Tales of a beginner

[PhillyNewbie]

First off, let me thank all the members here who have taught me so much through their postings. This place is better than 20 books!! And since I have sponged so much knowledge off all you, I thought Id try to make a little contribution posting my experiences thus far.

Background:
I first became interested in card counting years ago, when I was but a wee lad of 20 . My brother-in-law, who was quite a bit older, and a math whiz, had a bunch of Ken Uston's books and "Playing Blackjack as a Business" lying around, so in a down moment, I started reading "Million Dollar Blackjack". Soon after, he came in and saw me reading it, and asked what I thought about it. I said it sounded interesting, but really difficult and probably above my meager abilities. Not so, he said. During the course of the loooong conversation that followed, I found out he had played on several of Uston's Atlantic City teams, taken lessons from Lawrence Revere, and been barred from several LV casinos. As an interesting aside, the "Tony" character from South Philly in Uston's "Ken Uston on Blackjack" was based on my brother in law. Yes, his name was Tony, but the rest of the story about the wife and kids was BS. He really just lived with his mother, had no kids, and certainly wasnt taking the last dime out of their bank account to play BJ! He did, however, have the same sort of rude awakening to the Vegas style of dealing (face down, instead of face-up), but according to him, lost nowhere near what the fictional Tony lost. During that time, he managed to take around $100k out of the casinos, using the Revere APC. So of course, he became my go-to guy for any BJ questons as I worked my way through Uston, Revere, Wong, and the rest (he had quite the BJ library, so thankfully my BJ education was cost-free). I was still intrigued, but from my reading knew I had nowhere near the bankroll to attempt anything like this.
Fast forward a few years, and I have a little disposable income and decide to try to learn this stuff. Needless to say, my first few trips to AC I got my clock cleaned and vowed to not return until I had this stuff down cold! So there you have it...my initial tale of woe. Im sure there are LOTS out there with the same tale, having been plucked clean by the casinos after attempting counting plays without enough practice.

Sooooo....now Ive been studying, practicing, etc, for about a year. Ive run counting drills in CVBJ until I couldnt see straight. Played about 10000 hands in the casino simulator with no BS errors, so I figure Im ready to give it a shot.

Thankfully, Pennsylvania has great BJ rules, and Harrah's Chester has $5 games during the day, so off we go!

Sit down at the $5 table, hand over my card and $200 (yeah, I know, there's a great debate about using player cards, but at this point I figure what I know is gonna help the casino more than me, so I might as well get a free buffet out of it).
Cards start coming out, and HOLY SH*T!! This guy is so much faster than the CV dealer!! Im trying to keep the RC, but its no use. Im hopelessly lost by the 2nd round of the shoe, so I get up from the table, down $5.
Wander through the casino a bit, then sit down at a different table. Only 1 other player, so this might work better for me. NOT! Again, I lose the count quickly and leave.
So far Im 0-for-2. Nice. I decide to try a $15 table and get some one-on-one play. This makes keeping the RC a little easier, but I still end up dropping $100. OK, so I can handle it if there's no one else at the table, and if I can engage the dealer with enough bullsh*t talk to slow him down a little bit, and if I keep using my chips to help keep track, etc etc. Of course, to keep up play at those levels, I need about $20000, so this isnt going to work either.

Conclusion:
I am nowhere near ready for a real casino!! My little $2000 bankroll has been decimated, and I didnt even get a free buffet. Aspiring counters take heed...you will get your a$$ kicked the first few times. Learn from it as I did. It wasnt a super-expensive lesson, but it certainly validated what Ive read here.

now Im off to practice more so that by sometime in 2014 or so, I might be ready to try again!!

[zengrifter]

User is banned, content deleted.

[Smartpart]

Dealer can only deal as fast as the slowest player.

So I see you lost $105, and you learned a valuable lesson. I wouldn't call that being decimated.

[PhillyNewbie]

Dealer can only deal as fast as the slowest player.

So I see you lost $105, and you learned a valuable lesson. I wouldn't call that being decimated.

