card counting is not a particularly hard thing to do but it needs to be applied to a count strategy, but that, too, is not all that hard either. One needs adequate capital and an optimum betting strategy - that is essential. If you make tiny, tiny bets you are unlikely to go broke but you wont win much making small bets, but if your bets are too big a bad run might send you broke. The bets need to be sized just right. And you need to be in control of yourself. You might be counting perfectly, and have big positive counts, and really big bets on the table, and still lose hand after hand after hand. Believe me, it happens. What can you do about it? Nothing! Just keep playing, playing correctly. I will add a proviso here, that you are sure that the dealer is not cheating. It is possible to cheat out of a shoe, by the way!

In my early days I had an easy run but these days it's different with card counters getting kicked out or restricted. It's tough. Besides that, it takes a lot of work to make much money. It's a real job and hard work and your bankroll will go up and down like a lavatory seat :)

Answer 2

Card counting especially at the casino is a very difficult thing to do.  What's going to be even funnier is after the movie "21" comes out next week, everyone is going to profess to be a counter.

Few things to keep in mind, these were MIT's best and brightest, they had adequate financial backing and if everyone could do it the casino's wouldn't offer blackjack anymore  

I tried card counting and am not ashamed to say I got blasted, but if you want to learn repetition is the best way.  According to the MIT team, they got to the point where they weren't counting individual cards, but could run the count at 5-6 cards at a time,  

You have to get to the point where you don't see Kings Aces or threes, but see the cards as +1, -1 or neutral.  And that is very difficult and takes a lot of practice.

Answer 3

I count cards every time I play blackjack. Hiding your skill is actually much harder than counting cards.

There are a million books on counting out there. The place to start is the bookstore or library.

Answer 4

Get a deck of cards just one to start with and souffle them and go throw them look just at the suits at first then with five or so cards left in your hand see if you know what most of the suits are then work up to number and then work up in decks most tables I've been to use 8 decks good luck

Answer 5

either count the 3's or count the 9's  when you have seen 5 of them your chances of being beat by the dealer increase by 50%.