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The biggest obstacle I faced was BR. There are two possibilities for how I overcame it:
1) Luck. Just lasting long enough to grow a big enough BR. I had figured going from $10K to $20K would be the biggest hurdle at which point ruin was far less likely. Then hurdles were $60K (play up to tolerance chokepoints in my area. In other words the highest stakes that would not jeopardize longevity) and $100K (Somewhat arbitrary amount for going pro that allowed for living off winnings). I realized how lucky I was when hitting a terrible run after increasing my bets at around $45K BR. A bad run that probably would have bankrupt my original BR hit immediately after increasing my bets. I had to draw down after losing over a third of my BR. I waited until I earned the losing run back twice over to increase my bets again. I figured $100K was needed to go pro but after tweaking my own unique system enough I found that $75K was all that was needed.
2) Increasing the complexity of my count. I was no beginner as I had been counting recreationally for decades. When the economy tanked in 2008 my wife suggested I become a professional gambler as a fallback as job and economic certainty was out the window. She had seen me win consistently at many different games in the casino and online for decades. I know she was thinking live poker but I wanted a more definable advantage if I were to try to make a living at it. Anyway I studied card counting with modest play for a couple years while waiting until I was ready. I had so much to learn that really didn't concern me as a recreational counter. Anyway fast forward to when I was playing more often I kept almost hitting $20K BR but right when things seemed easy I would lose most or all of it back. Each time I tried to figure out how to increase certainty and EV. It was always increasing complexity. I broke the $20K mark and winning became easier. After the beating described above I came up with some ideas never published and they worked out real well. Very very hard count, harder than any published, but simple with enough practice. After that there were no large downswings anymore. Typical bad run was spinning wheels for a while and only showing a minimal profit or a quick larger downturn that was quickly erased by the play on either side of it. I had no problem reaching all my BR goals in a short period of time.
Now I will never know which of the 2 got me over the hump. Complex techniques are worth most to the BR challenged. The rub is most BR challenged are inexperienced so going complex takes a special personality but like I said that was not the case for me. I had always side counted aces for all my decades of card counting so that was the easiest thing I knew. With a bar of easy being so much higher than a lot of counters getting even more complex was easy. Anyway maybe I just got lucky at the time I went over the first BR threshold or maybe it was the added gains from complexity. It was most likely a combination of the 2 or me making my own luck.
Other things I had to fight was discipline. I am a very disciplined person but I needed the discipline to not play just because I was there. Playing crappy games just because you showed up and found that is all that was available at the time is a recipe for disaster. Scouting when and where to find the best conditions, not rules and pen, was an important part to consistent success.
Realizing that maximizing time played rarely if ever maximized rounds played was an epiphany. Usually maximizing rounds played means playing far fewer hours because you can't find great conditions while playing crappy conditions. I like to get 1/4 n0 rounds in when on a trip. That is about 3,000 rounds. If I just play whatever game speed is usually about 60 rounds/hr so it takes 50 hours of play to get the rounds in. If I carefully pick games played to average around 200 rounds/hr it takes 15 hours of play to get in the rounds. After doing the latter enough times it became clear what the best course of action was.
Also as a BR challenged player has the issue of trip expenses eating up most of their EV. Working casino incentives was very important because any trip expenses would cut too much into EV. This meant working transshipment problems to visit several casinos on the same day and pay trip expenses by combining the EV of multiple incentives. Planning trips to hit particularly lucrative incentive days or to be when and where table limits were lower so your spread could be larger helped greatly at the BR challenged level. Without doing something to eliminate trip expenses or make a trip +EV from incentives before you even play a hand a BR challenged player has a much much higher RoR than sims say they do.
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