Each person is different, each personality is different. Some advise never to enter a casino unless you have all the stuff (counting, bet ramp, BR etc.) you need to play. In my case, I could not follow that advice or put in place that much time without knowing if I would even like a casino, like the grind of making money.

I started going to casinos with just BS memorized and a vague idea that you increase your bet when the count is positive and either sit out or bet minimum when count is negative. I considered the losses as simply paying tuition. I kept playing while reading archives and forums, a couple of books (Stanford Wong, Don. S). I made a lot of mistakes but despite that I stayed even at the end of the first year. I learned a lot though and the second year I won $19k.

One way I learned was to put my mistakes or my doubts on this forum and the BJ21 forum. When you do this, you get ridiculed a lot (mostly from the full time pros who use the forum to get their hostilities out) but there were enough good advice and corrections that I learned a lot. Too many just lurk, being intimidated by the nastiness from some. Sometimes, I double checked the advice by asking the same question on another forum or on the same forum and it enraged the long time resident pros but I learned from that too. For example, for a time a couple of pros on this forum were constantly ridiculing the HiLO count (that I use) and I was starting to consider changing to another count but when I posted on another forum, there were a few pros who told me of their continued success using the HiLO and I stayed with it.

I would suggest going to the casino as you learn. One, you find out if you can handle the casino environment. Two, you learn a lot about yourself when under pressure and how you handle it. Three, your mistakes (bound to happen when you are still learning) establish you in your local casino as a gambler or an addict and not a card counter and this can go a long way. My small loses in my first year at one casino has paid me dividends now for almost 4 years.

The thing is that you try not to let the initial wins get you complacent and you keep reading and studying. There are always finer points to learn.