No, not really decimated (hyperbole..lol), but my ego took a serious a$$-kicking

[RS]

Yeah it's annoying, you think you're spot on and BOOM! Hit's you like a bag of dicks.

You need to manually go through a deck, or several decks, to get that good speed. Deal to yourself if you can afford tray, shoe, cards, etc.

[PhillyNewbie]

Yeah it's annoying, you think you're spot on and BOOM! Hit's you like a bag of dicks.

You need to manually go through a deck, or several decks, to get that good speed. Deal to yourself if you can afford tray, shoe, cards, etc.

I think its counting pairs that I need to work on. I can count down a single deck as fast as I can flip the cards, but it seems like when its time to see A-6 as 0, rather than thinking "RC is 3, A makes it 2, 6 its 3", etc, I need to be more like "RC is 3, A6, still 3"....if that makes sense?

[Smartpart]

Depending on the dealer and the amount of people, it may be easier to count down pairs or one at a time. Dealing to yourself, or better having someone deal to you, is probably the best way to practice. The table drills in CVBJ might help.

[Ouchez]

Philly,

There are alot of tricks and you may learn them in time, AP is not easy as some may think.

Best,
Ouchez

[RS]

Yes, exactly. If you're saying "a 6" in your head, that may be...too much "talking". You have to be good enough to the point where you can assign several "point values" to groups of cards: High/high = -2, high/mid = -1, mid/mid = 0, high/low = 0, low/mid = +1, low/low = +2. Or at least you have to be able to see them like that. It sounds confusing, but it's really not that bad. (That's actually how I originally learned, was by grouping them together when counting then later going one at a time.)

And sooner or later, you'll be able to cancel hands on the table with each other. Imagine A/K, 7/4, 5/6, Q/9. The A/K cancels with 5/6 and 7/4 cancels with Q/9. But IMO, that's more suitable to pitch games where you have to count the cards quicklier, because they're dealt face down.

Also when you go through decks, start at high RC's and low RC's and make sure you end on those RC's. this helps because you're not going to be at a +16 RC too often going through 2 decks....but in 6 decks you'll see that more often.

Kinda going on and on here...but eh whatever.

Practice counting by 2's mentally. Start at -20 and work your way to +20, then do the same starting at +21 down to -21, or -21 to +21. You need to get your mind used to thinking "m21, m19, m17, m15...etc". I usually spend 5 minutes of my drive to the casino doing this. (I start by going up/down by 1, then by 2, then 3, then 4....but I use Zen count where cards are valued between -2 and +2.) You can also back count a game for a few minutes when you first get to the casino to get warmed up.


Sitting at or near 3rd base also helps, since you can count the hands & drawn cards as they're being played before you have to play your own hand, giving you more time.

[Mr2Project]

Ya my first attempt at counting years ago, i was extremely under bankrolled, didnt play with indices, and would lose the count easily if i played heads up. Now that im giving this another shot w/ somewhat of an actual br. Im have not played until i have all aspects down cold. I now play the reko w/ full indices and know them inside out, use a cob cvcx optimized bet ramp, play/practice on cvbj w/ all the speed settings on 2nd to last settings, about every 4-5 shoes i make a counting mistake by 1. I will not feel comfortable playing my bankroll until i can play on cvbj and full speed settings 2 hands at a time w/ 0 mistakes. Im too risk averse to do it any other way.

[Frostbyte]

Aspiring counters take heed...you will get your a$$ kicked the first few times. Learn from it as I did. It wasnt a super-expensive lesson, but it certainly validated what Ive read here.

Yeah, I've had my ass kicked a few times now. Each loss has been quite a bit smaller than the last, though that probably doesn't mean anything. I am confident the trend will reverse soon enough.

[stopgambling]

How many hrs have you practiced???If you have cvbj to practice ,you should get up to speed eventually.Are you using some 3 level count with side counts??? I did not rememberyou mention what count you used.I M O ,one should have at least 300-400 hrs of practice.Maybe the real smart ones only needs 30-40 hrs of practices .

[PhillyNewbie]

Practiced more hours than I can remember..lol. Im using KO for now, no side counts or anything else.