Been playing seriously for now around 10 years. In the beginning read all the books, sharpened my skills with flashcards dealing cards from a shoe and doing all the drills on all the software and ran sims to prepare with proper bet spread to beat whatever games I chose to play. Won right away which kept me engaged. I was low green stakes to start off with and was likely overbetting a tad according to the bankroll that I considered to be money that I was willing to lose if things didn't go well. Doubled my bankroll in the first six months of play and over the next six months I had my first losing streak and lost everything that I won. In the next two months I crushed it and never looked back winning around 8000. Over the course of the next year I won around 15000 and the winning continued. From 2008 to 2014 I never once had a losing year. I never played with cover and over time the backoffs continued to mount. By 2014 I quit my job and started travelling ouside of my home territory Detroit where I had burned out nearly every casino in Michigan. I would travel as far west and or south as I could handle in a two to three week trip going home to be with my new wife at the time for a week in between hitting the road again and basically covering the same regions by car and playing as much as I could in a 24 hour period. I had incredible flux in 2014 which was everything I could ask for after quitting my full time x-ray job that I was burnt out from. Earlier in the year my wife and I decided that we were going to give it a go in Vegas. More casinos harder to get burnt out over time and the weather would be better for both of our health conditions. We decided to cash in some 401k money to establish a suitable professional blackjack income and moved in fall of 2014. Partnered up with a guy to do some advanced technique blackjack stuff that I did not share the same skill and knowledge as the other person and looking back we may have been playing games with much slimmer margins of edge than we had originally thought. I likely lost over a third of my entire bankroll and was also doing some team counting stuff on top of solo counting that was getting me databased and 86 left and right. I started to feel like it might be pretty hard to play blackjack at the stakes that I knew it would take to support a family if I started to lose most of the places in a new home town with a ton of casinos. Travelling was something that I was still willing to do but going to Wendover and Pheonix Tuscan regions resulted in even more Backoffs and 86ings. Travelling wasn't working out either. What I had noticed is that after not doing the advanced blackjack techniques at certain places they seemed to be ok with me not using any cover and blasting away for awhile. As time went on I found they were starting to be less tolerant and in the process I started incorporating cover and when the heat still was appearing at times using even more cover and the minute they would move on and not bother with me that should have been my clue to move on and find more places to play and hop on a plane once every other month and go to a different region. One thing I must say is that I have lost my edge trying not to burn out Vegas. You need to play like a lion at this game because the edge you can get is way to small at counting. You give up any of it with any amount of cover it is too much. Travel travel travel. No cover. You get asked to leave say thank you and have a good day. The backoffs are not a detrement they are a badge of honor and proof that if you are not making money in the short run you will make money in the long run. I see people trying to figure out what type of cover to use and sometimes even at low stakes. Only cover anyone should be using in casinos is the kind that won't cost you anything. Anything more than that can seep into your game and you will start to do other things that will cause massive holes that will be very hard to fix.