very discouraging results from 50 year veteran of card counting

[mhb]

this post is very difficult for me to make.
it is very discouraging to me as it makes me
face the possibility that most if not all of us are
barking up the wrong tree with card counting.

I have a friend who has played some 50 years
of intensive card counting using the most advanced
counting systems, 2 levels with side count of aces.
he back counts, wonging in and out to the extent
that he has been barred from most every casino in
las vegas, reno and many overseas such as aruba,
London etc. he is a very bright man and a very good
player. he plays a very hard game against the casinos.
he is very disciplined.
he says that after all of these years his profit from
blackjack is about $10-$15 per hour. he typically bets
black chips and in his hey day bet as much as $700
per hand. he has experienced the extreme highs and
lows and the variance from the game.
his profit from the game is not enough to cover
his overhead. currently he is financially ruined
for not being able to make his overhead. he has
had a part time career in teaching and very little
living expenses.
he is a much better player than I am.

my results from playing are coniderably less
than his in the some 10 years more or less
that I have played with a weaker count.

so, I ask the question:
how much can truly be expected from playing
blackjack? I don't mean the simulation results.
I mean real results from actually playing with all
of the distractions and practical problems of
casino play. what type of overhead can be covered?
has anyone played for many years and gotten similar
results? better or worse results?

truly, what kind of results are we getting with
this game? would we make more hourly profit
working at mcdonald's? I hope we can disclose
this and face the facts.

[Three]

The real issue when seeking answers the answers you are asking for is most peoples real world results will be too short to be meaningful statistically. In other words you will have a lot of people like me posting great results to whatever approach they use to counting for whatever games they attack and lots of people posting poor results or even losing results. Variance will account for most of this but then skill level also comes in as well as many other factors like patients to forgo poor conditions to wait for more favorable conditions. Many poor results I have had can be attributed directly to playing when I should have passed on the conditions available. Some came in the best of conditions but that is to be expected. I have learned to forgo those crappy conditions and pick my times to play. When I am disciplined enough to do this I have long runs of great results but when I get cocky and just start putting in time when I shouldn't even be playing the losses add up quickly.

There are a precious few with the BR, skillz, discipline and patience to play the way we should. I have heard the number of less than 200 in the entire country stated by experts. I try to show all these attributes in the casino but I fall short sometimes and my BR suffers. I have built a very strong BR over the last few years but still am not quite to the 6+ figure range (all profits) that I feel are necessary to take money from my BR. So I fall short rarely in discipline but still fall short in BR. The only thing I remove from my BR is vehicle expenses and whatever profits for any trip are not in $100 bills. I figure that averages out for travel expenses and vehicle maintanance (sorry about the spelling) comes out of my BR with the rest reinvested.

[KJ]

50 years. It is 2014, so we are talking he started right around the time of Thorp’s book? He played in some pretty good blackjack era games in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and I guess even the 90’s. All dealer stand 17, a lot of good single and double deck games.

I am going to open with some disagreement on T3’s first line. Yes, our real life results are, even for players who play a lot, are too small to match billion round simulations, but that doesn’t render such results meaningless (statistically). For someone who plays a lot like myself, if someday I am fortunate enough to look back on 50 years worth of play, it would be relevant. It might not match simulation results, but it should be ‘ballpark’. If my EV over that times amounts to $150/hour and I my actual results are $10 or $15/hour, then sometime is damn well wrong. Most likely, I was not playing the strong game that I thought I was.

But, I am not your friend and you didn’t really say how much he plays. I mean if he plays a couple days a year for 50 years, then yes, that might be such a small sample size to account for these results. If he plays several times a week for 50 years, again, I go back to something wrong. Like perhaps he isn’t the strong, disciplined player playing a strong winning game that you think and he claims he is. I am not trying to offend either yourself or your friend, but something isn’t adding up.

One red flag, for me, is that ‘estimate’ of $10/$15 per hour. A serious blackjack player keeps records, and should know exactly what his profits are. Granted, we are talking 50 years, and much of that time before computers, so I guess paper records which were probably lost, but that ‘estimate’ comment, leads me to believe he wasn’t taking this as seriously as you think.

[KJ]

so, I ask the question:
how much can truly be expected from playing
blackjack? I don't mean the simulation results.
I mean real results from actually playing with all
of the distractions and practical problems of
casino play. what type of overhead can be covered?
has anyone played for many years and gotten similar
results? better or worse results?

truly, what kind of results are we getting with
this game? would we make more hourly profit
working at mcdonald's? I hope we can disclose
this and face the facts.

I have broken this part of your post off from your post to reply directly to this. I have been pretty liberal, even reckless with sharing my results and experiences. My sample size is not 50 years of course. I am in my 11th year supporting myself from blackjack, but I break my results down further as I have been playing about the same level for 6 years. The first 5 years were lower level and don't really work well in a comparison. So, in my 6 years, my actual results are in the mid 400 grand range and just slightly ahead of EV. The EV thing is little misleading as I tend to be a little conservative figuring my EV, which probably accounts for my actual results being a little better than EV. Most of my 6 years at this level have come in very close to expectation. The 2 year's that didn't were last year, where I was just about 40 grand above EV and this year where amazingly I am currently just about 40 grand below EV. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that even these two years added together are pretty close.

Now, the McDonald's thing? @ 21 grand for this year, I must be pretty close to a McDonald's worker. That is, if the McDonald's worker was lucky enough to get full-time work, which he probably isn't as it is my understanding, they keep everyone part-time to avoid benefits and such. But even, in the McDonalds employee range, for this so far, subpar year, I'll take my job over the McDonalds guy. I might vent and complain about my result from time to time, but I wouldn't trade my job and life for anything. I love what I do for a living and that really is the bottom line, for me.

[Three]

I am going to open with some disagreement on T3’s first line. Yes, our real life results are, even for players who play a lot, are too small to match billion round simulations, but that doesn’t render such results meaningless (statistically). For someone who plays a lot like myself, if someday I am fortunate enough to look back on 50 years worth of play, it would be relevant. It might not match simulation results, but it should be ‘ballpark’.

Well of course you lend truth to the extreme cases but my point was to the typical answers he would get to his question to forum members not his friends play and what they would mean.

Now if you want to look at his friends historic results the games were much better with some having an off the top advantage. Working against that is what money was worth back then. A big top bet then would be small today. Table limits would have been smaller and tables were often packed 3 deep with back bettors waiting for a seat at the table. Your results would be much better relative to your bets but your bets would likely have been much smaller. Table maxes were a lot smaller in general. 40 years ago a minimum wage earner took home $100 a week, few people were millionaires and a executive in a big company might make 6 figures. Today top executives make 7 or 8 figures and being a millionaire doesn't mean much. The equivalent is a billionaire or 1000 times as much. So all that play at great games isn't going to add a lot to your average dollar win over time. That said the $10-15/hour seems way too low without more info on how he played.

[RWM]

There is a LOT of missing data here. He played up to $700 but how much of his play was for nickels? How many hours did he play in 50 years? Did he have less than ev results when playing at $700 top bets and greater than ev results playing smaller?

My guess is that if he played solidly through the 60s and 70s and did not make a ton of money then something is wrong.

[mhb]

There is a LOT of missing data here. He played up to $700 but how much of his play was for nickels? How many hours did he play in 50 years? Did he have less than ev results when playing at $700 top bets and greater than ev results playing smaller?

My guess is that if he played solidly through the 60s and 70s and did not make a ton of money then something is wrong.

yes, up until the mid 80s he made a ton of money.
since then it has been downhill in the $10 to $15
per hour range, very discouraging. not enough
to cover his overhead.
something to think about.

[Three]

Sounds like he didn't make adjustments to maintain his edge as the house edge grew.

[KJ]

yes, up until the mid 80s he made a ton of money.
since then it has been downhill in the $10 to $15
per hour range, very discouraging. not enough
to cover his overhead.
something to think about.

Can I ask what kind of overhead we are talking about here? Is he flying first class somewhere every weekend to log a handful of hours or something?

One solution to the overhead problem: move closer to the games that you play. My daily expenses are a buck or two in gas and a couple dollars tip on my comped meals.

[bigplayer]

He's not playing a winning game or he's bounced around in stakes so much to the point where he won big at low stakes and lost big at high stakes. He's evidently doing something wrong because with a top bet of 2@$700 his EV is around $250 per 100 hands. You don't just win $10 an hour for 50 years if you're doing it right...even playing the worst games imaginable if his bankroll held up he should have won about expectation over 50 years. He's doing something wrong.

[Ouchez]

He's not playing a winning game or he's bounced around in stakes so much to the point where he won big at low stakes and lost big at high stakes. He's evidently doing something wrong because with a top bet of 2@$700 his EV is around $250 per 100 hands. You don't just win $10 an hour for 50 years if you're doing it right...even playing the worst games imaginable if his bankroll held up he should have won about expectation over 50 years. He's doing something wrong.

I have to agree, and I must disregard the OP and the intent. As I have often said, the major threat to AP CCing is H-17, 8 decks, ###, 6.5, and the advanced surveillance with fast data transfer.

O

[ZenKinG]

I have to agree, and I must disregard the OP and the intent. As I have often said, the major threat to AP CCing is H-17, 8 decks, ###, 6.5, and the advanced surveillance with fast data transfer.

O

H17 and S17 isnt that big of a difference to a counter

[RobinHood21]

Like most have stated before me... He must have been doing something incorrectly.

In my case, and I believe a few others on this site, playing BJ for a living is not "just playing BJ"... It's a complete lifestyle. There are very few people that can live 100's of miles away from "good" games and only play a handful of hours here and there, and make a living playing. Precise record keeping is crucial. Discipline at and away from the game must be tuned. Game selection. Truly enjoying the game. Etc.

The games that were available in the 60's and 70's are dream games (S17 SD games dealt to the last card) and anyone with skills should have been able to take quite a bit of money from the casinos even with smallish bets. Yes... The game has changed drastically, but not enough to make it not profitable. IMO, you need to either seek out the very best games, or have enough money to bet big or spread big. There 's no sense in wasting time and money on "just okay" games which can be found throughout all of America.